Gulliver's Travels
Summary

Published in his sixtieth year, Gulliver’s Travels is the most famous example of Jonathan Swift’s satirical works and was the only one he received payment for (£200) since most of his works were vehemently and dangerously political, and were published anonymously or under one of his many pen-names. Following the success of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in 1719, Swift was inspired to write a similarly sober document of fiction spoken as truth to make the reader reconsider the accepted state of the world. Although Swift seems to have been writing the book from 1720 onwards, it was only completed and published in 1726. Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon, tells the story of his shipwreck on the island of Lilliput. Here people are six inches rather than six feet tall and as such their actions, debates and pageantry seem utterly ridiculous. Their fatuous political arguments (should an egg be broken at the big or small end?) mock the English political and religious debates of Swift’s time. On his ‘travels’, Gulliver meets various other strange humanoids: the extremely tall people of Brobdingnag and later the useless scientists and philosophers of Laputa and Lagado who spend their time trying to extract sunshine from cucumbers while failing to do anything worthwhile. Glubbdubdrib and Luggnagg present Gulliver with more intriguing insights still. In the final section of the book, Gulliver meets the Houyhnhnms who are horses empowered with reason, simplicity and dignity and the Yahoos who look like humans but live revolting lives of vice and brutality. Gulliver and the reader get to see the human race through a series of curved mirrors therefore and return to the real world somewhat disgusted. However, despite its dark themes, the book was an immediate success and has remained a favourite with adults who enjoy the satire and children who like the adventuring (or perhaps it is the other way around).

Table of contents
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part 2
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part 3
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part 4
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12

  By PanEris using Melati.

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