Assignment of Paper no. 2: Themes, Motifs and Symbols in Gulliver's Travels
Respected sir,
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Name: Rudrika Gohel
Respected sir,
To Evaluate my Assignment click here
Name: Rudrika Gohel
Course: M.A. English
Sem: 1
Batch: 2017-2019
Roll No: 38
Enrollment No: 2069108420180015
Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English MKBU
Email Id: rudrikagohel97@gmail.com
Paper no: 2 Neo Classical Age
Topic: Themes, Motifs and Symbols in Gulliver's Travels
Introduction of Jonathan Swift:
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, political pamphleter, essayist and poet. He was born on 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Irland and he was came of age at the height of the Glorious Revolution. He was a great literary figure in his time unfortunately his father died before his birth and they had to depend on the financial aid, they received from relatives. He was worked for several years as a private secretary of Sir William Templeton.
In 1699 Swift composed some of his most famous stires like "A Tale of the Tube" and " The Battle of the Books", which were published in 1704. His Gulliver's Travels ( written between 1721-1725) , was published in 1726. His Gulliver's Travels was a satire on the current politics between the Whigs and the Tories. Throughout of thirties he wrote his several work, and in 1699 after the the death of Sir William, he became chaplain to lord Berkeley.
After his appointment as Dean of St. Patrick's, Swift continued writing satirically in various genres including prose and poetry. He using various forms to address different causes including personal behavioral, philosophical, political, religious, civic and others.
His notable works,
" Gulliver's Travels"
" A Tale of a Tube"
" Journal to Stella"
" Drapiear's letters"
" The Conduct of the Allies"
" Argument Against Abolishing Christianity"
" Verse on the Death of Dr. Swift"
In 1742 he was declared incapable of caring for himself and guardians were appointed. After his death in 1745, he was buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral. On his memorial tablet was an 'epitaph' of his own composition, which says that he lies "where savage indignation can no longer tear his heart."
Introduction of Lamuel Gulliver:
Lamuel Gulliver was the narrator and the protagonist of the novel.
Gulliver's vivid style of narration portrait him as intelligent and well educated. Gulliver was bold adventures who visited a multitude of strange lands, it was difficult to regarded him as truly heroic. Additionally the isolation from humanity that he endured for sixteen years, it must be hard to bear, but he rarely talked about such matters.
One modern critic has described him as possessing the smallest will in all of western literature: he is simply devoid of a sense of mission, a goal that would make his wandering into a quest.
Themes Motifs and Symbols in the Gulliver's Travels:-
➜ Themes:
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary works
1. Might Verse Right:
Gulliver's Travels ambiguous postures the questions that whether physical power or moral rectitude should be the governing factors in social life. He has a physical power, as he was a giant in Lilliput and he can defeat the Blefuscadian Navy by his Voluminous size. But as he was miniature visitor of Brobdingnag, where he was harrassed by the huge people. His first encounter by Lilliputians. Gulliver was physically tied down by the Lilliputians. In Brobdingnag he was enslaved by a farmer. The whole point of the egg, controversy that has set Lilliput against Blefuscadian.
There is not difference of culture but a religious and moral issue related to the proper interpretation of their religion. The difference of opinion seems to justify, similarly the difference between Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, by their sense of moral superiority; they are cleaner, better behaved and more rational. Balanibarbi believes it self that they right in driving lord Munodi from power. So, as hard to justify as the random use of physical force to dominate others.
2. The Individual Society:
Gulliver's Travels represents the idea of Utopia- an imaginary model of the idea community. The idea of Utopia is an ancient one, compared with the Plato's 'Republic', which was the city State governed and expressed in English by Thomas More's utopia. Swift uses both in his work. Through his attitude towards the utopia was more skeptical. In Plato's 'Republic' children are raised communally. They have no knowledge of biological parents and social fairness was enhanced in the understand.
This social system in Swift's Lilliputians similarly raised their offspring collectively, but actually they are not exactly utopian. They are tern in conspiracies, jalousies and backstabbing. In the land of Houyhnhnms, there are females should exchange a child with a family of two males. So, the male to female ratio was perfectly maintained. So clearly they are more closer to utopian ideals than the Lilliputians. But, there were no clear perfection in Houyhnhnms. They don't have their perfect names and individual identities. In their lack of individuality, they are exact opposite of Gulliver who has hardly any sense of belonging to his society.
When Gulliver forced to leave the Houyhnhnms may he can lose his human Identity, since he felt that he was not a horse and all the societies which he visited make him feel alienated as well. Thus, if Swift's satire mocks the excesses of communal life, it may also mock the excesses of individualism in its portrait of a miserable and lonely Gulliver talking to his horses at home in England.
3. The Limits of Human Understanding:
In Gulliver's Travels humans are represented as they are not ment to know everything, all the understanding has a natural limits. Swift create a satire against those people who have pride themselves on knowledge about all else. In the academy of Balanibarbi, Swift satirised that there is a realm of understanding into which humans are simply not supposed to venture. As it is in Brobdingnag and Houyhnhnms they have no knowledge or understanding of abstract ideas, but their ability to live their lives in a wise and steady way.
The king of Brobdingnag knows little about abstraction of political science. Yet, his country was prosperous and well governed. Also the people of Houyhnhnms are knows that how long a month is, by observing the moon, but they are knows little about arcane subjects like astronomy. So, practical knowledge affected on their well-being. In such way it presents that living a happy and well ordered life seems to be the very thing for which Swift thinks that knowledge is useful.
Swift giving a prominence the importance of self understanding. Gulliver initially lacking a self reflection and self awareness. Thus, Swift may be saying that self knowledge was necessary as well as theoretical knowledge. If we look to closely at our self might not able to carry on living happily.
➜ Motifs:-
1. Excrement:
Mention of excrement in Gulliver's Travels, it was a serious philosophical significance in the narration. It symbolised that every thing that is brute and shabby about the human body and human existence. It obstructs any exertion to view human as wholly spiritual or mentally ascendent creatures. The culture of eighteenth century of England tended to view humans as a noble soul rather than valgur bodies, when Gulliver urinated to put out fire in Lilliput, or when Brobdingnagian flies defect on his meals, or when the scientists in Lagado works to transform excrement back in to food.
Swift represents the human condition through the characters of Gulliver and remind us that how little human has to do everything to servive and existence of everyday.
2. Foregin Language:
Gulliver appears as a linguist who knows the basics of several European languages, even some little bit about ancient Greek. Through this knowledge he was able to disguise himself as a Dutchman and also able to enter in Japan.
He learns the languages of the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnagins and even the Houyhnhnms also. Gulliver has a mastery of foreign languages but he does not correspondence to any real interest in cultural differences. He compares his native England to any of the government which he was visited.
3. Clothing:
Motif of clothing carries a deeper meaning, some critics have noted that Swift pays extraordinary attention to the clothes of Gulliver. Every time he gets a rip in his shirt and he was forced to replace his own clothes. When he was in Lilliput his pants are falling apart. So, as the army marched between his legs they get quite an eyeful. In a Brobdingnag he wears mouse skin and how the finest skills of the land are as thick as blanket on him.
His journey to the new land was also a journey into new clothes. When he saved by Don Pedro after his fourth voyage, he offered to Gulliver a new clothes, but Gulliver denied and preferred his wild animal skins. Through, this we can say that the Gulliver may well never fully back into European society.
➜ Symbols:-
1. Lilliputians:
The Lilliputians symbolised as humankinds wildly excessive pride in its own puny existence. Lilliput marked as tiniest race, visited by Gulliver. Which was most intellectual and smug in both ways collectively and individually. There is more backbiting and conspiracies in the Lilliput than anywhere else. Gulliver was honest consumer of the grand imaginings Lilliput.
There was no mention of other armies of other societies, which Gulliver visited Lilliput and Blefuscu both the countries has six inches tall citizens. Swift wants to mentioned about both the countries. Gulliver was served as a kind of makeshift Architecture of triumph for troops to pass under. The Lilliputians symbolised as misplaced human pride and they are shown their inability to determine the Gulliver.
2. Brobdingnag:
The Brobdingnagins symbolised as the physical, personal and private side of humans. The king of Brobdingnag reinforces this new sense of humanity. The philosophical era of the enlightenment tended to overlook the routines of everyday life and the sordid or tedious little facts of existence, but in Brobdingnag such facts becomes very important for Gulliver, sometimes matters of life and death.
He was forced to take the domestic sphere seriously as well. The other countries was difficult for Gulliver, to being an outsider. In Brobdingnag he was treated as buffoon or a plaything. Brobdingnagins symbolised as a dimension of human existence visible at close range, under the close scrutiny.
3. Laputans:
Laputans are represented as they are full of theoretical knowledge that has no relation to human life and no use in the actual world. Knowledge is not made socially useful as Swift demands indeed, theoretical knowledge there has proven positively disastrous, resulting in the ruin of agriculture and architecture and the impoverishment of the population.
The Laputans control a nonfloating island named Balnibarbi and live entirely by the rules of science and mathematics: even their bread and meat are carved into geometric shapes. The men are so consumed in thought that they
have servants, called flappers, to bring them out of a trance into conversation. The laputans do not symbolised reason it self but rather the pursuit of a form of knowledge that is not directly related to the improvement of human life.
4. Houyhnhnms:
The Houyhnhnms are an ideal of rational existence. The
Houyhnhnms are examines less what humanity creates, such as science or gunpowder or government, and more what humanity is. The Houyhnhms are talking horses who have established a society
based on reason rather than emotion, while the Yahoos are hairy humanoids who
are used by the Houyhnhms as slaves. As usual, Gulliver learns the language and
converses with the inhabitants about society, government, history, and
philosophy.
We can not accept Houyhnhnms as a ideal of humam existence. They have no Identities and no names. This apparent ease may be why Swift chooses to make them horse rather than human.
3. England:
Reference:-
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2394716-gulliver-s-travels
http://m.sparknotes.com/lit/gulliver/themes.html
http://www.gradesaver.com/gullivers-travels/study-guide/themes
Introduction of Jonathan Swift:
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, political pamphleter, essayist and poet. He was born on 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Irland and he was came of age at the height of the Glorious Revolution. He was a great literary figure in his time unfortunately his father died before his birth and they had to depend on the financial aid, they received from relatives. He was worked for several years as a private secretary of Sir William Templeton.
In 1699 Swift composed some of his most famous stires like "A Tale of the Tube" and " The Battle of the Books", which were published in 1704. His Gulliver's Travels ( written between 1721-1725) , was published in 1726. His Gulliver's Travels was a satire on the current politics between the Whigs and the Tories. Throughout of thirties he wrote his several work, and in 1699 after the the death of Sir William, he became chaplain to lord Berkeley.
After his appointment as Dean of St. Patrick's, Swift continued writing satirically in various genres including prose and poetry. He using various forms to address different causes including personal behavioral, philosophical, political, religious, civic and others.
His notable works,
" Gulliver's Travels"
" A Tale of a Tube"
" Journal to Stella"
" Drapiear's letters"
" The Conduct of the Allies"
" Argument Against Abolishing Christianity"
" Verse on the Death of Dr. Swift"
In 1742 he was declared incapable of caring for himself and guardians were appointed. After his death in 1745, he was buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral. On his memorial tablet was an 'epitaph' of his own composition, which says that he lies "where savage indignation can no longer tear his heart."
Introduction of Lamuel Gulliver:
Lamuel Gulliver was the narrator and the protagonist of the novel.
Gulliver's vivid style of narration portrait him as intelligent and well educated. Gulliver was bold adventures who visited a multitude of strange lands, it was difficult to regarded him as truly heroic. Additionally the isolation from humanity that he endured for sixteen years, it must be hard to bear, but he rarely talked about such matters.
One modern critic has described him as possessing the smallest will in all of western literature: he is simply devoid of a sense of mission, a goal that would make his wandering into a quest.
Themes Motifs and Symbols in the Gulliver's Travels:-
➜ Themes:
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary works
1. Might Verse Right:
Gulliver's Travels ambiguous postures the questions that whether physical power or moral rectitude should be the governing factors in social life. He has a physical power, as he was a giant in Lilliput and he can defeat the Blefuscadian Navy by his Voluminous size. But as he was miniature visitor of Brobdingnag, where he was harrassed by the huge people. His first encounter by Lilliputians. Gulliver was physically tied down by the Lilliputians. In Brobdingnag he was enslaved by a farmer. The whole point of the egg, controversy that has set Lilliput against Blefuscadian.
There is not difference of culture but a religious and moral issue related to the proper interpretation of their religion. The difference of opinion seems to justify, similarly the difference between Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, by their sense of moral superiority; they are cleaner, better behaved and more rational. Balanibarbi believes it self that they right in driving lord Munodi from power. So, as hard to justify as the random use of physical force to dominate others.
2. The Individual Society:
Gulliver's Travels represents the idea of Utopia- an imaginary model of the idea community. The idea of Utopia is an ancient one, compared with the Plato's 'Republic', which was the city State governed and expressed in English by Thomas More's utopia. Swift uses both in his work. Through his attitude towards the utopia was more skeptical. In Plato's 'Republic' children are raised communally. They have no knowledge of biological parents and social fairness was enhanced in the understand.
This social system in Swift's Lilliputians similarly raised their offspring collectively, but actually they are not exactly utopian. They are tern in conspiracies, jalousies and backstabbing. In the land of Houyhnhnms, there are females should exchange a child with a family of two males. So, the male to female ratio was perfectly maintained. So clearly they are more closer to utopian ideals than the Lilliputians. But, there were no clear perfection in Houyhnhnms. They don't have their perfect names and individual identities. In their lack of individuality, they are exact opposite of Gulliver who has hardly any sense of belonging to his society.
When Gulliver forced to leave the Houyhnhnms may he can lose his human Identity, since he felt that he was not a horse and all the societies which he visited make him feel alienated as well. Thus, if Swift's satire mocks the excesses of communal life, it may also mock the excesses of individualism in its portrait of a miserable and lonely Gulliver talking to his horses at home in England.
3. The Limits of Human Understanding:
In Gulliver's Travels humans are represented as they are not ment to know everything, all the understanding has a natural limits. Swift create a satire against those people who have pride themselves on knowledge about all else. In the academy of Balanibarbi, Swift satirised that there is a realm of understanding into which humans are simply not supposed to venture. As it is in Brobdingnag and Houyhnhnms they have no knowledge or understanding of abstract ideas, but their ability to live their lives in a wise and steady way.
The king of Brobdingnag knows little about abstraction of political science. Yet, his country was prosperous and well governed. Also the people of Houyhnhnms are knows that how long a month is, by observing the moon, but they are knows little about arcane subjects like astronomy. So, practical knowledge affected on their well-being. In such way it presents that living a happy and well ordered life seems to be the very thing for which Swift thinks that knowledge is useful.
Swift giving a prominence the importance of self understanding. Gulliver initially lacking a self reflection and self awareness. Thus, Swift may be saying that self knowledge was necessary as well as theoretical knowledge. If we look to closely at our self might not able to carry on living happily.
➜ Motifs:-
1. Excrement:
Mention of excrement in Gulliver's Travels, it was a serious philosophical significance in the narration. It symbolised that every thing that is brute and shabby about the human body and human existence. It obstructs any exertion to view human as wholly spiritual or mentally ascendent creatures. The culture of eighteenth century of England tended to view humans as a noble soul rather than valgur bodies, when Gulliver urinated to put out fire in Lilliput, or when Brobdingnagian flies defect on his meals, or when the scientists in Lagado works to transform excrement back in to food.
Swift represents the human condition through the characters of Gulliver and remind us that how little human has to do everything to servive and existence of everyday.
2. Foregin Language:
Gulliver appears as a linguist who knows the basics of several European languages, even some little bit about ancient Greek. Through this knowledge he was able to disguise himself as a Dutchman and also able to enter in Japan.
He learns the languages of the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnagins and even the Houyhnhnms also. Gulliver has a mastery of foreign languages but he does not correspondence to any real interest in cultural differences. He compares his native England to any of the government which he was visited.
3. Clothing:
Motif of clothing carries a deeper meaning, some critics have noted that Swift pays extraordinary attention to the clothes of Gulliver. Every time he gets a rip in his shirt and he was forced to replace his own clothes. When he was in Lilliput his pants are falling apart. So, as the army marched between his legs they get quite an eyeful. In a Brobdingnag he wears mouse skin and how the finest skills of the land are as thick as blanket on him.
His journey to the new land was also a journey into new clothes. When he saved by Don Pedro after his fourth voyage, he offered to Gulliver a new clothes, but Gulliver denied and preferred his wild animal skins. Through, this we can say that the Gulliver may well never fully back into European society.
➜ Symbols:-
1. Lilliputians:
The Lilliputians symbolised as humankinds wildly excessive pride in its own puny existence. Lilliput marked as tiniest race, visited by Gulliver. Which was most intellectual and smug in both ways collectively and individually. There is more backbiting and conspiracies in the Lilliput than anywhere else. Gulliver was honest consumer of the grand imaginings Lilliput.
There was no mention of other armies of other societies, which Gulliver visited Lilliput and Blefuscu both the countries has six inches tall citizens. Swift wants to mentioned about both the countries. Gulliver was served as a kind of makeshift Architecture of triumph for troops to pass under. The Lilliputians symbolised as misplaced human pride and they are shown their inability to determine the Gulliver.
2. Brobdingnag:
The Brobdingnagins symbolised as the physical, personal and private side of humans. The king of Brobdingnag reinforces this new sense of humanity. The philosophical era of the enlightenment tended to overlook the routines of everyday life and the sordid or tedious little facts of existence, but in Brobdingnag such facts becomes very important for Gulliver, sometimes matters of life and death.
He was forced to take the domestic sphere seriously as well. The other countries was difficult for Gulliver, to being an outsider. In Brobdingnag he was treated as buffoon or a plaything. Brobdingnagins symbolised as a dimension of human existence visible at close range, under the close scrutiny.
3. Laputans:
Laputans are represented as they are full of theoretical knowledge that has no relation to human life and no use in the actual world. Knowledge is not made socially useful as Swift demands indeed, theoretical knowledge there has proven positively disastrous, resulting in the ruin of agriculture and architecture and the impoverishment of the population.
The Laputans control a nonfloating island named Balnibarbi and live entirely by the rules of science and mathematics: even their bread and meat are carved into geometric shapes. The men are so consumed in thought that they
have servants, called flappers, to bring them out of a trance into conversation. The laputans do not symbolised reason it self but rather the pursuit of a form of knowledge that is not directly related to the improvement of human life.
4. Houyhnhnms:
The Houyhnhnms are an ideal of rational existence. The
Houyhnhnms are examines less what humanity creates, such as science or gunpowder or government, and more what humanity is. The Houyhnhms are talking horses who have established a society
based on reason rather than emotion, while the Yahoos are hairy humanoids who
are used by the Houyhnhms as slaves. As usual, Gulliver learns the language and
converses with the inhabitants about society, government, history, and
philosophy.
We can not accept Houyhnhnms as a ideal of humam existence. They have no Identities and no names. This apparent ease may be why Swift chooses to make them horse rather than human.
3. England:
As the site of his father’s disappointingly “small estate” and Gulliver’s failing business, England seems to symbolize deficiency or insufficiency, at least in the financial sense that matters most to Gulliver.
England is passed over very quickly in the first paragraph of Chapter I, as if to show that it is simply there as the starting point to be left quickly behind. Gulliver seems to have very few nationalistic or patriotic feelings about England, and he rarely mentions his homeland on his travels.
England is passed over very quickly in the first paragraph of Chapter I, as if to show that it is simply there as the starting point to be left quickly behind. Gulliver seems to have very few nationalistic or patriotic feelings about England, and he rarely mentions his homeland on his travels.
Conclusion:
Jonathan Swift emphasizes in Gulliver's Travels that knowledge is not equivalent to wisdom. Swift arises questions about the conflict between the individual and society, but does not resolved them. Jonathan Swift quoted in Gulliver's Travels to point out misanthropy,
"I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth."Reference:-
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2394716-gulliver-s-travels
http://m.sparknotes.com/lit/gulliver/themes.html
http://www.gradesaver.com/gullivers-travels/study-guide/themes
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