Question: Evaluate Swift's symbolic treatment of the Lilliputians, Brodingnagians, Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos in the Gulliver's Travels.
Or, What do you mean by symbolism? How does Swift use different symbols in Gulliver's Travels?
Or, Write on the most obvious symbolic interpretation in Gulliver's Travels.
Or, Discuss Swift's use of symbolism in Gulliver's Travels.
Answer: Symbolism is the use of one object to represent or suggest another. A close reading of Gulliver's Travels will certainly discover some elements of symbolism especially of sight and blindness.
Gulliver's alone experience in different strange lands marks the gulf that separates his appearance. In the first appearance, Lilliputians appear to be a harmless and tolerant race, but to the readers' utter frustrations they are gradually discovered the opposite of their first appearance. So, the readers' first impressions are tremendously wrong. The Lilliputians are not at all harmless and sophisticated, they are richer, vulgar mischievous, petty-minded, and vicious. Being a tiny small creature, the king of the Lilliputian is very greedy. He wants to capture the whole world. He gets help from Gulliver in capturing the neighboring country Blefasen. He dreams to hold the other countries under his feet. Apparently he shows love and sympathy to Gulliver but actually he is vindictive and harmful creature. Even the kind-hearted friend of Gulliver, Redreal, proves to be a man of conspiracy who planned to blind Gulliver and then compel him to die through starvation.
Again, in Brobdingnag we find a gulf between the appearance and reality. The thing is very opposite than the earlier voyage of Lilliput.
The Brobdingnagian king is monstrous in seize but actually he is not a monster at all. He is, rather, quite surprisingly humane and soft-hearted. He has no ambitions of territorial expansion. He is resentful that such a diminutive insect as Gulliver should haruld harbour such inhuman ideas. The sight of Gulliver saddens the Brobdingnagian king with a thought that never struck Gulliver while he was in Lilliput that human glory is itself a vain thing. Actually, the king was horrified to see the fathomless greed of such a tiny creature. Gulliver, in fact, represents the obsession for extending the kingdom of through European Warfare.
In part III, the theme of being, seeing and sight is established in a new sense of capturing absurd credits regarding inventions of science. The Laputans expose their credits in such a way that's if they were a very scholar in science and mathematics but at last, they prove themselves to be utter fools before Gulliver. They fail to make an adjustable dress for Gulliver. The acts and experiments in the Lagado Grand Academy are nothing but absurd and farce. The concept of the flying island is also fake and unattainable as they seem to be the superior being in earth. Here, in these above cases, we also find a gulf between appearance and reality. The difference between appearance and reality is also seen in the Struldbrugs, the immortals. But Gulliver's dream is shattered when he sees the aged old, decrepit and invalid who are no better than living dead. Mortal human beings are happier than those creatures who are suffering from the punishment of Tithonus”.
In part IV, Houyhnhnmland presents a clear contrast to normal expectations. The Master-Horse also is not undisputed as he agrees to the suggestion of the Grand Assembly to quit Gulliver from Houyhnhnmland considering him as a dangerous and harmful Yahoo. Gulliver's last reaction in front of Captain Don Pedro Do Mendey and in his family is not convincing and agreeable as Gulliver himself is not away from pride and vanity When he returns home, however, his loneliness leads him eventually to look for ways of coming to term with mankind, and he decides that he can no longer avoid the sight of what he is. He thus decides “to behold my Figuer often in a Glass, and thus if possible, habituate myself by Time to tolerate the sight of a human creature".
Considering all these, we can conclude, Gulliver's Travels is a book with symbols and Gulliver is a myopic hero in the hands of Jonathan Swift.
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