Power In Gulliver's Travels

In part one of the book, Gulliver travels to the island of Lilliput. As Gulliver sails to the country of Lilliput, which is a land of small people, he is ship wrecked and comes across people who represent quite the opposite of what he is. Upon arriving mysteriously on Lilliput, Gulliver was tied down and his weapons were taken away. To his surprise the people who captured him were only six inches tall, which to him was a relief because he didn’t feel threatened by them. The Lilliputians did not come to realize that they could use Gulliver to help them with things they could not do himself, “This great prince received me at my landing with all possible encomium, and created me a nardac upon the spot, which is the highest honor among
While Gulliver is tied up, the Lilliputians think that they are in control of Gulliver, not realizing that Gulliver can simply not be controlled because of his size and of his personality. These people are insignificant, small minded humans who are not aware of the humankind in general and that makes Gulliver feel empowered. These humans are physically and morally smaller than Gulliver. Swift shows how even though these “small” people are small; they seem to think they are in control of a human larger than them. Rather than being labeled as regular human beings, they are categorized and scaled instead, “As the common size of the natives is somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact proportion in all other.” (Swift, 47) This quote describes how all matters in Lilliput are scaled to the size of its citizens. As the reader, Swift throws me off when he says that they are holding him captive, but as they do that they also provide for him and treat him as if he was one of their own. In this part of the book, Swift also exemplifies that even though one might be of a different size, big or small, humans still take care of one