Exploring Gulliver's Character: A Literary Analysis, Course ABC

This essay provides a detailed character analysis of Gulliver in Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels.' It explores how Gulliver's personality and understanding of the world evolve through his encounters in different lands, including Lilliput, the land of the giants, Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms a...Read More

Running head: CHARACTER SKETCH OF GULLIVER
CHARACTER SKETCH OF GULLIVER
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

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CHARACTER SKETCH OF GULLIVER
A man`s personality and his motif has a lot of impact on his behavior. Man`s nature
and his way of reacting is inclusive of his personality and emotions. To bring this out more
clearly the character of Gulliver in the famous novel by Jonathan Swift has been taken into
account. Jonathan Swift took a man as his object to portray the faults of the society.
Jonathan Swift used the means of satire in his play to bring out the follies of men in
his novel (Ross, 2013). He composed the character of Gulliver who had variety of emotions
in him but the audience got to know about his emotions only when he faced different
situations in different places. Gulliver loved adventure and because of this, he travelled in all
the places. In the novel the readers found him in the land of Lilliput at first, then at the land of
the giants, then in the land of Laputa and finally in the land of Houghnhnms and the Yahoos
(Mackie, 2014).
In the land of Lilliput Gulliver explores the weaknesses of the politicians and realizes
the abstract form of it. The abstract form of government is the main exploration of Gulliver
(Wilding, 2014).. In the land of the giants, Gulliver realizes that man is nothing but mere
puppets in the hands of government. Everybody was superior to him in the land of giants and
everyone there harassed him, starting from an insect to a human. The reason of faith and
religion came up when Gulliver visited the land of Laputa. As the background of the novel
was set up in the seventeenth to eighteenth century had some characteristic trait of that
particular period. Humans rejected the Christian beliefs and denied to follow it blindly. In the
land of Laputa Gulliver encountered the domination of man. The rational thinking and the
scientific innovation led man to think in this manner. In the land of the Yahoos Gulliver
encountered his animal instinct. He started hating human because of their lack of reasoning
power (Williams, 2013). .

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CHARACTER SKETCH OF GULLIVER
Gulliver encountered the weakness of men through his journey. He realized the ambition in
his life and the greed that he had in himself. He realized the pitfalls in his own characters and
the present situations of the government in which he was living. Gulliver finally denied the
religious beliefs and believed in the power of reasoning.

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CHARACTER SKETCH OF GULLIVER
REFERENCES
Mackie, E. (2014). Gulliver and the Houyhnhnm Good Life. The Eighteenth Century, 55(1),
109-115.
Ross, I. C. (2013). Gulliver's Travels.
Wilding, M. (2014). The Politics of Gulliver's Travels. Sydney Studies in Society and
Culture, 8.
Williams, H. (2013). The text of Gulliver's travels. Cambridge University Press.