Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.

“This resolution perhaps may appear very bold and dangerous, and I am confident would not be imitated by any prince in Europe on the like occasion.”

Here, Gulliver employs one of his more common rhetorical devices: hyperbole. Gulliver often overstates his actions and the circumstances that cause him to act in the first place. His confidence that no “prince in Europe” would act similarly also reveals Gulliver’s tendency towards pride and self-aggrandizement, despite his self-presentation as a modest man.

“But this was the only time I was ever guilty of so uncleanly an action; for which I cannot but hope the candid reader will give some allowance, after he has maturely and impartially considered my case, and the distress I was in.”

Gulliver is explaining having to urinate, which he finally allowed himself to do after three days of being bound by the Lilliputians. Gulliver assumes the reader will somehow be offended by his behavior and thus seeks to justify his act of uncleanliness. Gulliver’s obsession with human excrement and uncleanliness will appear throughout the text, symbolizing the reality of human frailty and vice.

“Of so little weight are the greatest services to princes, when put into the balance with a refusal to gratify their passions.”

Gulliver is quick to defend the kingdom of Lilliput and pledge allegiance to the emperor. He believes that his loyalty will be respected and appreciated, but soon realizes that he is only seen as a means through which the emperor can accumulate even more power. His bitter remark in this passage about a prince’s lack of appreciation for even the “greatest services” when faced with a subject who will not “gratify their passions”­­­­—even when a refusal is morally justified­—hints at the more general change of heart towards power structures Gulliver will undergo later in the text.

“Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius.”

Gulliver’s remark is a subversive attack on how the laws and politics of nations are created in ways that confuse the general population. In this passage, Gulliver implies that this obfuscation is intentional and not in line with what “Providence”—a higher divine force, or even reason—would wish for in a truly just society.

“Blindness is an addition to courage, by concealing dangers from us.”

This is part of the Lilliputians’ justification for the punishment Gulliver is to receive for urinating to put out the fire at the queen’s apartment. The rationale used by the Lilliputians here is absurd; they suggest that losing one’s eyes will actually benefit that person in the long run because it will make them more courageous.

“[H]aving never been designed for a courtier, either by my birth or education, I was so ill a judge of things, that I could not discover the lenity and favour of this sentence, but conceived it (perhaps erroneously) rather to be rigorous than gentle.”

In this passage, Gulliver reacts to news of the punishment. His protestation that he is not a “courtier” by birth or training, followed by his ironic assertion that he was therefore “so ill a judge” of royal power that he saw the verdict as “rigorous” instead of just or fair as the Lilliputians present it, is a satirical commentary on the abuses of power.

“Having been condemned, by nature and fortune, to active and restless life.”

Gulliver often sees fate as a cause for why he does the things he does. In this passage, he ascribes his motivation to pursue another sea voyage to “nature and fortune.” In so doing, he essentially makes himself a victim of circumstance rather than an agent.

“Nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.”

Gulliver here introduces one lesson of the book: that perspective is needed to live a full life. Without experience, one does not have the perspective to measure the state of their lives or even the state of the world. His emphasis on “comparison” being what makes something “great or little” also suggests that perspective is relative and highly dependent upon context.

“When dinner was almost done, the nurse came in with a child of a year old in her arms, who immediately spied me, and began a squall that you might have heard from London-Bridge to Chelsea, after the usual oratory of infants, to get me for a plaything.”

Gulliver here employs hyperbole for comedic effect: because of his size in proportion to the giants, the child mistakes Gulliver for a doll. Gulliver is therefore reduced to the status of a small and helpless object—a far more vulnerable state than the one he enjoyed as a giant in Lilliput.

“However insignificant [these details] may appear to groveling vulgar minds, [they] will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of public as well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this and other accounts of my travels to the world.”

Gulliver once again mentions that he urinated and then offers this self-important rational, belying any pretensions he may make elsewhere in the text to modesty. His invocation of “a philosopher” who may use his “accounts of my travels to the world” to benefit both the public and private realms reveals the scale of Gulliver’s ambition, as he wishes to use his memoir to offer an exemplar to mankind.

“However, an unlucky school-boy aimed a hazel nut directly at my head, which very narrowly missed me; otherwise it came with so much violence, that it would have infallibly knocked out my brains, for it was almost as large as a small pumpkin, but I had the satisfaction to see the young rogue well beaten.”

This is one of many examples that Gulliver provides of the unexpected dangers he faces while in Brobdingnag. Gulliver’s penchant for overstatement here once more creates comedic effect.

“The queen, giving great allowance for my defectiveness in speaking, was, however, surprised at so much wit and good sense in so diminutive an animal.”

Gulliver’s depiction of the queen’s surprise at seeing “so much wit and good sense in so diminutive an animal” offers an ironic commentary on humanity as a whole, suggesting that humans, despite all their ambitions and intellectual strivings, remain small and relatively insignificant creatures in the wider scheme of things.

“How contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as I.”

This is the king’s response after Gulliver teaches him about the grandeur of English and European culture. Unlike the previous quote, this rebuke of humanity is much more obvious, with the king’s dismissal of Gulliver as an “insect” once more suggesting humanity’s ultimate insignificance.

“I was frequently rallied by the queen upon account of my fearfulness; and she used to ask me whether the people of my country were as great cowards as myself.”

A similar style remark as quote 14, Gulliver once again veils an insult. The queen does not intend to malign Gulliver; she is simply asking out of curiosity. However, the innocent intent softens the insult and makes the commentary more comedic than malicious.

“That which gave me most uneasiness among these maids of honour […] was, to see them use me without any manner of ceremony, like a creature who had no sort of consequence: for they would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my presence, while I was placed on their toilet, directly before their naked bodies, which I am sure to me was very far from being a tempting sight, or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and disgust.”

Much of what Gulliver focuses on in this part of the book is the simple ugliness of the human form. Gulliver’s disgust at the naked women does not stir him to lust; rather, he becomes filled with “horror and disgust.” The physical imperfection of the giants’ bodies is a symbolic commentary on the moral and intellectual imperfections hidden within.

“The veins and arteries spouted up such a prodigious quantity of blood, and so high in the air, that the great jet d’eau at Versailles was not equal to it for the time it lasted.”

In describing an execution by beheading, Gulliver once again resorts to hyperbole. While the hyperbole adds comedic effect, the explicit gruesomeness of the scene exposes the grim reality of human violence.

“We often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near.”

In this passage, Gulliver tries to pass along the knowledge of how to use gunpowder to make weapons, but the king rejects it. Again, without being fully aware, Gulliver is inadvertently exposing the cruelty of human society and offering a means by which the Brobdingnag could also become more corrupted.

“He first took my altitude by a quadrant, and then, with a rule and compasses, described the dimensions and outlines of my whole body, all which he entered upon paper; and in six days brought my clothes very ill made, and quite out of shape, by happening to mistake a figure in the calculation.”

Much of how Gulliver describes the hapless Laputans is exemplified by this passage. The failure to use the proper tools for the job—in this case tailoring— speaks to the absurd lack of common sense among the Laputans. It also demonstrates that just because one is an expert in one subject does not make them an expert in all trades.

“I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.”

Gulliver makes this remark as he is visiting the academy at Lagado. The professors are so caught up in their absurd experiments that they have sacrificed the ability to earn a wage; therefore, the only way they earn money is by begging.

“And one thing I might depend upon, that they would certainly tell me the truth, for lying was a talent of no use in the lower world.”

Gulliver makes this assertion based on his conversation with the governor who can call up the dead. The idea that lying is of no use when dead infers that it is of the utmost use while living—a vice that Gulliver sees as the cause of societal corruption and degradation.

“I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to cowards.”

Gulliver learns true history from the figures who lived it when the governor summons the dead. Here, he blames writers for distortions of history and implies it is due to selling themselves to the nobility under the promise that they will praise rather than criticize.

“There was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves.”

In this passage, Gulliver satirizes lawyers and the corruptions of the legal system. While, in theory, the law is meant to protect and provide justice for all, Gulliver suggests that this is not how things work in practice. Instead, lawyers are trained to argue even to the point of lying just to win cases for whoever pays them. In calling everyone else “slaves” to the society of lawyers, Gulliver implies that the legal system has become an instrument of tyranny instead of a safeguard against abuse.

“I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind; over whom I may, without breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority, from the advantages I received by conversing so long among the most accomplished Houyhnhnms.”

Gulliver feels himself justifiably privileged because of the time he spent among the Houyhnhnms. He does not see himself as boasting; instead, he fully believes in what he says, which enables him to claim that he has not breached modesty in any way in writing his memoirs. Again, he lacks the self-awareness to comprehend that his so-called superiority is based on time spent living amongst horses.