For the second part of my Independent studies across the study weeks 11-17, I covered the option for Chapter six regarding ‘Topics covered in Gulliver’s Travels’. Further to this, I looked at two of the sub-headings ‘Swift, Gulliver’s Travels and travel writing’ also, ‘Swift, Gulliver’s Travels and colonial discourse’. From my cursory reading of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, I found the character to lend a sense of false authority to the structure of the plot that is wholly believable. Firstly, every scene is related to the reader in the first person, namely through Gulliver, with Swift using this form of narrative, we could be persuaded that this is a reliable source of information. Also, as a surgeon Gulliver supplies his reasons for such extensive travel that helps to give further depth to the character while engaging with the reader emotively regarding his background ‘having few friends, my business began to fail’ (Swift, 1726, p.18).
Part of Swift’s clever satire comes from the fact that as a trusted surgeon, Gulliver’s stories could have been perceived as real arising from the subtle details supplied by himself. The travels themselves feel part diary or journal as he dates important encounters, the first voyage started ‘from Bristol May 4th 1699’ (p. 19). He also informs the reader of navigational coordinates, where possible, that help to give authenticity to the account. This possibly allows the reader to try to chart Gulliver’s journey across his fictional lands while following his course while also using the maps contained. However, Paul Hunter suggests in Gulliver’s Travels and the later writings that Swift, along with many other writers of his day were ‘authors who had never left home and whose facts were often wildly inaccurate’ (Hunter, 2003).
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This observation led by Hunter adds to the overall idea of Gulliver’s Travels as a satire that uses Gulliver’s many journeys as a frame allowing him to apply critical comparisons through the use of allegorical representation. A prime example of this could be through the conversation with the master of the Houyhnhnm to embody the social/political climate that was prevalent at his time of writing, ‘whatever share of reason the Yahoos pretend to, the Houyhnhnms are your masters’ (p. 286). Within this statement, there may well have been an attempt by Swift to directly attack the superiority of the white-led European colonial attitudes of the day by the replacement of horses as the overriding dominant species. With the added inclusion of the subservient Yahoo race seen to replicant any non-European race as Gulliver himself grossly declares similarities with their genetic make-up as ‘common to all savage nations’ (p. 273).
It would also be possible to find similarities between Swift’s Gulliver and the character Ismail from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Both writers take the reader on a journey of discovery into locations that are unknown or possibly dangerous through their first-person viewpoints. Interestingly, both authors have the lead characters introduce themselves with an explanation as to why they need to document their journey, therefore sharing the experience with the reader ‘and nothing particular to interest me on shore’ (Melville, 1851, p. 93). Similarly, both authors use a maritime theme to give their respective stories a background that openly suggests adventure through adversity while engaging in travel to their destinations. Both accounts are filled with strange occurrences that are thrilling yet somehow believable due to the sheer amount of minute detail that both authors use. Melville openly detailed about whale hunting and the industry that fed out of New York and New England at that time adding believable creditability to what is a fictional travel story.
Throughout Gulliver’s journey’s across strange and unconventional lands he responds positively to the variety of native languages that are inherent to each of the Islands he lands on. On reflection, it feels as though Gulliver desires to embrace and understand each of the alien dialects as he comes to fully realize through open communication comes greater understanding. This overriding sentiment appears to be problematic with each arrival back to Britain as he appears to struggle with assimilating back into his own native culture ‘I could not endure my wife or children in my presence’ (p. 346). Through his travels, he fully immerses himself with the complexities of everyday life, in strange lands, a total contrast to the colonial idea of how the English language was used when it came into contact with foreign cultures, therefore, ridiculing the expansion of English as a domineering colonial language.
It is interesting how Swift took aspects of colonialism and used his fictional lands and all sorted characters to disseminate what he saw as the social and racial inequalities that were occurring at his time of writing. The king of the Brobdingnagians is openly representative of the British upper-class aristocracy as he looks down on Gulliver when he verbally attacks Gulliver ‘I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin’ (p. 154).
However, Gulliver is self-critical of the Laputans due to the Islanders being similar to Europeans not only on a physical level but from the use of their rather simplistic language that Gulliver discounts as a form of communication similar to English and is demonstrative towards it as he sees in it the most unappealing characteristics of his native language. From this realization, Gulliver learns that a person could over time become estranged from the English language and culture when journeying away from Britain on a long voyage.
William Golding wrote in his sea trilogy to the ends of the Earth about an extensive fictional sea voyage made between Britain and Australia during the early 1800s. Throughout his series of three interconnecting novels, he also alludes to colonial ideas behind social class while applied to the confines of an old frigate. Just as Gulliver is forced to endure encounters in strange lands due to accidents at sea, the passengers on board the Britannia are confined and are forced to re-examine themselves as the social order, onboard, starts to break down exposing to the reader flaws in the rigid British class system. Just as Swift used satire to highlight faults through his observations of Britain, Golding focuses our attention to the minute details on board the Britannia through the first-person narrative of Edmund Talbot’s journal. Just like Gulliver, Talbot shows us directly the differences that allow society to be critiqued such as the segregation of the passengers based on their social class. But also the hierocracy within the officer class through the observations of Summers as he brazenly declares ‘Class is the British language’ (Golding, 1980, p. 131) when Talbot jokingly chides him about his own lower social standing leading to his officer status.
This rather blunt comment is typical of the blinkered attitude that was propagated alongside the growth and spread of the British colonial system prompting writers like Swift to explore through his satirical writing. What is most interesting from reading Gulliver’s Travels as Clement Hawes informs us is how we may perceive Gulliver Travels as ‘a narrative in which Gulliver, the English narrator is himself colonized’ (Hawes, 1991). The reader may positively relate to this statement when consideration is given as to how Gulliver arrives at each of his destinations, on a ship which cleverly mirrors how slaves were transported across the Atlantic. Through his various journeys, he becomes more and more disenchanted with his life back home in Britain and he appears to embrace the lifestyles of those he meets. From this assumption we can see how Swift mirrors aspects of colonialism through Gulliver’s experiences, the exception being when he encounters the Laputans whom Gulliver rejects due to their being blinkered to the world around them. It may be possible that Swift was directly satirizing the British academics through the use of the Laputans who were seen to be ‘abstracted and involved in speculation’ (p. 205). This may also be seen as an attack against the upper classes whom Swift could have ridiculed due to their unconcern with matters that sustain life.
What we can correctly perceive from Hawes statement is how Swift reverses the qualities behind colonialism throughout the novel allowing Gulliver to experience a type of reverse psychology, this is brought to the fore while travelling to the lands of the Houyhnhnm. He positively views the horse-like race as intelligent and through their Utopian society, he realizes all of mankind’s faults from the lack of the Houyhnhnm’s ability to commit or comprehend these faults. Ultimately, it is Gulliver’s hatred of the captive Yahoo’s that is most shocking due to how he is reminded of his homeland through their unkempt appearance but also how the captives are treated like slaves ‘an odious animal for which I had so utter a hatred and contempt’ (p. 282). This is probably Swift’s most direct attack on colonialism arising from his thoughts regarding slavery as being the most prominent evil that was rapidly occurring during Swift’s lifetime.
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