The Little People and the Horses - Are they 'Good'?

Are the Lilliputians inherently bad? I know that they’re supposed to be caricatures of the modern English folk for Swift’s time, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s more to them than that. Granted, they’re at times just as petty and odd as our own race is, what with the pointed shoes and eggshell crackings, but I would still argue that the Lilliputians are not as bad as we are or could be, at the very least.

 It’s in the way that they interact with Gulliver himself that makes me think this, at least marginally. Aspects of their society, while somewhat barbaric compared to ours, could also be seen as somewhat favorable as being good intentioned (the main example being how children are separated from their parents for so long). Their society almost in some ways mirrors the society of Utopia, albeit the Lilliputians are much more materialistic and focused on wealth and conquering other nations.

As Jordan mentioned in another blog post, Gulliver himself is very much a caricature of a middle class of people, with his naturally submissive nature and gullibility towards the Lilliputians. Yet, at first, the Lilliputians treat Gulliver pretty darn kindly. Sure, they make him follow certain rules that may seem a bit tyrannical, but if they’re willing to take the momentous effort to maintain him and feed him, then doesn’t that almost make them more selfless than anything else? After all, one can only imagine how much food it takes for Gulliver to survive on a daily basis. Just how would that end up affecting the economy and farmers’ livelihoods?

Is Gulliver really worth the amount of effort that’s being put into his caretaking? Granted, it must be creating a ton of new jobs in getting waiters and attendants for him, but all he ever really did was put out a fire (in the worst way possible) and seize the entire Navy of the enemy island. Granted, the latter of the two is pretty gosh darned important, but even that can only go so far.

Until some of them plot to kill Gulliver, the Lilliputians honestly seemed like pretty swell people. Their society is one that, while I wouldn’t want to live in it, I’d certainly want to visit. They seem like they’d be pretty nice if you kept on their good side.

It’s the same with the horse people. Those guys, while extremely egotistical and haughty, have a certain elegance to them that reminds me a lot of the English upper class. There’s a certain superiority about them that would make them, at the very least, fun to hang around. Even their language sounds super pretentious, and I can only imagine it being spoken with a kind of pish posh British drawl that would make it especially amusing.

Granted, they have a concept of slavery same as the Lilliputians, but both races seem much more civilized than our own Yahoo race. It’s odd considering that they both represent certain characteristics of human society, but have perfection in almost everything else that makes them seem all the more idyllic.