Gulliver’s Travels
By Jonathan Swift
During his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck and finds himself a prisoner of a race of tiny people, less than 6 inches (15 cm) tall, who are inhabitants of the island country of Lilliput. After being assured of his good behaviour, he was given a residence in Lilliput and became a favourite of the Lilliput Royal Court. He is also permitted by the King of Lilliput to go around the city because he must not hurt their subjects.
At first, the Lilliputians are hospitable to Gulliver, but they are also wary of his size’s threat to them. The Lilliputians reveal themselves as people who put great emphasis on trivial matters. For example, which end of an egg a person cracks becomes the basis of a deep political rift within that nation. They are a people who revel in displays of authority and performances of power. Gulliver assists the Lilliputians to subdue their neighbours, the Blefuscudians, by stealing their fleet. However, he refuses to reduce the island nation of Blefuscu to a province of Lilliput, displeasing the King and the royal court.
Gulliver is charged with treason for, among other crimes, urinating in the capital, though he was putting out a fire. He is convicted and sentenced to be blinded. With the assistance of a kind friend, “a considerable person at court”, he escapes to Blefuscu. Here, he spots and retrieves an abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a passing ship, which safely takes him home with some Lilliputian animals he carries.
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Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin in the Kingdom of Ireland.
Biography
He was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift (1640–1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick) of Frisby on the Wreake. His father was a native of Goodrich, Herefordshire. Still, he accompanied his brothers to Ireland to seek their fortunes in law after their Royalist father’s estate was brought to ruin during the English Civil War. His maternal grandfather, James Ericke, was the vicar of Thornton in Leicestershire.
In 1634, the vicar was convicted of Puritan practices. Sometime thereafter, Ericke and his family, including his young daughter Abigail, fled to Ireland. Swift’s father joined his elder brother, Godwin, in law practice in Ireland. He died in Dublin about seven months before his namesake was born. He died of syphilis, which he said he got from dirty sheets when out of town. His mother returned to England after his birth, leaving him in the care of his uncle Godwin Swift (1628–1695), a close friend and confidant of Sir John Temple, whose son later employed Swift as his secretary. At the age of one, child Jonathan was taken by his wet nurse to her hometown of Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. He said that there, he learned to read the Bible. His nurse returned him to his mother, still in Ireland, when he was three.
Jonathan Swift
