Jonathan Swifts renowned novel, Gullivers Travels, satirizes human perceptions of dignity and power through the use of physical size and appearance

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Gulliver’s Travels Essay

Nick Miller

Period 4W

9-9-12

        Jonathan Swift’s renowned novel, Gulliver’s Travels, satirizes human perceptions of dignity and power through the use of physical size and appearance. Swift uses Lemeul Gulliver to exemplify how society constantly strives to obtain an “ideal” appearance in order to have as much power as possible. Lemeul Gulliver is placed in many different situations in which his, and the inhabitants’, dignity and power is “questioned”. He first ends up in Lilliput where he is bigger than the rest of the people, yet does not have much power whatsoever. Later on, Gulliver is trapped on Borbdingnag where he is much smaller than the inhabitants. Swift uses both of these locations and their inhabitants to satirize humans and society during the 15th Century.

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        Gulliver arrives in Lilliput to find that the inhabitants are one-twentieth his size. These people, the Lilliputians, represent the insignificance of the human nature in general. Because the Lilliputians are so small, Gulliver just notices their beauty and details in their artistry, instead of their tiny flaws. He states, “The country round appeared like a continued garden, and the enclosed fields, which were generally forty square feet, resembled so many beds of flowers” (35). Here he notices the beauty of the countryside of the land, but he is ignoring the pettiness due to the fact that he cannot see many ...

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