What values have you learnt in gulliver'stravel?
Lemuel Gulliver had two great gifts, he was exceptionally smart and secondly, extremely interested in watching people, their manners and dispositions. He could navigate through different kinds of social circles due to his middle class and modest upbringing which lent him flexibility and respectability at the same time. He knew how to associate himself with the cultured upper classes as well conversely freely with the working classes. His perceptiveness would help him in becoming attuned to the differences in people and places around him. Gulliver would never flatter or belittle anyone, what he did was to engage with the people around him critically and not judge them but observe them. Gulliver was also vastly interested in languages, customs and traditions of different places which tells us a lot about the countries he comes across. He took a keen interest in human nature and that makes him the most appropriate narrator for a novel engaged in dissecting the fine idiosyncrasies and eccentricities inherent in human nature and culture. This serves as an interesting link to the creator of Gulliver himself, Jonathan Swift, who came from a similar background and whose astute observational skills are evident in his work. Swift's work serves as a satirical commentary of the actual society of his time, the philosophy and science at work as well as social behaviour. But most importantly, his observations and comments are meant to provoke thinking, to probe deeper into the matter through this veiled attack on his contemporaneous society. Swift has often been termed as a misanthrope but if we take Gulliver to be a reflection of his creator, it is evident that both seem to highly analytical of the problems that pertain to the societies they associated with rather than being merely critical of them.