Compare and contrast the Lilliputian Emperor with the Brobdingnagian King as rulers in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
Ans. Ostensibly, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is an adventure story detailing a sailor’s journey to four fantastic lands. But, deeper level, it is a bitter satire satirizing the political and social systems of eighteenth-century England. Besides successfully using irony, ambiguity, and symbolism, Swift also adopts the technique of comparison and contrast to bring his ideas home. In the book, the tyranny and pride of the diminutive Lilliputian Emperor are set in stark contrast to the benevolence and simplicity of the Brobdingnagian King. They are poles apart not only in terms of their physical stature but also in terms of their qualities they possess.
In the first book of Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver arrives on the island of Lilliput inhabited by six-inch tall people. Swift delineates the Lilliputians as corrupt and morally depraved. In the book, the Lilliputians stand for excessive pride. Despite their smallness, the Lilliputians think very highly of themselves. The Lilliputian Emperor is an absolute monarch and seems to be an incarnation of pride. He is an excessively proud man and his pride manifests in his dealing with his subjects. He is a fingernail talker than his subjects. He has turned the court into a place of intrigue and conspiracies. He is out and out a politically corrupt man. The Lilliputian Emperor is a tyrant who hankers after absolute power. He is a viciously proud man. His pride is manifest in his desire of subjugating completely his Blefuscudian foes. He wishes to become the ruler of what to him seems to be the entire world.
Compare and contrast the Lilliputian Emperor Compare and contrast the Lilliputian Emperor Compare and contrast the Lilliputian Emperor Compare and contrast the Lilliputian Emperor Compare and contrast the Lilliputian Emperor
