Although Jonathan Swift takes great pains throughout Gulliver's Travels to establish his protagonist as an honest and trustworthy individual, it becomes clear over the course of the novel that Gulliver is actually a very unreliable narrator.
In Book 1, Chapter 1, Gulliver describes himself as an honest man, a trait that is apparently uncommon among professional surgeons:
[M]y Business began to fail; for my Conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad Practice of too many among my Brethren.
But despite identifying himself as a pillar of integrity, Gulliver goes on to engage in numerous acts of deception. He escapes from Lilliput under false pretenses, conceals his mishaps from Glumdalclitch, lies to the Japanese emperor about being Dutch, and allows the Houyhnhnms to believe that his clothes are part of his body. Although Gulliver has valid reasons for all of these deceptions, they nonetheless seriously undermine his credibility.
It is also no coincidence that Gulliver's name is so similar to the word "gullible," as he consistently shows himself to be somewhat naive and a poor judge of character. Despite not trusting the Lilliputian court, he is oblivious to their plot against him, and he only realizes that members of his crew were pirates in the past after they successfully mutiny and imprison him.
In Gulliver's Travels, Swift also consistently implies that it is impossible to be a truly reliable narrator. A person's perspective, he argues, is necessarily limited and biased. These limits cannot always be overcome, but they should be acknowledged. Gulliver, however, seems blissfully unaware of the fact that he is an unreliable narrator of his own story. In Book 4, Chapter 12, he cheerfully claims to have written a perfectly factual account:
I meddle not the least with any Party, but write without Passion, Prejudice, or Ill will against any Man or number of Men whatsoever. I write for the noblest End, to inform and instruct Mankind.
Gulliver experiences numerous changes in perspective over the course of the novel, but this statement shows just how little he has learned from those experiences. He still believes in the infallibility of his own biased, imperfect perspective.
Although Jonathan Swift takes great pains throughout Gulliver's Travels to establish his protagonist as an honest and trustworthy individual, it becomes clear over the course of the novel that Gulliver is actually a very unreliable narrator.
In Book 1, Chapter 1, Gulliver describes himself as an honest man, a trait that is apparently uncommon among professional surgeons:
[M]y Business began to fail; for my Conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad Practice of too many among my Brethren.
But despite identifying himself as a pillar of integrity, Gulliver goes on to engage in numerous acts of deception. He escapes from Lilliput under false pretenses, conceals his mishaps from Glumdalclitch, lies to the Japanese emperor about being Dutch, and allows the Houyhnhnms to believe that his clothes are part of his body. Although Gulliver has valid reasons for all of these deceptions, they nonetheless seriously undermine his credibility.
It is also no coincidence that Gulliver's name is so similar to the word "gullible," as he consistently shows himself to be somewhat naive and a poor judge of character. Despite not trusting the Lilliputian court, he is oblivious to their plot against him, and he only realizes that members of his crew were pirates in the past after they successfully mutiny and imprison him.
In Gulliver's Travels, Swift also consistently implies that it is impossible to be a truly reliable narrator. A person's perspective, he argues, is necessarily limited and biased. These limits cannot always be overcome, but they should be acknowledged. Gulliver, however, seems blissfully unaware of the fact that he is an unreliable narrator of his own story. In Book 4, Chapter 12, he cheerfully claims to have written a perfectly factual account:
I meddle not the least with any Party, but write without Passion, Prejudice, or Ill will against any Man or number of Men whatsoever. I write for the noblest End, to inform and instruct Mankind.
Gulliver experiences numerous changes in perspective over the course of the novel, but this statement shows just how little he has learned from those experiences. He still believes in the infallibility of his own biased, imperfect perspective.
