GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

Jonathan Swifts satirical narrative Gullivers Travels (1726) has retained its popularity with children and adults alike for two and a half centuries for its inventiveness wit narrative strength and black humour. The four parts of the narrative describe the adventures of Gulliver the ships surgeon among the Lilliputians six inches high the Brobdingnagians tall as church steeples the Laputans the thoroughly impractical philosophers historians scientists and mathematicians and finally the Houyhnhnms noble horses endowed with rationality far beyond the reach of human beings. In all the narratives Man is shown in contrast with these diverse creations of Swifts imagination and the result shows how vain contentious brutal and self-deceiving humans are and how they epitomize each of the seven deadly sins.