Utopian Ideal In Gulliver's Travels

The Brobdingnag have another form of society, unlike Lilliputians, based on ethics. The Brobdingnagians are giants and most of them have, as their size displays, an equal gigantic moral virtue. However, that is not true for all of them as we see, for example, how the farmer who discovers Gulliver exploits him. The Brobdingnagians’s society is not flawless. Gulliver always considered the Lilliputians to be men like him but with a different size, in contrast, the Brobdingnagians cannot consider him a miniature Brobdingnagian. Even the Brobdingnagian king treats him like a little tiny fellow, disapproving Gulliver’s ideas.

In the third part we observe another type of narrative as we see the scientific dystopia of the floating island of Laputa. Gulliver tells us that the Laputians make him feel ignorant and that he is bored by their constantly talking about mathematics, music, geometry, etc. The author shows us a culture dedicated to the music and mathematics but unable to use them for practical purposes.

Swift’s depiction of the utopian ideal

Gulliver finds an ideal society organized entirely along rational lines. This emphasis on rationality leads them to organize all aspects of social life according to logical standards. Gulliver admires them and learns to behave like a Houyhnhnm voluntarily to amuse them. He replaces part of his human nature with a pure and abstract rationality like the one the Houyhnhnms possess. But Gulliver tries not to become a more rational human being, but to become a Houyhnhnm itself; so it becomes clear that he has not learned the teachings of the Houyhnhnms.

“Man, of course, can never be a Houyhnhnm, nor was meant to be, but the rational society of Houyhnhnmland nevertheless offers a goal of moral perfection toward which he should strive” .

The Houyhnhnms society can be seen as the manifestation of man’s rational nature opposed to the more animal nature of the brute