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Satire in Lilliput
Generations of schoolchildren raised on the first Book of "Gulliver's
Travels" have loved it as a delightful visit to a fantasy kingdom full of
creatures they can relate to_little creatures, like themselves. Few casual
readers look deeply enough to recognize the satire just below the surface.
But Jonathan Swift was one of the great satirists of his or any other age,
and "Gulliver's Travels" is surely the apex of his art.
"Gulliver's Travels" tells the story of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon
who has a number of rather extraordinary adventures, comprising four
sections or "Books." In Book I, his ship is blown off course and Gulliver
is shipwrecked. He wakes up flat on his back on the shore, and discovers
that he cannot move; he has been bound to the earth by thousands of tiny
crisscrossing threads. He soon discovers that his captors are tiny men
about six inches high, natives of the land of Lilliput. He is released from
his prone position only to be confined in a ruined temple by ninety-one
tiny but unbreakable chains. In spite of his predicament, Gulliver is at
first impressed by the intelligence and organizational abilities of the
Lilliputians.
In this section, Swift introduces us to the essential conflict of Book I:
the naive, ordinary, but compassionate "Everyman" at the mercy of an army
of people with "small minds". Because they are technologically adept,
Gulliver does not yet see how small-minded the Lilliputians are.
In Chapter II, the Emperor of Lilliput arrives to take a look at the
"giant", and Gulliver is equally impressed by the Emperor and his courtiers.
They are handsome and richly dressed, and the Emperor attempts to speak to
Gulliver civilly (although they are unable to understand one another). The
Emperor decrees that every morning Gulliver is to be delivered "six beeves,
forty sheep, and other victuals," along with as much bread and wine as he
needs, his basic needs are to be attended to, and six scholars are to teach
Gulliver the language of his new compatriots.
Again, in this chapter, Gulliver is won over by the fact that the
Lilliputians are well-dressed and articulate (despite the fact that they
speak a language he cannot understand). He is still held captive by these
people, both metaphorically, as in being entranced by them, and literally.
It is in this chapter that Gulliver first asks to be freed and is refused.
As Chapter III opens, Gulliver and his captors have become great friends.
Much in the style of a travelogue, Gulliver describes for the reader some
of the unusual forms of entertainment practiced by the Lilliputians. For
instance, anyone desiring a high position at court is required to jump up
and down on a tightrope stretched six inches above the floor (and remember,
Lilliputians are only six inches high). Only those who are able to do it
win the office, and anyone wishing to remain in office may be asked to do
it again. If he fails, he's out the door, and a successful rope-dancer
takes his place. Gulliver remarks that it would seem that noble birth or a
fine educational background would seem to be better predictors of one's
ability to govern than dancing on a rope, but the Lilliputians find no
sense in that. A similar "trial" requires office-seekers to jump over or
crawl under a stick, sort of a combination vault and limbo exercise. The
Emperor, who holds the stick, raises or lowers the stick suddenly and
without warning, so the performer is obliged to change tactics midstream.
Winners receive a snippet of colored thread, which they wear on their
clothing with great pride. Gulliver delights the Emperor by inventing some
new forms of entertainment, also; one involves making the calvary perform
military maneuvers on the drum-taut surface of his handkerchief, stretched
above the ground, but when a rider is thrown, Gulliver stops the game. At
the end of this chapter, Gulliver is freed after agreeing to nine silly
conditions.
Chapter III is where it really gets interesting. Look at the types of
entertainment the Lilliputians engage in, and why they do so. Swift makes a
point of telling us that the only people who perform the rope dance are
people seeking to acquire or maintain a high position at court, so this is
actually not a form of "entertainment" at all; it's a form of political
selection. And, Swift implies, it makes as much sense as the way many
political appointments in his day were made_which is to say it makes no
sense at all. The exercise in which the Emperor raises and lowers the stick
for performers to jump over or crawl under is actually not a test of
jumping or crawling; it's a test of one's ability to adapt to rapidly
changing conditions brought about by a monarch's whim_and the prize is
nothing more than a snippet of thread. And, most importantly, note that
Gulliver stopped his game when someone got hurt. The Emperor's exercises go
on until somebody loses.
The first thing Gulliver does in Chapter IV is visit the capital city,
Mildendo. Again, he is tremendously impressed by the Lilliputian's
technological and organizational skill, as evidenced by the beauty of their
city. Now that he is an "insider", Gulliver is told of the political
problems besetting the country, both from the inside and from the outside.
The domestic problem is an intense feud between people who wear low heels
(such as the Emperor) and people who wear high heels, whom the Emperor
would like to see out of power. Unfortunately, however, the Emperor's son
has a fancy for high heels himself, but his fear of his father causes him
to wear a low-heeled shoe on one foot and a high-heeled shoe on the other;
this is why he limps. Lilliput is also under threat of invasion from a
neighboring country, Blefuscu; the nature of their aggression seems to be
religious. Apparently the current Emperor's grandfather initiated a new
religion which demanded that believers break their eggs on the smaller end.
Many Lilliputians refused to do so, as since time immemorial their creed
had been to break their eggs on the larger end, and they insisted on their
right to do so. This caused them to emigrate to Blefuscu, and now that
country, bolstered by its new angry citizens, is planning an invasion
against Lilliput.
Obviously Swift is saying that the argument between the Low-Heels and the
High-Heels is ridiculous_almost as silly as the jihad between the Big-
Enders and the Little-Enders. During Swift's lifetime, an equally high
level of animosity existed between the various English sects which
considered themselves Protestant, and between the English Protestants
collectively and the Catholics on the Continent. Swift, an Anglican
clergyman himself, is clearly showing how ridiculous such dissention is
among people who all profess to be followers of the same path.
And pity the poor Emperor's son, who has to hobble along the middle of the
road in pain. Like any good satire, "Gulliver's Travels" cannot be read
purely as an analogy, as some scholars have tried to do. You cannot say
that the Emperor "is" George I, or Filimap "is" Robert Walpole. The Emperor
is the Emperor and Filimap is himself. But by making the political and
religious situations of the eighteenth century seem even more ridiculous
than they already were, Swift he was able to make people view their actual
life choices more rationally.
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