Gulliver's Travels (Swift)/Part 1/Chapter 1

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Jonathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels. Part 1. Chapter 1

Shipwreck and capture by the Lilliputians

1726

Summary of a Chapter
from the Collection “Gulliver's Travels. Part 1”

The original takes about 21 minutes to read

Microsummary

After a shipwreck, Gulliver reaches Lilliput, where tiny inhabitants bind and feed him. Their emperor has him carried to the capital and chained outside an abandoned temple.

The division of this summary into sections is editorial.

A surgeon takes to the sea

Gulliver, the third of five sons in a Nottinghamshire family, studied at Cambridge until his father could no longer afford to keep him there.

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Gulliver — narrator, an English surgeon and traveller; observant, resourceful and curious about other peoples.

Apprenticed to the London surgeon James Bates, he also learned navigation and mathematics in preparation for travel. With help from relatives, he went on to study medicine at Leyden. Bates then recommended him as a ship’s surgeon, and Gulliver spent three and a half years at sea.

Back in London, he married Mary Burton and established a practice. After Bates died, his business declined. Gulliver said he could not bring himself to adopt the dishonest practices of some fellow surgeons:

for my conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad practice of too many among my brethren.

After consulting his wife and acquaintances, he returned to sea for six years. He read on board and, ashore, studied local customs and languages. A disappointing voyage made him try again to support his family in London, but after three unprofitable years he accepted another post.

Shipwreck and captivity

Gulliver sailed from Bristol aboard the Antelope on 4 May 1699. During the voyage, a storm drove the ship northwest of Van Diemen’s Land. Twelve crewmen had died from hard labour and poor food, and the survivors were weak. On 5 November, the ship struck a rock in hazy weather.

Gulliver and five others escaped in a boat, but a sudden gust overturned it. He never learned what became of his companions and supposed them lost. He swam until he could stand, waded ashore and, exhausted, fell asleep on the grass.

At daylight he found his limbs and hair tied to the ground. A tiny armed man climbed onto him, followed by many others. Gulliver’s startled roar sent them fleeing, but they soon returned. When he freed his left arm and tried to loosen his hair, they shot arrows into his hand and face. His thick jacket protected him from their spears, and he decided to lie still until night.

Food and an imperial decision

The inhabitants stopped shooting and built a platform beside Gulliver. A lord addressed him in a language he did not understand. Gulliver gestured that he was hungry, and men climbed up ladders to bring him small portions of meat and bread, followed by two casks of wine.

Though tempted to seize some of the people on his body, Gulliver remembered their arrows and considered himself bound by their hospitality. A high-ranking envoy then indicated that the emperor’s council had ordered him taken to the capital. Gulliver asked by signs to be freed, but the envoy refused and promised him food and good treatment instead. Gulliver submitted.

The emperor of Lilliput had been told of the stranger soon after his arrival and had ordered him bound, supplied and transported.

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The emperor of Lilliput — ruler of Lilliput and patron of learning; orders the giant stranger treated well but kept prisoner.

The Lilliputians applied ointment to Gulliver’s wounds and loosened his bonds enough for him to relieve himself. He slept for about eight hours. He later learned that the emperor’s physicians had put a sleeping potion in the wine.

The journey to the capital

While Gulliver slept, hundreds of carpenters and engineers prepared a wheeled wooden frame. Nine hundred men used poles, ropes and pulleys to lift and bind him onto it; fifteen hundred small horses pulled it towards the capital.

During a stop, a curious guard put the tip of a small spear up Gulliver’s nostril, making him sneeze and wake. He learned the cause only weeks later. The party halted overnight with guards stationed on both sides, then resumed its journey and reached the city the next day.

The emperor and his court came out to see him, though the emperor’s officers would not let him climb onto the prisoner. A vast crowd gathered, and many people climbed Gulliver until a proclamation forbade it.

The authorities chose an old temple for his lodging. Once considered desecrated by a murder, it had been stripped and put to ordinary use. Smiths fastened numerous chains to Gulliver’s left leg, then workmen cut his other bonds. He rose in misery, astonishing the spectators. The chains let him walk in a semicircle and crawl into the temple to lie down, but not escape.

The summary is based on the edition of the novel edited by G. Ravenscroft Dennis from volume 8 of The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift (London: George Bell and Sons, 1899).