Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1726

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-4

Part 1, Chapters 5-8

Part 2, Chapters 1-4

Part 2, Chapters 5-8

Part 3, Chapters 1-6

Part 3, Chapters 7-11

Part 4, Chapters 1-6

Part 4, Chapters 7-12

Character Analysis

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Important Quotes

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Part 2, Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “A Voyage to Brobdingnag”

Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary

Gulliver has another incident with the dwarf, which he instigates by pointing out to the dwarf that he is standing near a dwarf apple tree. Gulliver is then caught in a hailstorm with huge, tennis ball-sized hailstones. Gulliver describes the constant threats posed by birds. He then tells of an execution that he witnesses, and because everything is proportional, the beheading leads to an astonishing amount of blood.

Sometime later, the queen has her workers build Gulliver a boat and a pond in which he can row and exercise. All goes well until a frog jumps into Gulliver’s boat. He then describes another near-disaster that happens after a monkey enters the room his dollhouse is in. With Grumdalclitch away, the monkey is able to sense where Gulliver is located, grabs him, and makes off with him. Gulliver’s absence is immediately noticed, and eventually, members of the queen’s court force the monkey to let go of Gulliver, who has managed to climb to the roof. After a series of fortunate events, Gulliver is rescued unharmed.

Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary

Gulliver relays his day-to-day activities while in the king’s court. This includes attending the king’s levee “once or twice a week” (72). He also watches the king receive a shave and a haircut and is mortified by the size of the razor that is used. Gulliver tries to please the king by making a makeshift instrument, since he is unable to perform on any of the instruments due to the size of them.

Gulliver then describes a discussion that he and the king have about England. The king is curious about Gulliver’s native land and wants to know more. After Gulliver explains the political system, the social classes, and the way the upper-class seeks, uses, and abuses power, the king is disgusted and denigrates England. When Gulliver mentions the British military and the fact that it fights wars and conflicts in other parts of the world, the king is especially contemptuous. In his mind, all that Gulliver describes shows a greedy, blood-thirsty people.

Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary

The king continues his criticism of England. Although Gulliver defends his home country and tries to persuade the king, ultimately he is unsuccessful. Gulliver thinks that the king’s views are informed by his isolation from the rest of the world. Gulliver then tells that he knows how to make bombs, and that he would be happy to instruct the king how to make them. The king is shocked, and even more disgusted, forcing Gulliver to agree that he will never mention bombs or guns ever again. Gulliver sees this reaction as foolish, and a denial of a means by which the king’s power could be perpetual.

Gulliver then discusses and criticizes Brobdingnag culture, education, and law. The Brobdingnag legal system is very minimal, and because the people are so driven by a practical lifestyle rather than guided by more abstract principles, there is no real reason to have more nuanced laws than is essential. Gulliver discusses Brobdingnag’s military and praises it for its discipline, though he wonders why any military at all is needed when there are no countries who pose a threat. It turns out that the threat is within: There have been numerous civil conflicts in which royal power was challenged and this is why a military is kept by the king.

Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary

Although Gulliver feels he has been treated well in Brobdingnag, he longs to return home. The king and queen take a journey and invite Gulliver to come along. While on the trip, Gulliver becomes ill and Glumdalclitch is even more sick. Wishing to get some privacy and to see the ocean, Gulliver convinces her to allow a servant to bring him there. She acquiesces and Gulliver is brought to the shore in his travel box. He is not there long when he feels his box being lifted in the air. Though he is disoriented, he begins to realize that he has been scooped up by a bird and carried out over the ocean. Eventually, the box is dropped into the ocean.

The box is partially submerged, and Gulliver is adrift with no idea where he is. Sometime later, he feels his box being pulled with what he thinks is a cable. He is brought to safety in a passing ship. When abroad, the crew and the captain think he has lost his mind because of the things he says, notably his surprise that they saw his box. Because of his experience in Brobdingnag, his senses are disproportionate, and it takes time for him to readjust. Even after he returns home, he still feels diminutive compared to his wife and daughter.

Part 2, Chapters 5-8 Analysis

In Chapter 6, Gulliver and the king of Brobdingnag have a series of conversations in which Gulliver presents to him the greatness of his native land. The king does not respond quite as Gulliver expects him to: Gulliver thinks the king will be impressed, but he is not. Instead, he poses a series of objections and rebuttals that satirize the British parliamentary system.

For example, Gulliver explains to the king how parliament contains the House of Commons and the people get to elect their representatives. Gulliver presents the Commons in an idealized fashion, defining the representatives as “all principal gentlemen, freely picked and culled out by the people themselves, for their great abilities and love of their country” (74, emphasis added). The king responds to Gulliver’s assertions with skepticism. He challenges Gulliver by asking “whether a stranger, with a strong purse, might not influence the vulgar voters to choose him before their own landlord” (75, emphasis added) and questions why “people were so violently bent upon getting into this assembly […] often to the ruin of their families, without any salary or pension?” (75). Gulliver’s characterization of the MPs as “gentlemen” motivated solely by “love of their country” is therefore countered by the king’s more worldly cynicism, with the king pointing out that money (“a strong purse”), and not merit or love of country, could be the true influence on an election’s outcome. Furthermore, the king suggests that the apparent lack of material inducements to serve (“without any salary or pension”) in Parliament is all the more suspicious, as it implies that there must be other, unspoken reasons why people wish to serve in the “assembly”—namely, self-interested power. The narrative therefore derides the English political system by juxtaposing the lofty ideals of Gulliver with the far more realistic objections of the king.

As their conversation ends, the king tells Gulliver, “You have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator” (77). The king’s assessment serves as a complete condemnation of British politics, in which those in power are driven more by “ignorance” and “vice” than any love of country or true merit, as Gulliver had previously argued. The king even goes so far as to call the British “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin […] upon the surface of the earth” (77), suggesting that, in spite of Britain’s growing wealth and power at the time, there is more corruption and self-interest than any real nobility at work in British governance.