Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift | Symbols

The five key symbols in Gulliver's travels are the various strange peoples Gulliver encounters, starting with the Lilliputians. The little Lilliputians represent the human tendency to consider themselves the most important creatures in the universe, but their tiny size and insignificance in the world as a whole reveals the error in this belief. The emperor has little regard for his neighbors, because his beliefs differ from theirs, and he thinks his own importance justifies the lives that may be lost if the war continues. The Brobdingnagian size symbolically magnifies their best and worst aspects, representing how all humans have the capacity for great good and beauty, as well as ugliness and evil. The farmer's family, Gulliver's first acquaintances in Brobdingnag, illustrate both extreme greed and extreme kindness. The Lilliputians and their ground-dwelling counterparts on Bal-Nabarbi symbolize the futility of seeking knowledge without the means or desire to put it to practical use. From their floating island, the Lilliputians eschew most normal human interactions, preferring a life of the mind, puzzling over mysteries of mathematics, physics, and astronomy all day. On Bal-Nabarbi, the projectors engage in studies and experiments with the aim of improving their lives and the lives of the people, but their understanding of science and other topics is so incomplete that they lack the ability to construct useful experiments or learn anything that might accomplish their goals. The Houenems symbolize the rule of rational thinking and the benefits of collective living, but also the loss of individual identity that comes with extreme devotion to reason. Rationality has allowed the Houenems to construct a peaceful, inwardly harmonious culture based on benevolence and friendship. Yet they are also overly beholden to the culture's rules and norms. The Yahoos symbolize a complete loss of rationality in a primitive state, but they also show how ongoing oppression can, in fact, drive humans into this primitive state. Yahoos fight one another, hoard stones, and on one occasion a female tries to sexually accost Gulliver. At the same time, the Yahoos have little and are subject to abuse, enslavement, and rejection by the Houenems, which introduces a chicken-and-egg scenario. Are the Yahoos rejected because they're primitive, or are they violent because they've been rejected?