Compare and Contrast - The Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift’s magnum opus Gulliver’s Travels is the story of the astonishing voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, who is basically the narrator and protagonist of the tale. A parody of the popular travel narrative, Gulliver’s Travels combines adventure with savage satire, mocking English customs and the politics of the day. The phenomenal and continuing popularity of Gulliver's Travels raises the question that this essay will attempt to answer. Harold Bloom remarks on Gulliver’s Travels:

"If the Tale-teller is a Swiftian parody of one side of Swift, the anti-Cartesian, anti-Hobbesian, then Gulliver is a Swiftian parody of the great ironist’s own misanthropy." (2)

Swift’s A Tale of a Tub has much to do with our sense of its excess, with its force being so exuberantly beyond its form. Gulliver’s Travels, the later and lesser work, has survived for the common reader, and whereas Swift’s early masterpiece has not.  Gulliver's Travels is the story of Lemuel Gulliver, a married surgeon from Nottinghamshire, England, who loves to explore the world. He works as a surgeon on ships and lands up becoming a ship captain, and suffers shipwreck and accidents during his voyages. He completes many voyages without incident, but his final four journeys take him to some of the strangest lands on the planet, where he discovers the virtues and flaws in his own culture by comparing it with others.

Gulliver's Travels is a satiric masterpiece that divided into four parts. The first part deals with “A Voyage to Lilliput”, a land of tiny people, shows how they react to larger people like a giant to them with wonder and extreme fear. Gulliver lands in a strange place inhabited by animals and people of odd sizes, puzzling behaviour and absurd beliefs in life. The second part is “A Voyage to Brobdingnag”, deals with Gulliver’s voyage to Brobdingnag, a land of giants and shows how the giants react and treats Gulliver with wonder and curiosities. Let’s do a compare and contrast between the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

The crucial difference between the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians is that of their size, mentality, character and culture. Also the thinking of the two kings of the two lands differs from each other. The Lilliputians stand about only six inches tall and are ruled by an Emperor who appoints his high. According to Gulliver:

"In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left Leg, which advancing gently forward over my Breast, came almost up to my Chin; when bending my Eyes downwards as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human Creature not six Inches high." (Swift 17)

Here it clears how tiny creature actually they are by Gulliver’s this statement. The Lilliputians were cruel, disrespectful and ungrateful towards Gulliver. Firstly, their cruelty manifests in the manner in which they hand Gulliver upon his captivation at the sea shore. They make a tie up with Gulliver and shoot him with arrows, a painful experience for Gulliver who had not harmed anyone, rather he helped the Lilliputians. They were very clever, that is why, they used him to conquer the battle against their neighbour country the Blefuscu. And also the court of Lilliput is mischievous those in power plot against one another.

Gulliver tells the reader that everything in Lilliput is proportionate to the Lilliputians' size and that even their eyesight is adjusted so that they can see things closer than Gulliver. Gulliver also describes many of Lilliput's laws in the tale, telling the reader that dishonesty and false accusations are punished more severely than theft and other terrible things are punished in England. In Lilliput if someone accuses another, but is proven to be wrong in the accusation, the accused is punished severely while the falsely accused person is rewarded. These kinds of odd rules and culture we can notice in the land of Lilliput.

The Brobdingnagians, on the other hand, are giants. They are the race of huge males and females. They are literally giants, over 60 feet tall.  As a result, everything around them is also gigantic and Gulliver is in complete danger being that he is tiny in comparison. We can assume actually how the monstrous creature they are in Gulliver’s words:

"I resolved not to struggle in the least as he held me in the Air above sixty Foot from the ground." (Swift 73)

Not only the people, but also the grasses of that land are as tall as a man. Gulliver then found a farmer who was about 72 feet tall. The Brobdingnagians were good-willed, virtuous and respectful towards Gulliver. They handle him with care and constructed a small abode for him. Also, the Queen of the Brobdingnag hired a caretaker to look after Gulliver as well as teach him different language. The Brobdingnagians did not use Gulliver for their own gain as the Lilliputians did. That farmer brings Gulliver to his home and the farmer's daughter Glumdalclitch cares for Gulliver and also plays with him. The giant-sized farmer treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money in various cities.

The Brobdingnagians are essentially human, going through the same feeding, breeding, and living processes as typical people. They have a peacekeeping army, engage in conflict, and understand the difference between political parties and factions. If they were normal sized, they would not be any different than us. Their massive size makes the worldly aspects of human physiology even more shocking as they are fully displayed at a much larger scale. The king of that land laughs at English politics, but he requests a detailed description of the government of England, which Gulliver relates.

On the other hand, the character of the Lilliputians is very mean and they fight amongst themselves most of the time. Lilliputians make their own weapons and they are excellent in mechanics. Here we can see the difference of the two lands. Robert Demaria, Jr states:

"The contrast between the smallness of the Lilliputians and the grossness of Gulliver foreshadows the reversal of the conceit...the smallness and insignificance of Gulliver in relation to the grossness of the Brobdingnags." (xiii)

The citizen of the Brobdingnag disgusts Gulliver because he inevitably has to witness the graphic changes in their bodies, including the good, the bad, and the ugly. As a people the Brobdingnagians are relatively civil, even more than us in comparison, because their laws are clear, and they seek for peace as their common goal. The politics of the Lilliputians are similar to those in England, and Swift makes sure to highlight the differences of the two main parties in a way that they mirror those of the Tories and the Whigs.

In Swift’s masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels we can notice all the Lilliputians are tiny but their size is nothing to feel safe about. They have machinations in terms of everything, from their everyday life, to the making of war machinery, to the way that people backstab each other at court and also out of court. They are little people with massive personalities.

To conclude, there is not just one major difference since they are two completely different races from different lands. However, for the sake of argument, we may contend that, in both races of individuals, the size of the citizens seems to contrast with their personalities. From my point of view, the Lilliputians may be small in size, but they are able to cause big problems. On the other hand, the Brobdingnagians are large, but want to avoid those "big problems" by reducing conflict.

Works Cited:

1. Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. Ed. Albert J. Rivero. New York: Norton & Company, 2002. Print.

2. Bloom, Harold. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2009. Print.

3. Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. Ed. Robert Demaria, Jr. London: Penguin Classics, 2003. Print.

4. <https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gullivers-Travels> Accessed 20 November 2018

University of North Bengal,

Siliguri