Gulliver's Travels (Swift)
Short summary
England, May 1699. Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, set out on a merchant voyage. After a shipwreck he swam ashore and woke tied to the ground by people less than six inches tall.
In Lilliput he became the emperor's servant and captured the enemy fleet of neighbouring Blefuscu, but refused to help enslave its people. When he put out a palace fire by urinating on it, his enemies accused him of treason and planned to blind him. He fled to Blefuscu, found a boat and returned to England.
On his next voyage he was abandoned in Brobdingnag, a land of giants. A farmer exhibited him for money and then sold him to the queen. The king questioned him about England, judged his countrymen corrupt and refused his offer to teach the making of gunpowder. An eagle carried Gulliver's travelling box out to sea, where English sailors rescued him.
Next, pirates set him adrift, and the flying island of Laputa took him aboard. Its scholars and the mainland's inventors wasted their lives on useless schemes. On an island of magicians he questioned the dead, and in Luggnagg he met immortals who grew old without end, which cured his wish to live forever.
On his last voyage, mutineers left Gulliver in a land ruled by wise horses, the Houyhnhnms, who kept filthy human-like creatures called Yahoos. His host could not understand lies.
The wise and virtuous Houyhnhnms, who abound in all excellencies that can adorn a rational creature, have no name for this vice in their language...
Admiring the horses, Gulliver came to hate humans as Yahoos. Still, the horses' assembly ordered him to leave. A Portuguese captain picked up his canoe and sent him home, where Gulliver shunned his family and talked daily to two horses.
Detailed summary by parts and chapters
Chapter titles are editorial.
Part 1. A Voyage to Lilliput
Chapter 1. Shipwreck and capture by the Lilliputians
Lemuel Gulliver, an English surgeon with a wife and children, sailed again when his medical practice failed.
In November 1699, a wreck left him stranded on Lilliput. He woke tied down among people under six inches tall. They fed and drugged him, then carried him to their capital.
Chapter 2. The emperor's prisoner surrenders his weapons
The Emperor of Lilliput inspected his prisoner and ordered food and language lessons.
Gulliver gained goodwill by freeing men who had attacked him. Officials searched his pockets, and he surrendered his sword, pistols and powder after a gunshot terrified the troops. He secretly kept his spectacles and telescope, fearing that the tiny searchers would damage them.
Chapter 3. Court entertainments and the conditions of freedom
Officials won posts by rope-dancing. The high admiral, Skyresh Bolgolam, opposed Gulliver.
He nevertheless received freedom after swearing to avoid harm, carry messengers, help with building and defend Lilliput against Blefuscu. The emperor supplied food equal to the meals of 1,728 subjects.
Chapter 4. A visit to Mildendo and the causes of war with Blefuscu
Gulliver visited Mildendo and reached the palace using two stools. A royal secretary explained that high and low shoe heels divided rival parties. War with Blefuscu followed rebellions over a law ordering eggs opened at the smaller end. He described the parties' hatred:
The animosities between these two parties run so high, that they will neither eat nor drink, nor talk with each other. We compute the Tramecksan, or High-Heels, to exceed us in number; but the power is wholly on our side.
Chapter 5. The captured fleet, imperial displeasure and the palace fire
Protecting his eyes with spectacles, Gulliver crossed the channel and towed fifty enemy warships to Lilliput. The emperor rewarded him, then demanded Blefuscu's complete conquest. Gulliver refused to enslave its people and befriended its peace envoys, angering his ruler. Later, he put out a palace fire by urinating on it. Although he saved the royal rooms, he broke a capital law and made the empress his enemy.
Chapter 6. Lilliputian laws, education and Gulliver's life at court
Gulliver learned that Lilliput's original laws punished false accusations and fraud, rewarded obedience and favoured honesty over talent in officials. Court entertainments had later corrupted appointments. Most children entered public nurseries, where education followed rank and occupation; labourers' children stayed home. Hundreds of workers clothed and fed him. The treasurer complained that he drained public money and suspected his wife of visiting him secretly. Gulliver denied this, explaining that court ladies visited openly with companions, but the treasurer remained hostile.
Chapter 7. The treason plot and flight to Blefuscu
A grateful court lord secretly warned Gulliver that his enemies had accused him of treason over the fire, his refusal to conquer Blefuscu and his dealings with its envoys. The proposed mercy was blinding, followed by a secret reduction in food until he starved. Rather than destroy the capital or face a biased trial, Gulliver used his existing permission to visit Blefuscu and crossed the channel, where its emperor welcomed him warmly.
Chapter 8. Escape by boat and return to England
Gulliver found an overturned boat and repaired it with Blefuscu's help. Its emperor refused Lilliput's demand to surrender him. Rejecting further royal service, Gulliver sailed away with provisions and tiny livestock. An English ship rescued him, and he reached home in April 1702. He sold the animals, provided for his family and sailed again after two months.
Part 2. A Voyage to Brobdingnag
Chapter 1. Gulliver is abandoned in Brobdingnag and taken in by a farmer
Sailing again in 1702, Gulliver went ashore for water after storms. His companions fled a giant, leaving him behind. A giant reaper found him and carried him to a farmer.
The family fed him, but a baby nearly swallowed him. Alone afterward, he fought two enormous rats, killing one and driving the other away.
Chapter 2. Glumdalclitch's care and Gulliver's life as a public spectacle
The farmer's nine-year-old daughter, Glumdalclitch, became Gulliver's nurse and teacher.
She made him a cradle bed and taught him words. Her father exhibited him for money at an inn, then across the country. She guarded him from spectators, but constant performances exhausted him. At the capital, he performed ten times daily.
Chapter 3. The Queen buys Gulliver and he begins a hazardous life at court
When exhausting exhibitions nearly killed Gulliver, the Queen of Brobdingnag bought him from the farmer.
At his request, she kept Glumdalclitch with him and gave him a furnished, portable room. A jealous court dwarf dropped him into cream, and giant insects threatened him at meals.
Chapter 4. The geography, capital and royal sights of Brobdingnag
Brobdingnag was a huge peninsula cut off by mountains and dangerous seas, with no foreign trade. Glumdalclitch carried Gulliver around the capital in a travelling box. He admired the magnificent palace, temple and royal guard, but giant beggars' sores and lice horrified him.
Chapter 5. Accidents, humiliations and the monkey's abduction
Small accidents became deadly dangers: hail bruised Gulliver, a falling apple knocked him down and a dog carried him in its mouth. Court ladies treated him as a toy, and an execution's enormous bloodshed shocked him. The queen provided a boat and indoor trough for exercise, but a frog nearly overturned it. A monkey later seized him from his room, carried him onto a roof and forced food into his mouth. A servant rescued him, and Glumdalclitch nursed him through two weeks of painful illness.
Chapter 6. Ingenious gifts and the King's scrutiny of English society
After making gifts from royal hair, Gulliver praised England to the King of Brobdingnag.
The king questioned elections, judges, debts, wars and standing armies. He judged virtue irrelevant to public advancement:
It doth not appear from all you have said, how any one virtue is required towards the procurement of any one station among you; much less that men are ennobled on account of their virtue...
Chapter 7. The King rejects gunpowder and reveals Brobdingnag's political ideals
Hoping to impress the king, Gulliver offered the secret of gunpowder and weapons that could destroy cities. Horrified, the king forbade further discussion on pain of death. He preferred justice, mercy and useful farming to political schemes. Laws were brief, learning practical, and an unpaid militia protected the isolated kingdom.
Chapter 8. The eagle carries Gulliver's box to sea and he returns home
An eagle snatched Gulliver's travelling box near the coast and dropped it into the sea. An English ship rescued him, and giant objects saved from the box supported his account. He reached England in June 1706. Accustomed to giants, he thought ordinary people tiny, ducked through his own doorway and mishandled his greetings to his family. His wife begged him not to sail again.
Part 3. A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan
Chapter 1. Pirates set Gulliver adrift, and a flying island rescues him
In 1706, Gulliver sailed for the East Indies. Pirates later captured a small vessel he commanded and set him adrift in a canoe. After sheltering on rocky islands, he was lifted aboard the flying island of Laputa.
Chapter 2. Life among Laputa's distracted mathematicians and musicians
Laputa's people studied mathematics and music so intently that servants tapped their ears and mouths to prompt attention. Their houses were crooked, their clothes ill-fitting, and they feared disasters in the sky.
Chapter 3. The magnet that moves Laputa and the rebellion of Lindalino
A giant magnet moved Laputa over the kingdom below. Its ruler punished rebellious towns by blocking sunlight and rain or threatening to crush them. Lindalino resisted with towers bearing magnets that almost pulled the island down, forcing the king to accept the town's demands.
Chapter 4. Gulliver leaves Laputa and sees Balnibarbi's ruined countryside
Leaving Laputa, Gulliver stayed with a former governor in Balnibarbi. Experimental improvements had ruined farms and houses, while his host's traditionally managed estate flourished.
Chapter 5. The Grand Academy of Lagado and its impractical inventions
At Lagado's academy, Gulliver saw attempts to extract sunlight from cucumbers, recover food from excrement and build houses from the roof down. A machine randomly rearranged words to produce knowledge without study. Other teachers wanted people to communicate by carrying objects, while mathematics pupils swallowed proofs written on wafers.
Chapter 6. Political projectors, strange taxes and methods for detecting plots
Political researchers proposed medicines for senators, exchanges of half-brains to reconcile parties, taxes on vanity and examinations of excrement to uncover plots. Gulliver described ministers twisting innocent writings into evidence of conspiracy.
Chapter 7. On Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver questions the illustrious dead
While awaiting a ship, Gulliver visited Glubbdubdrib, where a magician summoned the dead to answer questions truthfully. Ancient commanders corrected stories of their deaths and victories, and he admired opponents of tyranny.
Chapter 8. The dead expose false learning, corrupt history and forgotten merit
Dead writers rejected their commentators' explanations. Noble family histories revealed humble or criminal ancestors, while former courtiers exposed fraud, betrayal and undeserved promotion. Brave public servants had often died poor or disgraced.
Chapter 9. Gulliver reaches Luggnagg and licks the dust before its king
In Luggnagg, Gulliver crawled before the king, licking a floor cleaned for his visit. Poison spread there sometimes killed nobles. The pleased king gave him money and lodging.
Chapter 10. The struldbrugs teach Gulliver to fear endless old age
A gentleman described the immortal struldbrugs. Gulliver imagined lasting wisdom, but they aged without dying, lost legal rights at eighty and eventually forgot words and friends. His host described their declining affections:
They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but uncapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren.
Chapter 11. Through Japan and Holland, Gulliver returns to his family
Using a royal recommendation, Gulliver entered Japan as a Dutchman and secretly gained exemption from trampling a crucifix. He sailed with Dutch traders to Amsterdam, then returned to his family in England in 1710.
Part 4. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
Chapter 1. Mutiny, abandonment, and the first rational horses
In 1711, mutineers abandoned Gulliver ashore. Hairy creatures attacked him until a rational grey horse drove them away.
Chapter 2. The Houyhnhnm household and Gulliver's resemblance to the Yahoos
The horse housed Gulliver among rational horses called Houyhnhnms. Their brutish servants, the Yahoos, resembled humans. Gulliver refused their food and survived on milk, oat cakes and herbs.
Chapter 3. Language lessons, Gulliver's clothes, and a world ruled by humans
He learned speech, undressed and described human rulers. His host replied:
He replied, that I must needs be mistaken, or that I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)
Chapter 4. Lying, humanity's treatment of horses, and the vices of Gulliver's crew
His master could not understand lying, since speech should convey truth. Gulliver explained that humans ruled his homeland, trained and castrated horses, and used whips to control them. He also described his criminal recruits.
Chapter 5. War, weapons, and the corruption of law
He described Europe's wars and corrupt lawyers to his horrified host:
For these reasons, the trade of a soldier is held the most honourable of all others; because a soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can.
Chapter 6. Money, medicine, ministers, and noble birth
Gulliver described money and a wealthy minority living on the labour of the poor. He blamed disease on excess, accused doctors of harmful treatment and portrayed ministers as corrupt schemers. Noble birth, he said, often went with idleness and sickness rather than ability.
Chapter 7. Human reason and the evidence of Yahoo nature
His master concluded that human cleverness enlarged vice rather than supplying true reason. Yahoo greed for shining stones, battles over food, drunkenness and powerful favourites reminded Gulliver of human conduct. He wished to remain among the horses.
Chapter 8. Yahoo behavior and the virtues of Houyhnhnm society
A female Yahoo's embrace convinced Gulliver that he belonged to their species. He admired Houyhnhnm friendship, truthful speech and disciplined education. Their marriages followed practical breeding choices, and national councils redistributed supplies and arranged replacement children.
Chapter 9. The assembly's Yahoo debate and Houyhnhnm customs
The national assembly debated removing the Yahoos. Gulliver's master proposed castrating the young and replacing them with donkeys. The horses preserved knowledge without writing, made useful objects and faced old age and death without mourning.
Chapter 10. Contentment among the Houyhnhnms and the sentence of exile
Although he hated his own human appearance, Gulliver lived contentedly until his master announced that the assembly required his departure. The horses feared that his intelligence might help Yahoos rebel. Given time and a servant's help, he built a canoe covered with Yahoo skins. In tears, he kissed his master's hoof and sailed away.
Chapter 11. Rescue by Pedro de Mendez and a painful homecoming
After exile and an arrow wound, Pedro de Mendez rescued Gulliver.
The captain helped him return in 1715, but he shunned his family for horses.
Chapter 12. A defense of truth, a rejection of conquest, and a warning against pride
Gulliver defended his truthfulness and opposed conquest and enslavement. He tolerated his wife only at a distance, hoped to teach his family the horses' virtues and rejected pride.