In the story, Gulliver's Travels, it shows insight into the understanding that humans are not meant to know everything in life. It shows that all we understand we have as humans has a natural limit and this theme is a very important one in Gulliver’s Travels. The author finds all these different worlds while traveling by ship who have their own set of knowledge and ways they live.
For example in the first meeting he found himself with the self-centered Laputans. These people show plain disregard for those who are not like them and very much in private theorizing. It is a clear banter against those who pride themselves on knowledge above all else. Practical knowledge is also mocked when it doesn’t show evidence that it is true, as in the academy of Balnibarbi. Here the experiments for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers amount to nothing.
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The author stand firm on the idea that there is a dimension of knowledge and understanding of things which humans are simply not supposed to get into. Because of this, he shows his portrayal of rational societies, like Houyhnhnmland and Brobdingnag, emphasizing it’s not these people’s knowledge or understanding of abstract ideas but their capability to live their lives in a wise and steady way. The Brobdingnagian king knows very little about the breakdown of politics, yet his country seems to be flourishing and well governed. Just like them, the Houyhnhnms know hardly anything about arcane subjects like astronomy, though they know how long a month is by watching the moon. Because of their already found knowledge, striving to find a higher level of knowledge would be meaningless and would also disrupt with their happiness they have now.
In this context, it’s apparent that living a happy and well-ordered life seems to be the thing that the author thinks knowledge is useful for. They also emphasizes the need of self-understanding. Gulliver at the beginning of the story lacks in self-reflection and self-awareness. He chooses to not talk about his emotions, passions, dreams, or aspirations, and he shows no interest in describing his own psychology to us. Because of this, he may strike us as empty, but by the end, he comes close to a kind of twisted self-knowledge in his irrational belief that he is a Yahoo. His disgust with the human condition broadens to himself as well. Because of this, the story ends with him having a disguised state of self-hatred. The author may therefore be stating that self-knowledge has its necessary limits just as theoretical knowledge does, and that if we look too closely at ourselves we might not be able to carry on living happily.
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Ignorance and Self-Perception in Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift.
(2023, February 01). Edubirdie. Retrieved November 21, 2024, from https://edubirdie.com/examples/natural-ignorance-and-self-perception-described-in-different-societies-in-gullivers-travels-by-jonathan-swift/
“Ignorance and Self-Perception in Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift.” Edubirdie, 01 Feb. 2023, edubirdie.com/examples/natural-ignorance-and-self-perception-described-in-different-societies-in-gullivers-travels-by-jonathan-swift/
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2023 Feb 01 [cited 2024 Nov 21].
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