Question

Liliputs in 100 words

Answer 1

The Lilliputians are a society of people around six inches in average height, but with all the arrogance and sense of self-importance associated with full-sized men. Typically greedy, jealous, manipulative, conniving, violent, selfish, and untrustworthy; they are, in all ways, an accurate portrayal of their "giant" counterparts.

The author (Jonathan Swift) makes use of the Lilliputians as a device for satirizing actual events and people in his own life. Swift's model for Flimnap, for example, was Robert Walpole - leader of the Whig party and first prime minister of modern England. Walpole was known as a very wily politician, as the book illustrates, making Flimnap the most skilled of the rope dancers. Reldresal, the next most skillful of the rope dancers, probably represents either Viscount Townshend or Lord Carteret, both of whom were well known as political allies of Walpole.

The articles Gulliver is forced to sign in order to regain his freedom directly relate the political climate of Lilliput, and conversely to that of the real-world England of the time. These articles parallel specific real-world English codes and laws. Likewise, the ridiculously over-complicated formalities which Gulliver must observe while swearing to the articles (he must hold his right foot in his left hand and place the middle finger of his right hand on top of his head with the right thumb on the tip of his ear) exemplify an aspect of unnecessarily ceremonious Whig politics: petty, red-tape harassing.