The miniature stature of the Lilliputians and the gigantic inhabitants of Brobdingnag can be interpreted as a physical incarnation of exactly these kinds of cultural differences.
Swift has cleverly used the difference in physical size to demonstrate the radical difference in power between Gulliver and the Lilliputian state. Despite Gulliver’s fear of the Lilliputians’ arrows, he is almost condescending in his willingness to be held prisoner by them. Reducing the scale of life in Lilliput strips human affairs of their self-imposed grandeur. Rank and politics lose their significance. Over time, Gulliver begins to earn the Lilliputians’ trust, but it is clearly unnecessary: for all their threats, Gulliver could crush the Lilliputians by simply walking carelessly. The humour comes from the Lilliputians’ view of the situation: despite the evidence before their eyes, they never realize their own insignificance. They keep Gulliver tied up, believing that they can control him, while in truth he could destroy them effortlessly. In this way, Swift satirizes humanity’s pretensions to power and significance.
The nation of Lilliputians is a satire of England-it represents her position with respect to the countries that it colonised. It could also be an attempt to show the importance of might in a society supposedly guided by right.
Lilliputian government officials are chosen by their skill at rope dancing, which seemed relevant and right to the Lilliputians saw as relevant but which Gulliver recognizes as arbitrary and ridiculous. The would-be officials are almost literally forced to jump through hoops in order to qualify for their positions. This is was an attack on England’s system of political appointments that was similarly arbitrary.
The story narrated by Gulliver coincides with European history exactly. The two political parties of the Lilliputians, the High Heels and the Low Heels correspond to the Whigs and Tories of English polity. The two political parties being differentiated by the height of their heels points out how little substantive difference there was between Whig and Tory. Lilliput and Belfuscu represent England and France. By signing off European history as a series of brutal wars over meaningless and insignificant disagreements, Swift implies that the differences between Whigs and Tories and France and England are equally silly and meaningless as how one chooses to crack an egg. This has implications in today’s world, with the Catholics and Protestants, the various religious fundamentalists and
The most ironical criticism of European civilization occurs when, after offering the secret of gunpowder to the King and his subsequent horrified refusal, Gulliver declares the King to possess “narrow principles and short views!” (Gulliver’s Travel, Jonathan Swift, Part II, Chapter 7). It seemed almost incredulous to Gulliver that the king did not desire to learn a new method of inflicting pain and torture. Swift is also alluding to the eagerness with which European nations would leap at such an offer as an aid to waging war against their neighbours.
Swift juxtaposes the smoothest skin and the most appealing political system, to conclude that it has imperfections, and these imperfections are bound to be exposed under very close scrutiny. What looks perfect to us is not actually perfect—it is just that the imperfections are not jarring enough to be sighted by our limited senses.
The focus of criticism in the voyage to Laputa is on intellectuals, such as scholars, philosophers, and scientists, who often get lost in their reverie of theoretical abstractions and conceptions to the exclusion of the more practical aspects of life.
The floating island is both a formidable weapon and a personified image that represents the distance between the government and the people it governs. The king is oblivious to the real concerns of the people below—indeed, he has never even been below. The nobility and scientific thinkers of the island are similarly far removed from the people and their concerns, so much so that they need their servants to arouse them from their thoughts and daydreams.
The Laputians excel at theoretical mathematics, but they cannot build houses where the walls are straight and the corners are square. Instead, they constantly worry about when the sun will burn out and whether a comet will collide with the earth. This misuse of reason is hilariously elaborated in the various experiments conducted at the Grand Academy of Lagado. The point is emphasised when Gulliver professes his admiration for projects such as extracting sunbeams from cucumber and building houses from the roof down. Swift attacks both the lack of common sense and the result of corrupt judgement.
Gulliver’s final destination was the land of Houyhnhnms, where Houyhnhnms represent perfect reason, untouched by irrationality or excessive emotions. Yahoo, who look and act like humans stripped of reasoning, casts a light on the defects of human nature. Swift moves from veiled attacks to rather direct blows to the subjects of war, which is destruction clad in the pretext of valour and patriotism, lawyers, a lot of social parasites, who measure their worth by their dexterity at deception, thus inhibiting justice, and money, which feeds the greed of few by the labour and poverty of many.
Towards the conclusion of the novel, the Swift through Gulliver describes his total rejection of European government and society. He longs for an ideal country such as the land of Houyhnhnms to live in. Swift was one of the many Europeans who were unhappy with the political and social environment in Europe. This led to migration to the New World, America-the land of Houyhnhnms, was what many unhappy Europeans hoped it to be.