Although Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift has long been thought of as a children's story, it is actually a dark satire on the fallacies of human nature. The four parts of the book are arranged in a planned sequence, to show Gulliver's optimism and lack of shame with the Lilliputians, decaying into his shame and disgust with humans when he is in the land of the Houyhnhmns. The Brobdingnagians are more hospitable than the Lilliputians, but Gulliver's attitude towards them is more disgusted and bitter. Gulliver's tone becomes even more critical of the introspective people of Laputa and Lagado, and in Glubbdubdrib he learns the truth about modern man. Gulliver finds the Luggnuggians to be a "polite and generous people" (III, 177), until he learns that the Struldbruggs' immortality is a curse rather than a blessing. Throughout the course of Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver's encounters with each culture signify a progression from benevolence towards man to misanthropy, resulting in Gulliver's final insanity.

In the first part of the book, Gulliver arrives on a strange island and wakes up tied to the ground by a culture of six-inch tall Lilliputians. Gulliver is amazed by the skill of t

Where the first two parts of the book concern the physical size of people, the third voyage concerns the scientific, mental side, as demonstrated by the Laputians who inhabit a floating island. Gulliver finds them both impractical and difficult to communicate with: "I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy People, nor so slow and perplexed in their Conceptions upon all other Subjects, except those of Mathematicks and Musick" (III, 136). In this book, Gulliver criticizes the culture more openly than he does in the previous two books, and he sums up the problem with this society as follows: "I rather take this Quality to spring from a very common Infirmity of human Nature, inclining us to be more curious and conceited in Matters where we have least Concern, and for which we are least adapted either by Study or Nature" (II, 137). As Swift satirizes the people who absorb themselves so much into the scientific world that they cannot communicate with others, Gulliver as a character becomes more aware of the dark side of human nature. The floating of the island is a metaphor of the side of humanity that is the mind, which

Gulliver's attitude is a result of the dehumanizing way in which he feels small and insignificant in an otherwise huge world. His feeling of insignificance is magnified by the manner in which he is handled: as a toy, a thing, an animal, an alien, a freak, and a machine. Gulliver is startled when he sees himself and the queen next to each other in a mirror: "...there could nothing be more ridiculous than the Comparison: So that I really began to imagine my self dwindled many Degrees below my usual Size" (II, 85). From this statement it is apparent that the Brobdingnagians are as symbolically huge as the Lilliputians are small: they represent true moral human nature, but Gulliver is too small to see it.

Despite Gulliver's newfound contempt for humankind, his earlier optimism is revived in his visit to the Luggnuggians, where he learns of a race of people called the Struldbruggs, or the immortals. Gulliver's extreme enthusiasm at the mention of eternal life is laughed at by the Luggnuggians, because Gulliver does not know the truth about Struldbruggs: they age continuously. This finding is essential to Gulliver's attitude towards man, for the only joy he can extrapolate from life is knowing that some people never die, which turns out to be negative.

All four books of Gulliver's Travels form a rapid descent into the dark nature of

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