Lecturi

Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/

18th Century- The Enlightenment
Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift

(Augustan Literature 1689-1750)

Context

Jonathan Swift, son of the English lawyer Jonathan Swift the elder, was born in Dublin, Ireland, on
November 30, 1667. He grew up there in the care of his uncle before attending Trinity College at the
age of fourteen, where he stayed for seven years, graduating in 1688. In that year, he became the
secretary of Sir William Temple, an English politician and member of the Whig party. In 1694, he took
religious orders in the Church of Ireland and then spent a year as a country parson. He then spent
further time in the service of Temple before returning to Ireland to become the chaplain of the earl of
Berkeley. Meanwhile, he had begun to write satires on the political and religious corruption
surrounding him, working on A Tale of a Tub, which supports the position of the Anglican Church
against its critics on the left and the right, and The Battle of the Books, which argues for the supremacy
of the classics against modern thought and literature. He also wrote a number of political pamphlets in
favor of the Whig party. In 1709 he went to London to campaign for the Irish church but was
unsuccessful. After some conflicts with the Whig party, mostly because of Swift’s strong allegiance to
the church, he became a member of the more conservative Tory party in 1710.

Unfortunately for Swift, the Tory government fell out of power in 1714 and Swift, despite his fame for
his writings, fell out of favor. Swift, who had been hoping to be assigned a position in the Church of
England, instead returned to Dublin, where he became the dean of St. Patrick’s. During his brief time in
England, Swift had become friends with writers such as Alexander Pope, and during a meeting of their
literary club, the Martinus Scriblerus Club, they decided to write satires of modern learning. The third
voyage of Gulliver’s Travels is assembled from the work Swift did during this time. However, the final
work was not completed until 1726, and the narrative of the third voyage was actually the last one
completed. After his return to Ireland, Swift became a staunch supporter of the Irish against English
attempts to weaken their economy and political power, writing pamphlets such as the satirical A
Modest Proposal, in which he suggests that the Irish problems of famine and overpopulation could be
easily solved by having the babies of poor Irish subjects sold as delicacies to feed the rich.

Gulliver’s Travels was a controversial work when it was first published in 1726. In fact, it was not until
almost ten years after its first printing that the book appeared with the entire text that Swift had
originally intended it to have. Ever since, editors have excised many of the passages, particularly the
more caustic ones dealing with bodily functions. Even without those passages, however, Gulliver’s
Travels serves as a biting satire, and Swift ensures that it is both humorous and critical, constantly
attacking British and European society through its descriptions of imaginary countries.

Late in life, Swift seemed to many observers to become even more caustic and bitter than he had been.
Three years before his death, he was declared unable to care for himself, and guardians were appointed.

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Based on these facts and on a comparison between Swift’s fate and that of his character Gulliver, some
people have concluded that he gradually became insane and that his insanity was a natural outgrowth of
his indignation and outrage against humankind. However, the truth seems to be that Swift was suddenly
incapacitated by a paralytic stroke late in life, and that prior to this incident his mental capacities were
unimpaired.

Gulliver’s Travels is about a specific set of political conflicts, but if it were nothing more than that it
would long ago have been forgotten. The staying power of the work comes from its depiction of the
human condition and its often despairing, but occasionally hopeful, sketch of the possibilities for
humanity to rein in its baser instincts.

Plot Overview

Gulliver’s Travels recounts the story of Lemuel Gulliver, a practical-minded Englishman trained as a
surgeon who takes to the seas when his business fails. In a deadpan first-person narrative that rarely
shows any signs of self-reflection or deep emotional response, Gulliver narrates the adventures that
befall him on these travels.

Gulliver’s adventure in Lilliput begins when he wakes after his shipwreck to find himself bound by
innumerable tiny threads and addressed by tiny captors who are in awe of him but fiercely protective of
their kingdom. They are not afraid to use violence against Gulliver, though their arrows are little more
than pinpricks. But overall, they are hospitable, risking famine in their land by feeding Gulliver, who
consumes more food than a thousand Lilliputians combined could. Gulliver is taken into the capital city
by a vast wagon the Lilliputians have specially built. He is presented to the emperor, who is entertained
by Gulliver, just as Gulliver is flattered by the attention of royalty. Eventually Gulliver becomes a
national resource, used by the army in its war against the people of Blefuscu, whom the Lilliputians
hate for doctrinal differences concerning the proper way to crack eggs. But things change when
Gulliver is convicted of treason for putting out a fire in the royal palace with his urine and is
condemned to be shot in the eyes and starved to death. Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, where he is able to
repair a boat he finds and set sail for England.

After staying in England with his wife and family for two months, Gulliver undertakes his next sea
voyage, which takes him to a land of giants called Brobdingnag. Here, a field worker discovers him.
The farmer initially treats him as little more than an animal, keeping him for amusement. The farmer
eventually sells Gulliver to the queen, who makes him a courtly diversion and is entertained by his
musical talents. Social life is easy for Gulliver after his discovery by the court, but not particularly
enjoyable. Gulliver is often repulsed by the physicality of the Brobdingnagians, whose ordinary flaws
are many times magnified by their huge size. Thus, when a couple of courtly ladies let him play on
their naked bodies, he is not attracted to them but rather disgusted by their enormous skin pores and the
sound of their torrential urination. He is generally startled by the ignorance of the people here—even
the king knows nothing about politics. More unsettling findings in Brobdingnag come in the form of
various animals of the realm that endanger his life. Even Brobdingnagian insects leave slimy trails on
his food that make eating difficult. On a trip to the frontier, accompanying the royal couple, Gulliver
leaves Brobdingnag when his cage is plucked up by an eagle and dropped into the sea.

Next, Gulliver sets sail again and, after an attack by pirates, ends up in Laputa, where a floating island
inhabited by theoreticians and academics oppresses the land below, called Balnibarbi. The scientific
research undertaken in Laputa and in Balnibarbi seems totally inane and impractical, and its residents

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too appear wholly out of touch with reality. Taking a short side trip to Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver is able to
witness the conjuring up of figures from history, such as Julius Caesar and other military leaders,
whom he finds much less impressive than in books. After visiting the Luggnaggians and the
Struldbrugs, the latter of which are senile immortals who prove that age does not bring wisdom, he is
able to sail to Japan and from there back to England.

Finally, on his fourth journey, Gulliver sets out as captain of a ship, but after the mutiny of his crew
and a long confinement in his cabin, he arrives in an unknown land. This land is populated by
Houyhnhnms, rational-thinking horses who rule, and by Yahoos, brutish humanlike creatures who
serve the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver sets about learning their language, and when he can speak he narrates
his voyages to them and explains the constitution of England. He is treated with great courtesy and
kindness by the horses and is enlightened by his many conversations with them and by his exposure to
their noble culture. He wants to stay with the Houyhnhnms, but his bared body reveals to the horses
that he is very much like a Yahoo, and he is banished. Gulliver is grief-stricken but agrees to leave. He
fashions a canoe and makes his way to a nearby island, where he is picked up by a Portuguese ship
captain who treats him well, though Gulliver cannot help now seeing the captain—and all humans—as
shamefully Yahoolike. Gulliver then concludes his narrative with a claim that the lands he has visited
belong by rights to England, as her colonies, even though he questions the whole idea of colonialism.

Character List

Gulliver - The narrator and protagonist of the story. Although Lemuel Gulliver’s vivid and detailed
style of narration makes it clear that he is intelligent and well educated, his perceptions are naïve and
gullible. He has virtually no emotional life, or at least no awareness of it, and his comments are strictly
factual. Indeed, sometimes his obsession with the facts of navigation, for example, becomes unbearable
for us, as his fictional editor, Richard Sympson, makes clear when he explains having had to cut out
nearly half of Gulliver’s verbiage. Gulliver never thinks that the absurdities he encounters are funny
and never makes the satiric connections between the lands he visits and his own home. Gulliver’s
naïveté makes the satire possible, as we pick up on things that Gulliver does not notice.

The emperor - The ruler of Lilliput. Like all Lilliputians, the emperor is fewer than six inches tall. His
power and majesty impress Gulliver deeply, but to us he appears both laughable and sinister. Because
of his tiny size, his belief that he can control Gulliver seems silly, but his willingness to execute his
subjects for minor reasons of politics or honor gives him a frightening aspect. He is proud of possessing
the tallest trees and biggest palace in the kingdom, but he is also quite hospitable, spending a fortune on
his captive’s food. The emperor is both a satire of the autocratic ruler and a strangely serious portrait of
political power.
The farmer - Gulliver’s first master in Brobdingnag. The farmer speaks to Gulliver, showing that he
is willing to believe that the relatively tiny Gulliver may be as rational as he himself is, and treats him
with gentleness. However, the farmer puts Gulliver on display around Brobdingnag, which clearly
shows that he would rather profit from his discovery than converse with him as an equal. His
exploitation of Gulliver as a laborer, which nearly starves Gulliver to death, seems less cruel than
simpleminded. Generally, the farmer represents the average Brobdingnagian of no great gifts or
intelligence, wielding an extraordinary power over Gulliver simply by virtue of his immense size.
Glumdalclitch - The farmer’s nine-year-old daughter, who is forty feet tall. Glumdalclitch becomes
Gulliver’s friend and nursemaid, hanging him to sleep safely in her closet at night and teaching him the
Brobdingnagian language by day. She is skilled at sewing and makes Gulliver several sets of new
clothes, taking delight in dressing him. When the queen discovers that no one at court is suited to care
for Gulliver, she invites Glumdalclitch to live at court as his sole babysitter, a function she performs
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with great seriousness and attentiveness. To Glumdalclitch, Gulliver is basically a living doll,
symbolizing the general status Gulliver has in Brobdingnag.
The queen - The queen of Brobdingnag, who is so delighted by Gulliver’s beauty and charms that she
agrees to buy him from the farmer for 1,000 pieces of gold. Gulliver appreciates her kindness after the
hardships he suffers at the farmer’s and shows his usual fawning love for royalty by kissing the tip of
her little finger when presented before her. She possesses, in Gulliver’s words, “infinite” wit and
humor, though this description may entail a bit of Gulliver’s characteristic flattery of superiors. The
queen seems genuinely considerate, asking Gulliver whether he would consent to live at court instead
of simply taking him in as a pet and inquiring into the reasons for his cold good-byes with the farmer.
She is by no means a hero, but simply a pleasant, powerful person.

The king - The king of Brobdingnag, who, in contrast to the emperor of Lilliput, seems to be a true
intellectual, well versed in political science among other disciplines. While his wife has an intimate,
friendly relationship with the diminutive visitor, the king’s relation to Gulliver is limited to serious
discussions about the history and institutions of Gulliver’s native land. He is thus a figure of rational
thought who somewhat prefigures the Houyhnhnms in Book IV.

Lord Munodi - A lord of Lagado, capital of the underdeveloped land beneath Laputa, who hosts
Gulliver and gives him a tour of the country on Gulliver’s third voyage. Munodi is a rare example of
practical-minded intelligence both in Lagado, where the applied sciences are wildly impractical, and in
Laputa, where no one even considers practicality a virtue. He fell from grace with the ruling elite by
counseling a commonsense approach to agriculture and land management in Lagado, an approach that
was rejected even though it proved successful when applied to his own flourishing estate. Lord Munodi
serves as a reality check for Gulliver on his third voyage, an objective-minded contrast to the
theoretical delusions of the other inhabitants of Laputa and Lagado.
Yahoos - Unkempt humanlike beasts who live in servitude to the Houyhnhnms. Yahoos seem to
belong to various ethnic groups, since there are blond Yahoos as well as dark-haired and redheaded
ones. The men are characterized by their hairy bodies, and the women by their low-hanging breasts.
They are naked, filthy, and extremely primitive in their eating habits. Yahoos are not capable of
government, and thus they are kept as servants to the Houyhnhnms, pulling their carriages and
performing manual tasks. They repel Gulliver with their lascivious sexual appetites, especially when an
eleven-year-old Yahoo girl attempts to rape Gulliver as he is bathing naked. Yet despite Gulliver’s
revulsion for these disgusting creatures, he ends his writings referring to himself as a Yahoo, just as the
Houyhnhnms do as they regretfully evict him from their realm. Thus, “Yahoo” becomes another term
for human, at least in the semideranged and self-loathing mind of Gulliver at the end of his fourth
journey.
Houyhnhnms - Rational horses who maintain a simple, peaceful society governed by reason and
truthfulness—they do not even have a word for “lie” in their language. Houyhnhnms are like ordinary
horses, except that they are highly intelligent and deeply wise. They live in a sort of socialist republic,
with the needs of the community put before individual desires. They are the masters of the Yahoos, the
savage humanlike creatures in Houyhnhnmland. In all, the Houyhnhnms have the greatest impact on
Gulliver throughout all his four voyages. He is grieved to leave them, not relieved as he is in leaving
the other three lands, and back in England he relates better with his horses than with his human family.
The Houyhnhnms thus are a measure of the extent to which Gulliver has become a misanthrope, or
“human-hater”; he is certainly, at the end, a horse lover.
Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm master - The Houyhnhnm who first discovers Gulliver and takes him into his
own home. Wary of Gulliver’s Yahoolike appearance at first, the master is hesitant to make contact
with him, but Gulliver’s ability to mimic the Houyhnhnm’s own words persuades the master to protect
Gulliver. The master’s domestic cleanliness, propriety, and tranquil reasonableness of speech have an
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extraordinary impact on Gulliver. It is through this horse that Gulliver is led to reevaluate the
differences between humans and beasts and to question humanity’s claims to rationality.
Don Pedro de Mendez - The Portuguese captain who takes Gulliver back to Europe after he is forced
to leave the land of the Houyhnhnms. Don Pedro is naturally benevolent and generous, offering the
half-crazed Gulliver his own best suit of clothes to replace the tatters he is wearing. But Gulliver meets
his generosity with repulsion, as he cannot bear the company of Yahoos. By the end of the voyage, Don
Pedro has won over Gulliver to the extent that he is able to have a conversation with him, but the
captain’s overall Yahoolike nature in Gulliver’s eyes alienates him from Gulliver to the very end.

Brobdingnagians - Giants whom Gulliver meets on his second voyage. Brobdingnagians are basically
a reasonable and kindly people governed by a sense of justice. Even the farmer who abuses Gulliver at
the beginning is gentle with him, and politely takes the trouble to say good-bye to him upon leaving
him. The farmer’s daughter, Glumdalclitch, gives Gulliver perhaps the most kindhearted treatment he
receives on any of his voyages. The Brobdingnagians do not exploit him for personal or political
reasons, as the Lilliputians do, and his life there is one of satisfaction and quietude. But the
Brobdingnagians do treat Gulliver as a plaything. When he tries to speak seriously with the king of
Brobdingnag about England, the king dismisses the English as odious vermin, showing that deep
discussion is not possible for Gulliver here.
Lilliputians and Blefuscudians - Two races of miniature people whom Gulliver meets on his first
voyage. Lilliputians and Blefuscudians are prone to conspiracies and jealousies, and while they treat
Gulliver well enough materially, they are quick to take advantage of him in political intrigues of
various sorts. The two races have been in a longstanding war with each over the interpretation of a
reference in their common holy scripture to the proper way to eat eggs. Gulliver helps the Lilliputians
defeat the Blefuscudian navy, but he eventually leaves Lilliput and receives a warm welcome in the
court of Blefuscu, by which Swift satirizes the arbitrariness of international relations.
Laputans - Absentminded intellectuals who live on the floating island of Laputa, encountered by
Gulliver on his third voyage. The Laputans are parodies of theoreticians, who have scant regard for any
practical results of their own research. They are so inwardly absorbed in their own thoughts that they
must be shaken out of their meditations by special servants called flappers, who shake rattles in their
ears. During Gulliver’s stay among them, they do not mistreat him, but are generally unpleasant and
dismiss him as intellectually deficient. They do not care about down-to-earth things like the
dilapidation of their own houses, but worry intensely about abstract matters like the trajectories of
comets and the course of the sun. They are dependent in their own material needs on the land below
them, called Lagado, above which they hover by virtue of a magnetic field, and from which they
periodically raise up food supplies. In the larger context of Gulliver’s journeys, the Laputans are a
parody of the excesses of theoretical pursuits and the uselessness of purely abstract knowledge.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes
Might Versus Right

Gulliver’s Travels implicitly poses the question of whether physical power or moral righteousness
should be the governing factor in social life. Gulliver experiences the advantages of physical might
both as one who has it, as a giant in Lilliput where he can defeat the Blefuscudian navy by virtue of his
immense size, and as one who does not have it, as a miniature visitor to Brobdingnag where he is
harassed by the hugeness of everything from insects to household pets. His first encounter with another

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society is one of entrapment, when he is physically tied down by the Lilliputians; later, in Brobdingnag,
he is enslaved by a farmer. He also observes physical force used against others, as with the
Houyhnhnms’ chaining up of the Yahoos.

But alongside the use of physical force, there are also many claims to power based on moral
correctness. The whole point of the egg controversy that has set Lilliput against Blefuscu is not merely
a cultural difference but, instead, a religious and moral issue related to the proper interpretation of a
passage in their holy book. This difference of opinion seems to justify, in their eyes at least, the warfare
it has sparked. Similarly, the use of physical force against the Yahoos is justified for the Houyhnhnms
by their sense of moral superiority: they are cleaner, better behaved, and more rational. But overall, the
novel tends to show that claims to rule on the basis of moral righteousness are often just as arbitrary as,
and sometimes simply disguises for, simple physical subjugation. The Laputans keep the lower land of
Balnibarbi in check through force because they believe themselves to be more rational, even though we
might see them as absurd and unpleasant. Similarly, the ruling elite of Balnibarbi believes itself to be in
the right in driving Lord Munodi from power, although we perceive that Munodi is the rational party.
Claims to moral superiority are, in the end, as hard to justify as the random use of physical force to
dominate others.

The Individual Versus Society

Like many narratives about voyages to nonexistent lands, Gulliver’s Travels explores the idea of utopia
—an imaginary model of the ideal community. The idea of a utopia is an ancient one, going back at
least as far as the description in Plato’s Republic of a city-state governed by the wise and expressed
most famously in English by Thomas More’s Utopia. Swift nods to both works in his own narrative,
though his attitude toward utopia is much more skeptical, and one of the main aspects he points out
about famous historical utopias is the tendency to privilege the collective group over the individual.
The children of Plato’s Republic are raised communally, with no knowledge of their biological parents,
in the understanding that this system enhances social fairness. Swift has the Lilliputians similarly raise
their offspring collectively, but its results are not exactly utopian, since Lilliput is torn by conspiracies,
jealousies, and backstabbing.

The Houyhnhnms also practice strict family planning, dictating that the parents of two females should
exchange a child with a family of two males, so that the male-to-female ratio is perfectly maintained.
Indeed, they come closer to the utopian ideal than the Lilliputians in their wisdom and rational
simplicity. But there is something unsettling about the Houyhnhnms’ indistinct personalities and about
how they are the only social group that Gulliver encounters who do not have proper names. Despite
minor physical differences, they are all so good and rational that they are more or less interchangeable,
without individual identities. In their absolute fusion with their society and lack of individuality, they
are in a sense the exact opposite of Gulliver, who has hardly any sense of belonging to his native
society and exists only as an individual eternally wandering the seas. Gulliver’s intense grief when
forced to leave the Houyhnhnms may have something to do with his longing for union with a
community in which he can lose his human identity. In any case, such a union is impossible for him,
since he is not a horse, and all the other societies he visits make him feel alienated as well.

Gulliver’s Travels could in fact be described as one of the first novels of modern alienation, focusing
on an individual’s repeated failures to integrate into societies to which he does not belong. England
itself is not much of a homeland for Gulliver, and, with his surgeon’s business unprofitable and his
father’s estate insufficient to support him, he may be right to feel alienated from it. He never speaks
fondly or nostalgically about England, and every time he returns home, he is quick to leave again.
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Gulliver never complains explicitly about feeling lonely, but the embittered and antisocial misanthrope
we see at the end of the novel is clearly a profoundly isolated individual. Thus, if Swift’s satire mocks
the excesses of communal life, it may also mock the excesses of individualism in its portrait of a
miserable and lonely Gulliver talking to his horses at home in England.

The Limits of Human Understanding

The idea that humans are not meant to know everything and that all understanding has a natural limit is
important in Gulliver’s Travels. Swift singles out theoretical knowledge in particular for attack: his
portrait of the disagreeable and self-centered Laputans, who show blatant contempt for those who are
not sunk in private theorizing, is a clear satire against those who pride themselves on knowledge above
all else. Practical knowledge is also satirized when it does not produce results, as in the academy of
Balnibarbi, where the experiments for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers amount to nothing. Swift
insists that there is a realm of understanding into which humans are simply not supposed to venture.
Thus his depictions of rational societies, like Brobdingnag and Houyhnhnmland, emphasize not these
people’s knowledge or understanding of abstract ideas but their ability to live their lives in a wise and
steady way.

The Brobdingnagian king knows shockingly little about the abstractions of political science, yet his
country seems prosperous and well governed. Similarly, the Houyhnhnms know little about arcane
subjects like astronomy, though they know how long a month is by observing the moon, since that
knowledge has a practical effect on their well-being. Aspiring to higher fields of knowledge would be
meaningless to them and would interfere with their happiness. In such contexts, it appears that living a
happy and well-ordered life seems to be the very thing for which Swift thinks knowledge is useful.

Swift also emphasizes the importance of self-understanding. Gulliver is initially remarkably lacking in
self-reflection and self-awareness. He makes no mention of his emotions, passions, dreams, or
aspirations, and he shows no interest in describing his own psychology to us. Accordingly, he may
strike us as frustratingly hollow or empty, though it is likely that his personal emptiness is part of the
overall meaning of the novel. By the end, he has come close to a kind of twisted self-knowledge in his
deranged belief that he is a Yahoo. His revulsion with the human condition, shown in his shabby
treatment of the generous Don Pedro, extends to himself as well, so that he ends the novel in a thinly
disguised state of self-hatred. Swift may thus be saying that self-knowledge has its necessary limits just
as theoretical knowledge does, and that if we look too closely at ourselves we might not be able to
carry on living happily.

Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
text’s major themes.

Excrement

While it may seem a trivial or laughable motif, the recurrent mention of excrement in Gulliver’s
Travels actually has a serious philosophical significance in the narrative. It symbolizes everything that
is crass and ignoble about the human body and about human existence in general, and it obstructs any
attempt to view humans as wholly spiritual or mentally transcendent creatures. Since the Enlightenment
culture of eighteenth-century England tended to view humans optimistically as noble souls rather than
vulgar bodies, Swift’s emphasis on the common filth of life is a slap in the face of the philosophers of

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his day. Thus, when Gulliver urinates to put out a fire in Lilliput, or when Brobdingnagian flies
defecate on his meals, or when the scientist in Lagado works to transform excrement back into food,
we are reminded how very little human reason has to do with everyday existence. Swift suggests that
the human condition in general is dirtier and lowlier than we might like to believe it is.

Foreign Languages

Gulliver appears to be a gifted linguist, knowing at least the basics of several European languages and
even a fair amount of ancient Greek. This knowledge serves him well, as he is able to disguise himself
as a Dutchman in order to facilitate his entry into Japan, which at the time only admitted the Dutch. But
even more important, his linguistic gifts allow him to learn the languages of the exotic lands he visits
with a dazzling speed and, thus, gain access to their culture quickly. He learns the languages of the
Lilliputians, the Brobdingnagians, and even the neighing tongue of the Houyhnhnms. He is meticulous
in recording the details of language in his narrative, often giving the original as well as the translation.
One would expect that such detail would indicate a cross-cultural sensitivity, a kind of anthropologist’s
awareness of how things vary from culture to culture. Yet surprisingly, Gulliver’s mastery of foreign
languages generally does not correspond to any real interest in cultural differences. He compares any of
the governments he visits to that of his native England, and he rarely even speculates on how or why
cultures are different at all. Thus, his facility for translation does not indicate a culturally comparative
mind, and we are perhaps meant to yearn for a narrator who is a bit less able to remember the
Brobdingnagian word for “lark” and better able to offer a more illuminating kind of cultural analysis.

Clothing

Critics have noted the extraordinary attention that Gulliver pays to clothes throughout his journeys.
Every time he gets a rip in his shirt or is forced to adopt some native garment to replace one of his own,
he recounts the clothing details with great precision. We are told how his pants are falling apart in
Lilliput, so that as the army marches between his legs they get quite an eyeful. We are informed about
the mouse skin he wears in Brobdingnag, and how the finest silks of the land are as thick as blankets on
him. In one sense, these descriptions are obviously an easy narrative device with which Swift can chart
his protagonist’s progression from one culture to another: the more ragged his clothes become and the
stranger his new wardrobe, the farther he is from the comforts and conventions of England. His journey
to new lands is also thus a journey into new clothes. When he is picked up by Don Pedro after his
fourth voyage and offered a new suit of clothes, Gulliver vehemently refuses, preferring his wild
animal skins. We sense that Gulliver may well never fully reintegrate into European society.

But the motif of clothing carries a deeper, more psychologically complex meaning as well. Gulliver’s
intense interest in the state of his clothes may signal a deep-seated anxiety about his identity, or lack
thereof. He does not seem to have much selfhood: one critic has called him an “abyss,” a void where an
individual character should be. If clothes make the man, then perhaps Gulliver’s obsession with the
state of his wardrobe may suggest that he desperately needs to be fashioned as a personality.
Significantly, the two moments when he describes being naked in the novel are two deeply troubling or
humiliating experiences: the first when he is the boy toy of the Brobdingnagian maids who let him
cavort nude on their mountainous breasts, and the second when he is assaulted by an eleven-year-old
Yahoo girl as he bathes. Both incidents suggest more than mere prudery. Gulliver associates nudity
with extreme vulnerability, even when there is no real danger present—a pre-teen girl is hardly a threat
to a grown man, at least in physical terms. The state of nudity may remind Gulliver of how nonexistent
he feels without the reassuring cover of clothing.

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Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Lilliputians

The Lilliputians symbolize humankind’s wildly excessive pride in its own puny existence. Swift fully
intends the irony of representing the tiniest race visited by Gulliver as by far the most vainglorious and
smug, both collectively and individually. There is surely no character more odious in all of Gulliver’s
travels than the noxious Skyresh. There is more backbiting and conspiracy in Lilliput than anywhere
else, and more of the pettiness of small minds who imagine themselves to be grand. Gulliver is a naïve
consumer of the Lilliputians’ grandiose imaginings: he is flattered by the attention of their royal family
and cowed by their threats of punishment, forgetting that they have no real physical power over him.
Their formally worded condemnation of Gulliver on grounds of treason is a model of pompous and
self-important verbiage, but it works quite effectively on the naïve Gulliver.

The Lilliputians show off not only to Gulliver but to themselves as well. There is no mention of armies
proudly marching in any of the other societies Gulliver visits—only in Lilliput and neighboring
Blefuscu are the six-inch inhabitants possessed of the need to show off their patriotic glories with such
displays. When the Lilliputian emperor requests that Gulliver serve as a kind of makeshift Arch of
Triumph for the troops to pass under, it is a pathetic reminder that their grand parade—in full view of
Gulliver’s nether regions—is supremely silly, a basically absurd way to boost the collective ego of the
nation. Indeed, the war with Blefuscu is itself an absurdity springing from wounded vanity, since the
cause is not a material concern like disputed territory but, rather, the proper interpretation of scripture
by the emperor’s forebears and the hurt feelings resulting from the disagreement. All in all, the
Lilliputians symbolize misplaced human pride, and point out Gulliver’s inability to diagnose it
correctly.

Brobdingnagians

The Brobdingnagians symbolize the private, personal, and physical side of humans when examined up
close and in great detail. The philosophical era of the Enlightenment tended to overlook the routines of
everyday life and the sordid or tedious little facts of existence, but in Brobdingnag such facts become
very important for Gulliver, sometimes matters of life and death. An eighteenth-century philosopher
could afford to ignore the fly buzzing around his head or the skin pores on his servant girl, but in his
shrunken state Gulliver is forced to pay great attention to such things. He is forced take the domestic
sphere seriously as well. In other lands it is difficult for Gulliver, being such an outsider, to get
glimpses of family relations or private affairs, but in Brobdingnag he is treated as a doll or a plaything,
and thus is made privy to the urination of housemaids and the sexual lives of women. The
Brobdingnagians do not symbolize a solely negative human characteristic, as the Laputans do. They are
not merely ridiculous—some aspects of them are disgusting, like their gigantic stench and the
excrement left by their insects, but others are noble, like the queen’s goodwill toward Gulliver and the
king’s commonsense views of politics. More than anything else, the Brobdingnagians symbolize a
dimension of human existence visible at close range, under close scrutiny.

Laputans

The Laputans represent the folly of theoretical knowledge that has no relation to human life and no use
in the actual world. As a profound cultural conservative, Swift was a critic of the newfangled ideas

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springing up around him at the dawn of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, a period of great
intellectual experimentation and theorization. He much preferred the traditional knowledge that had
been tested over centuries. Laputa symbolizes the absurdity of knowledge that has never been tested or
applied, the ludicrous side of Enlightenment intellectualism. Even down below in Balnibarbi, where the
local academy is more inclined to practical application, knowledge is not made socially useful as Swift
demands. Indeed, theoretical knowledge there has proven positively disastrous, resulting in the ruin of
agriculture and architecture and the impoverishment of the population. Even up above, the pursuit of
theoretical understanding has not improved the lot of the Laputans. They have few material worries,
dependent as they are upon the Balnibarbians below. But they are tormented by worries about the
trajectories of comets and other astronomical speculations: their theories have not made them wise, but
neurotic and disagreeable. The Laputans do not symbolize reason itself but rather the pursuit of a form
of knowledge that is not directly related to the improvement of human life.

Houyhnhnms

The Houyhnhnms represent an ideal of rational existence, a life governed by sense and moderation of
which philosophers since Plato have long dreamed. Indeed, there are echoes of Plato’s Republic in the
Houyhnhnms’ rejection of light entertainment and vain displays of luxury, their appeal to reason rather
than any holy writings as the criterion for proper action, and their communal approach to family
planning. As in Plato’s ideal community, the Houyhnhnms have no need to lie nor any word for lying.
They do not use force but only strong exhortation. Their subjugation of the Yahoos appears more
necessary than cruel and perhaps the best way to deal with an unfortunate blot on their otherwise ideal
society. In these ways and others, the Houyhnhnms seem like model citizens, and Gulliver’s intense
grief when he is forced to leave them suggests that they have made an impact on him greater than that
of any other society he has visited. His derangement on Don Pedro’s ship, in which he snubs the
generous man as a Yahoo-like creature, implies that he strongly identifies with the Houyhnhnms.

But we may be less ready than Gulliver to take the Houyhnhnms as ideals of human existence. They
have no names in the narrative nor any need for names, since they are virtually interchangeable, with
little individual identity. Their lives seem harmonious and happy, although quite lacking in vigor,
challenge, and excitement. Indeed, this apparent ease may be why Swift chooses to make them horses
rather than human types like every other group in the novel. He may be hinting, to those more
insightful than Gulliver, that the Houyhnhnms should not be considered human ideals at all. In any
case, they symbolize a standard of rational existence to be either espoused or rejected by both Gulliver
and us.

England

As the site of his father’s disappointingly “small estate” and Gulliver’s failing business, England seems
to symbolize deficiency or insufficiency, at least in the financial sense that matters most to Gulliver.
England is passed over very quickly in the first paragraph of Chapter I, as if to show that it is simply
there as the starting point to be left quickly behind. Gulliver seems to have very few nationalistic or
patriotic feelings about England, and he rarely mentions his homeland on his travels. In this sense,
Gulliver’s Travels is quite unlike other travel narratives like the Odyssey, in which Odysseus misses his
homeland and laments his wanderings. England is where Gulliver’s wife and family live, but they too
are hardly mentioned. Yet Swift chooses to have Gulliver return home after each of his four journeys
instead of having him continue on one long trip to four different places, so that England is kept
constantly in the picture and given a steady, unspoken importance. By the end of the fourth journey,

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England is brought more explicitly into the fabric of Gulliver’s Travels when Gulliver, in his neurotic
state, starts confusing Houyhnhnmland with his homeland, referring to Englishmen as Yahoos. The
distinction between native and foreign thus unravels—the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos are not just races
populating a faraway land but rather types that Gulliver projects upon those around him. The possibility
thus arises that all the races Gulliver encounters could be versions of the English and that his travels
merely allow him to see various aspects of human nature more clearly.

Important Quotations Explained

1. My Father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons. . . . I was bound
Apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent Surgeon in London . . . my Father now and then sending
me small Sums of Money. . . . When I left Mr. Bates, I went down to my Father; where, by the
Assistance of him and my Uncle John . . . I got Forty Pounds, and a Promise of Thirty Pounds a Year.

Explanation for Quotation 1 >>

This introductory paragraph from Part I, Chapter I, is often passed over as simply providing the
preliminary facts of Gulliver’s life, the bare essentials needed in order to proceed to the more
interesting travel narrative. But this introduction is deeply significant in its own right, and it reveals
much about Gulliver’s character that is necessary to understand not just his journeys but also his way of
narrating them. Gulliver is bourgeois: he is primarily interested in money, acquisitions, and
achievement, and his life story is filtered through these desires. The first sentence means more than just
a statement of his financial situation, since the third son of a possessor of only a “small Estate” would
have no hopes of inheriting enough on which to support himself and would be expected to leave the
estate and seek his own fortune. If Gulliver had been the first-born son, he might very well not have
embarked on his travels. But the passage is even more revealing in its tone, which is starkly
impersonal. Gulliver provides no sentimental characterization of his father, Bates, or Uncle John; they
appear in his story only insofar as they further him in life. There is no mention of any youthful dreams
or ambitions or of any romantic attachments. This lack of an emotional inner life is traceable
throughout his narrative until his virtual nervous breakdown at the very end.

2. He said, he knew no Reason, why those who entertain Opinions prejudicial to the Public, should be
obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them. And, as it was Tyranny in any
Government to require the first, so it was Weakness not to enforce the second.


This quotation comes from a conversation between Gulliver and the king of Brobdingnag, in Part II,
Chapter VI. The belief expressed by the king is one that Swift, writing in his own voice, expressed
elsewhere: that people have the right to their own beliefs but not the right to express them at will. As
always, it is difficult to determine whether or not Swift’s view is exactly the one advanced by his
characters. The king has little sympathy for many English institutions as Gulliver describes them to
him. Swift would probably not have rejected such institutions, and we should keep in mind that
Brobdingnagian criticism does not always imply Swiftian criticism. Indeed, Gulliver’s Travels could be
considered to contain at least a few “Opinions prejudicial to the Publick”—unpopular opinions, in other
words—so it is unlikely that Swift is in favor of suppressing all social criticism entirely. Whatever the
final interpretation, the quotation raises interesting issues of censorship, freedom of speech, and the
rightful place of indirect forms of criticism, such as the satire of which Swift was a master.

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3. My little Friend Grildrig. . . . I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most
pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the
Earth.


This famous judgment by the king of Brobdingnag on the people of England, given in Part II, Chapter
VI, after Gulliver (or “Grildrig”) has summarized the institutions of his native land, is a harsh
denunciation of mankind in its current state, and it stokes the misanthropy that dominates Gulliver’s
mind by the end of Gulliver’s Travels. The judgment is particularly ironic because Gulliver’s own
purpose in telling the king about England is to convince him of England’s significance. The king acts
as though Gulliver has intended to “clearly prove” the faults of his land, though of course Gulliver does
not mean to make such an attack at all. Gulliver’s speech on his country is not meant to be in the least
critical, but it is received by the king as a forceful damnation, so what is mocked here is not just
England but also Gulliver’s naïve and unthinking acceptance of his own society. Swift subtly raises the
issue of ideology, which refers to a person’s brainwashed way of taking for granted a social
arrangement that could or should be criticized and improved.

4. [T]hey go on Shore to rob and plunder; they see an harmless People, are entertained with Kindness,
they give the Country a new Name, they take formal Possession of it for the King, they set up a rotten
Plank or a Stone for a Memorial, they murder two or three Dozen of the Natives, bring away a Couple
more by Force for a Sample, return home, and get their Pardon. Here commences a New Dominion
acquired with a Title by Divine Right . . . the Earth reeking with the Blood of its Inhabitants.


This quotation comes from Part IV, Chapter XII, when Gulliver, having returned home to England after
his stay among the Houyhnhnms, tries to apologize for what he sees as the only fault he committed
while on his journeys: failing to claim the lands he visited in the name of England. First, he justifies his
failure by saying that the countries he visited would not be worth the effort of conquering them. In the
section quoted above, however, he goes even further by criticizing the practice of colonization itself.
His picture of colonization as a criminal enterprise justified by the state for the purposes of trade and
power military is one that looks familiar to modern eyes but was radical for Swift’s time. Others
criticized aspects of colonialism, such as the murder or enslavement of indigenous peoples, but few
failed to see it as the justifiable expansion of purportedly civilized cultures. Swift employs his standard
satirical technique here, as he first describes something without naming it in order to create an image in
our minds, then gives it the name of something different, provoking us to rethink old assumptions.

5. My Reconcilement to the Yahoo-kind in general might not be so difficult, if they would be content
with those Vices and Follies only which Nature hath entitled them to. I am not in the least provoked at
the Sight of a Lawyer, a Pick-pocket, a Colonel. . . . This is all according to the due Course of Things:
But, when I behold a Lump of Deformity, and Diseases both in Body and Mind, smitten with Pride, it
immediately breaks all the Measures of my Patience; neither shall I ever be able to comprehend how
such an Animal and such a Vice could tally together.


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This quotation comes from the end of the narrative, in Part IV, Chapter XII, when Gulliver describes
the difficulties he has had in readjusting to his own human culture. He now associates English and
European culture with the Yahoos, though the hypocrisy he describes is not a Yahoo characteristic. By
attributing a number of sins to “the due Course of Things,” Gulliver expresses his new conviction that
humanity is, as the Houyhnhnms believe, corrupt and ungovernable at heart. Humans are nothing more
than beasts equipped with only enough reason to make their corruption dangerous. But even worse than
that, he says, is the inability of humanity to see its own failings, to recognize its depravity behind its
false nobility.

Gulliver’s apparent exemption of himself from this charge against humanity—referring to “such an
Animal” rather than to humans, may be yet another moment of denial. In fact, he is guilty of the same
hypocrisy he condemns, showing himself unaware of his own human flaws several times throughout
his travels. He is a toady toward royalty in Lilliput and Brobdingnag, indifferent toward those in misery
and pain when visiting the Yahoos, and ungrateful toward the kindness of strangers with the Portuguese
captain, Don Pedro. Gulliver’s difficulty in including himself among the humans he describes as vice-
ridden animals is symbolic of the identity crisis he undergoes at the end of the novel, even if he is
unaware of it.

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19th Century- Victorian Age

Hard Times
Charles Dickens

Plot Overview

Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, retired merchant in the industrial city of Coketown, England, devotes his
life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his oldest children, Louisa and
Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits.
He founds a school and charitably takes in one of the students, the kindly and imaginative Sissy Jupe,
after the disappearance of her father, a circus entertainer. As the Gradgrind children grow older, Tom
becomes a dissipated, self-interested hedonist, and Louisa struggles with deep inner confusion, feeling
as though she is missing something important in her life. Eventually Louisa marries Gradgrind’s friend
Josiah Bounderby, a wealthy factory owner and banker more than twice her age. Bounderby
continually trumpets his role as a self-made man who was abandoned in the gutter by his mother as an
infant. Tom is apprenticed at the Bounderby bank, and Sissy remains at the Gradgrind home to care for
the younger children.

In the meantime, an impoverished “Hand”—Dickens’s term for the lowest laborers in Coketown’s
factories—named Stephen Blackpool struggles with his love for Rachael, another poor factory worker.
He is unable to marry her because he is already married to a horrible, drunken woman who disappears
for months and even years at a time. Stephen visits Bounderby to ask about a divorce but learns that
only the wealthy can obtain them. Outside Bounderby’s home, he meets Mrs. Pegler, a strange old
woman with an inexplicable devotion to Bounderby.

James Harthouse, a wealthy young sophisticate from London, arrives in Coketown to begin a political
career as a disciple of Gradgrind, who is now a Member of Parliament. He immediately takes an
interest in Louisa and decides to try to seduce her. With the unspoken aid of Mrs. Sparsit, a former
aristocrat who has fallen on hard times and now works for Bounderby, he sets about trying to corrupt
Louisa.

The Hands, exhorted by a crooked union spokesman named Slackbridge, try to form a union. Only
Stephen refuses to join because he feels that a union strike would only increase tensions between
employers and employees. He is cast out by the other Hands and fired by Bounderby when he refuses
to spy on them. Louisa, impressed with Stephen’s integrity, visits him before he leaves Coketown and
helps him with some money. Tom accompanies her and tells Stephen that if he waits outside the bank
for several consecutive nights, help will come to him. Stephen does so, but no help arrives. Eventually
he packs up and leaves Coketown, hoping to find agricultural work in the country. Not long after that,
the bank is robbed, and the lone suspect is Stephen, the vanished Hand who was seen loitering outside
the bank for several nights just before disappearing from the city.

Mrs. Sparsit witnesses Harthouse declaring his love for Louisa, and Louisa agrees to meet him in
Coketown later that night. However, Louisa instead flees to her father’s house, where she miserably

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confides to Gradgrind that her upbringing has left her married to a man she does not love, disconnected
from her feelings, deeply unhappy, and possibly in love with Harthouse. She collapses to the floor, and
Gradgrind, struck dumb with self-reproach, begins to realize the imperfections in his philosophy of
rational self-interest.

Sissy, who loves Louisa deeply, visits Harthouse and convinces him to leave Coketown forever.
Bounderby, furious that his wife has left him, redoubles his efforts to capture Stephen. When Stephen
tries to return to clear his good name, he falls into a mining pit called Old Hell Shaft. Rachael and
Louisa discover him, but he dies soon after an emotional farewell to Rachael. Gradgrind and Louisa
realize that Tom is really responsible for robbing the bank, and they arrange to sneak him out of
England with the help of the circus performers with whom Sissy spent her early childhood. They are
nearly successful, but are stopped by Bitzer, a young man who went to Gradgrind’s school and who
embodies all the qualities of the detached rationalism that Gradgrind once espoused, but who now sees
its limits. Sleary, the lisping circus proprietor, arranges for Tom to slip out of Bitzer’s grasp, and the
young robber escapes from England after all.

Mrs. Sparsit, anxious to help Bounderby find the robbers, drags Mrs. Pegler—a known associate of
Stephen Blackpool—in to see Bounderby, thinking Mrs. Pegler is a potential witness. Bounderby
recoils, and it is revealed that Mrs. Pegler is really his loving mother, whom he has forbidden to visit
him: Bounderby is not a self-made man after all. Angrily, Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit and sends her
away to her hostile relatives. Five years later, he will die alone in the streets of Coketown. Gradgrind
gives up his philosophy of fact and devotes his political power to helping the poor. Tom realizes the
error of his ways but dies without ever seeing his family again. While Sissy marries and has a large and
loving family, Louisa never again marries and never has children. Nevertheless, Louisa is loved by
Sissy’s family and learns at last how to feel sympathy for her fellow human beings.

Analysis of Major Characters

Thomas Gradgrind

Thomas Gradgrind is the first character we meet in Hard Times, and one of the central figures through
whom Dickens weaves a web of intricately connected plotlines and characters. Dickens introduces us
to this character with a description of his most central feature: his mechanized, monotone attitude and
appearance. The opening scene in the novel describes Mr. Gradgrind’s speech to a group of young
students, and it is appropriate that Gradgrind physically embodies the dry, hard facts that he crams into
his students’ heads. The narrator calls attention to Gradgrind’s “square coat, square legs, square
shoulders,” all of which suggest Gradgrind’s unrelenting rigidity.

In the first few chapters of the novel, Mr. Gradgrind expounds his philosophy of calculating, rational
self-interest. He believes that human nature can be governed by completely rational rules, and he is
“ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you what it comes to.” This
philosophy has brought Mr. Gradgrind much financial and social success. He has made his fortune as a
hardware merchant, a trade that, appropriately, deals in hard, material reality. Later, he becomes a
Member of Parliament, a position that allows him to indulge his interest in tabulating data about the
people of England. Although he is not a factory owner, Mr. Gradgrind evinces the spirit of the
Industrial Revolution insofar as he treats people like machines that can be reduced to a number of
scientific principles.

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While the narrator’s tone toward him is initially mocking and ironic, Gradgrind undergoes a significant
change in the course of the novel, thereby earning the narrator’s sympathy. When Louisa confesses that
she feels something important is missing in her life and that she is desperately unhappy with her
marriage, Gradgrind begins to realize that his system of education may not be perfect. This intuition is
confirmed when he learns that Tom has robbed Bounderby’s bank. Faced with these failures of his
system, Gradgrind admits, “The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet.” His
children’s problems teach him to feel love and sorrow, and Gradgrind becomes a wiser and humbler
man, ultimately “making his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope and Charity.”

Louisa Gradgrind

Although Louisa is the novel’s principal female character, she is distinctive from the novel’s other
women, particularly her foils, Sissy and Rachael. While these other two embody the Victorian ideal of
femininity—sensitivity, compassion, and gentleness—Louisa’s education has prevented her from
developing such traits. Instead, Louisa is silent, cold, and seemingly unfeeling. However, Dickens may
not be implying that Louisa is really unfeeling, but rather that she simply does not know how to
recognize and express her emotions. For instance, when her father tries to convince her that it would be
rational for her to marry Bounderby, Louisa looks out of the window at the factory chimneys and
observes: “There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when the night
comes, Fire bursts out.” Unable to convey the tumultuous feelings that lie beneath her own languid and
monotonous exterior, Louisa can only state a fact about her surroundings. Yet this fact, by analogy,
also describes the emotions repressed within her.

Even though she does not conform to the Victorian ideals of femininity, Louisa does her best to be a
model daughter, wife, and sister. Her decision to return to her father’s house rather than elope with
Harthouse demonstrates that while she may be unfeeling, she does not lack virtue. Indeed, Louisa,
though unemotional, still has the ability to recognize goodness and distinguish between right and
wrong, even when it does not fall within the strict rubric of her father’s teachings. While at first Louisa
lacks the ability to understand and function within the gray matter of emotions, she can at least
recognize that they exist and are more powerful than her father or Bounderby believe, even without any
factual basis. Moreover, under Sissy’s guidance, Louisa shows great promise in learning to express her
feelings. Similarly, through her acquaintance with Rachael and Stephen, Louisa learns to respond
charitably to suffering and to not view suffering simply as a temporary state that is easily overcome by
effort, as her father and Bounderby do.

Josiah Bounderby

Although he is Mr. Gradgrind’s best friend, Josiah Bounderby is more interested in money and power
than in facts. Indeed, he is himself a fiction, or a fraud. Bounderby’s inflated sense of pride is
illustrated by his oft-repeated declaration, “I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.” This statement
generally prefaces the story of Bounderby’s childhood poverty and suffering, a story designed to
impress its listeners with a sense of the young Josiah Bounderby’s determination and self-discipline.
However, Dickens explodes the myth of the self-made man when Bounderby’s mother, Mrs. Pegler,
reveals that her son had a decent, loving childhood and a good education, and that he was not
abandoned, after all.

Bounderby’s attitude represents the social changes created by industrialization and capitalism. Whereas
birth or bloodline formerly determined the social hierarchy, in an industrialized, capitalist society,
wealth determines who holds the most power. Thus, Bounderby takes great delight in the fact that Mrs.
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Sparsit, an aristocrat who has fallen on hard times, has become his servant, while his own ambition has
enabled him to rise from humble beginnings to become the wealthy owner of a factory and a bank.
However, in depicting Bounderby, the capitalist, as a coarse, vain, self-interested hypocrite, Dickens
implies that Bounderby uses his wealth and power irresponsibly, contributing to the muddled relations
between rich and poor, especially in his treatment of Stephen after the Hands cast Stephen out to form a
union.

Stephen Blackpool

Stephen Blackpool is introduced after we have met the Gradgrind family and Bounderby, and
Blackpool provides a stark contrast to these earlier characters. One of the Hands in Bounderby’s
factory, Stephen lives a life of drudgery and poverty. In spite of the hardships of his daily toil, Stephen
strives to maintain his honesty, integrity, faith, and compassion.

Stephen is an important character not only because his poverty and virtue contrast with Bounderby’s
wealth and self-interest, but also because he finds himself in the midst of a labor dispute that illustrates
the strained relations between rich and poor. Stephen is the only Hand who refuses to join a workers’
union: he believes that striking is not the best way to improve relations between factory owners and
employees, and he also wants to earn an honest living. As a result, he is cast out of the workers’ group.
However, he also refuses to spy on his fellow workers for Bounderby, who consequently sends him
away. Both groups, rich and poor, respond in the same self-interested, backstabbing way. As Rachael
explains, Stephen ends up with the “masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the other,
he only wantin’ to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right.” Through Stephen, Dickens suggests
that industrialization threatens to compromise both the employee’s and employer’s moral integrity,
thereby creating a social muddle to which there is no easy solution.

Through his efforts to resist the moral corruption on all sides, Stephen becomes a martyr, or Christ
figure, ultimately dying for Tom’s crime. When he falls into a mine shaft on his way back to Coketown
to clear his name of the charge of robbing Bounderby’s bank, Stephen comforts himself by gazing at a
particularly bright star that seems to shine on him in his “pain and trouble.” This star not only
represents the ideals of virtue for which Stephen strives, but also the happiness and tranquility that is
lacking in his troubled life. Moreover, his ability to find comfort in the star illustrates the importance of
imagination, which enables him to escape the cold, hard facts of his miserable existence.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes
The Mechanization of Human Beings

Hard Times suggests that nineteenth-century England’s overzealous adoption of industrialization
threatens to turn human beings into machines by thwarting the development of their emotions and
imaginations. This suggestion comes forth largely through the actions of Gradgrind and his follower,
Bounderby: as the former educates the young children of his family and his school in the ways of fact,
the latter treats the workers in his factory as emotionless objects that are easily exploited for his own
self-interest. In Chapter 5 of the first book, the narrator draws a parallel between the factory Hands and
the Gradgrind children—both lead monotonous, uniform existences, untouched by pleasure.
Consequently, their fantasies and feelings are dulled, and they become almost mechanical themselves.

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The mechanizing effects of industrialization are compounded by Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy of
rational self-interest. Mr. Gradgrind believes that human nature can be measured, quantified, and
governed entirely by rational rules. Indeed, his school attempts to turn children into little machines that
behave according to such rules. Dickens’s primary goal in Hard Times is to illustrate the dangers of
allowing humans to become like machines, suggesting that without compassion and imagination, life
would be unbearable. Indeed, Louisa feels precisely this suffering when she returns to her father’s
house and tells him that something has been missing in her life, so much so that she finds herself in an
unhappy marriage and may be in love with someone else. While she does not actually behave in a
dishonorable way, since she stops her interaction with Harthouse before she has a socially ruinous
affair with him, Louisa realizes that her life is unbearable and that she must do something drastic for
her own survival. Appealing to her father with the utmost honesty, Louisa is able to make him realize
and admit that his philosophies on life and methods of child rearing are to blame for Louisa’s
detachment from others.

The Opposition Between Fact and Fancy

While Mr. Gradgrind insists that his children should always stick to the facts, Hard Times not only
suggests that fancy is as important as fact, but it continually calls into question the difference between
fact and fancy. Dickens suggests that what constitutes so-called fact is a matter of perspective or
opinion. For example, Bounderby believes that factory employees are lazy good-for-nothings who
expect to be fed “from a golden spoon.” The Hands, in contrast, see themselves as hardworking and as
unfairly exploited by their employers. These sets of facts cannot be reconciled because they depend
upon perspective. While Bounderby declares that “[w]hat is called Taste is only another name for
Fact,” Dickens implies that fact is a question of taste or personal belief. As a novelist, Dickens is
naturally interested in illustrating that fiction cannot be excluded from a fact-filled, mechanical society.
Gradgrind’s children, however, grow up in an environment where all flights of fancy are discouraged,
and they end up with serious social dysfunctions as a result. Tom becomes a hedonist who has little
regard for others, while Louisa remains unable to connect with others even though she has the desire to
do so. On the other hand, Sissy, who grew up with the circus, constantly indulges in the fancy
forbidden to the Gradgrinds, and lovingly raises Louisa and Tom’s sister in a way more complete than
the upbringing of either of the older siblings. Just as fiction cannot be excluded from fact, fact is also
necessary for a balanced life. If Gradgrind had not adopted her, Sissy would have no guidance, and her
future might be precarious. As a result, the youngest Gradgrind daughter, raised both by the factual
Gradgrind and the fanciful Sissy, represents the best of both worlds.

The Importance of Femininity

During the Victorian era, women were commonly associated with supposedly feminine traits like
compassion, moral purity, and emotional sensitivity. Hard Times suggests that because they possess
these traits, women can counteract the mechanizing effects of industrialization. For instance, when
Stephen feels depressed about the monotony of his life as a factory worker, Rachael’s gentle fortitude
inspires him to keep going. He sums up her virtues by referring to her as his guiding angel. Similarly,
Sissy introduces love into the Gradgrind household, ultimately teaching Louisa how to recognize her
emotions. Indeed, Dickens suggests that Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy of self-interest and calculating
rationality has prevented Louisa from developing her natural feminine traits. Perhaps Mrs. Gradgrind’s
inability to exercise her femininity allows Gradgrind to overemphasize the importance of fact in the
rearing of his children. On his part, Bounderby ensures that his rigidity will remain untouched since he
marries the cold, emotionless product of Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind’s marriage. Through the various

18

female characters in the novel, Dickens suggests that feminine compassion is necessary to restore
social harmony.

Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
text’s major themes.

Bounderby’s Childhood

Bounderby frequently reminds us that he is “Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.” This emphatic phrase
usually follows a description of his childhood poverty: he claims to have been born in a ditch and
abandoned by his mother; raised by an alcoholic grandmother; and forced to support himself by his
own labor. From these ignominious beginnings, he has become the wealthy owner of both a factory and
a bank. Thus, Bounderby represents the possibility of social mobility, embodying the belief that any
individual should be able overcome all obstacles to success—including poverty and lack of education
—through hard work. Indeed, Bounderby often recites the story of his childhood in order to suggest
that his Hands are impoverished because they lack his ambition and self-discipline. However, “Josiah
Bounderby of Coketown” is ultimately a fraud. His mother, Mrs. Pegler, reveals that he was raised by
parents who were loving, albeit poor, and who saved their money to make sure he received a good
education. By exposing Bounderby’s real origins, Dickens calls into question the myth of social
mobility. In other words, he suggests that perhaps the Hands cannot overcome poverty through sheer
determination alone, but only through the charity and compassion of wealthier individuals.

Clocks and Time

Dickens contrasts mechanical or man-made time with natural time, or the passing of the seasons. In
both Coketown and the Gradgrind household, time is mechanized—in other words, it is relentless,
structured, regular, and monotonous. As the narrator explains, “Time went on in Coketown like its own
machine.” The mechanization of time is also embodied in the “deadly statistical clock” in Mr.
Gradgrind’s study, which measures the passing of each minute and hour. However, the novel itself is
structured through natural time. For instance, the titles of its three books—“Sowing,” “Reaping,” and
“Garnering”—allude to agricultural labor and to the processes of planting and harvesting in accordance
with the changes of the seasons. Similarly, the narrator notes that the seasons change even in
Coketown’s “wilderness of smoke and brick.” These seasonal changes constitute “the only stand that
ever was made against its direful uniformity.” By contrasting mechanical time with natural time,
Dickens illustrates the great extent to which industrialization has mechanized human existence. While
the changing seasons provide variety in terms of scenery and agricultural labor, mechanized time
marches forward with incessant regularity.

Mismatched Marriages

There are many unequal and unhappy marriages in Hard Times, including those of Mr. and Mrs.
Gradgrind, Stephen Blackpool and his unnamed drunken wife, and most pertinently, the Bounderbys.
Louisa agrees to marry Mr. Bounderby because her father convinces her that doing so would be a
rational decision. He even cites statistics to show that the great difference in their ages need not prevent
their mutual happiness. However, Louisa’s consequent misery as Bounderby’s wife suggests that love,
rather than either reason or convenience, must be the foundation of a happy marriage.

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Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Staircase

When Mrs. Sparsit notices that Louisa and Harthouse are spending a lot of time together, she imagines
that Louisa is running down a long staircase into a “dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom.” This
imaginary staircase represents her belief that Louisa is going to elope with Harthouse and consequently
ruin her reputation forever. Mrs. Sparsit has long resented Bounderby’s marriage to the young Louisa,
as she hoped to marry him herself; so she is very pleased by Louisa’s apparent indiscretion. Through
the staircase, Dickens reveals the manipulative and censorious side of Mrs. Sparsit’s character. He also
suggests that Mrs. Sparsit’s self-interest causes her to misinterpret the situation. Rather than ending up
in a pit of shame by having an affair with Harthouse, Louisa actually returns home to her father.

Pegasus

Mr. Sleary’s circus entertainers stay at an inn called the Pegasus Arms. Inside this inn is a “theatrical”
pegasus, a model of a flying horse with “golden stars stuck on all over him.” The pegasus represents a
world of fantasy and beauty from which the young Gradgrind children are excluded. While Mr.
Gradgrind informs the pupils at his school that wallpaper with horses on it is unrealistic simply because
horses do not in fact live on walls, the circus folk live in a world in which horses dance the polka and
flying horses can be imagined, even if they do not, in fact, exist. The very name of the inn reveals the
contrast between the imaginative and joyful world of the circus and Mr. Gradgrind’s belief in the
importance of fact.

Smoke Serpents

At a literal level, the streams of smoke that fill the skies above Coketown are the effects of
industrialization. However, these smoke serpents also represent the moral blindness of factory owners
like Bounderby. Because he is so concerned with making as much profit as he possibly can, Bounderby
interprets the serpents of smoke as a positive sign that the factories are producing goods and profit.
Thus, he not only fails to see the smoke as a form of unhealthy pollution, but he also fails to recognize
his own abuse of the Hands in his factories. The smoke becomes a moral smoke screen that prevents
him from noticing his workers’ miserable poverty. Through its associations with evil, the word
“serpents” evokes the moral obscurity that the smoke creates.

Fire

When Louisa is first introduced, in Chapter 3 of Book the First, the narrator explains that inside her is a
“fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow.” This description
suggests that although Louisa seems coldly rational, she has not succumbed entirely to her father’s
prohibition against wondering and imagining. Her inner fire symbolizes the warmth created by her
secret fancies in her otherwise lonely, mechanized existence. Consequently, it is significant that Louisa
often gazes into the fireplace when she is alone, as if she sees things in the flames that others—like her
rigid father and brother—cannot see. However, there is another kind of inner fire in Hard Times—the
fires that keep the factories running, providing heat and power for the machines. Fire is thus both a
destructive and a life-giving force. Even Louisa’s inner fire, her imaginative tendencies, eventually
becomes destructive: her repressed emotions eventually begin to burn “within her like an unwholesome

20

fire.” Through this symbol, Dickens evokes the importance of imagination as a force that can
counteract the mechanization of human nature.

Important Quotations Explained

1. Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in
life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the mind of reasoning animals
upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.


These are the novel’s opening lines. Spoken by Mr. Gradgrind, they sum up his rationalist philosophy.
In claiming that “nothing else will ever be of service” to his pupils, Gradgrind reveals his belief that
facts are important because they enable individuals to further their own interests. However, Tom and
Louisa’s unhappy childhood soon calls into question their father’s claim that “[f]acts alone are wanted
in life.” Ironically, while Gradgrind refers to the pupils in his school as “reasoning animals” and
compares their minds to fertile soil in which facts can be sowed, he treats them like machines by
depriving them of feeling and fantasy. His jarringly short sentences and monotonous repetition of the
word “Fact” illustrate his own mechanical, unemotional character. Finally, it is significant that
Gradgrind’s call for facts opens a work of fiction. By drawing attention to the fact that we are reading
fiction, Dickens suggests to us that facts alone cannot bring intellectual pleasure.

2. It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but not all the calculators
of the National debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or
discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of
one of these quiet servants, with the composed faces and the regulated actions.


This passage, from Book the First, Chapter 11, provides insight into the narrator’s beliefs and opinions.
Dickens’s omniscient narrator assumes the role of a moral guide, and his opinion tends to shape our
own interpretations of the story. Here, we learn that the narrator disagrees with Gradgrind, believing
instead that human nature cannot be reduced to a bundle of facts and scientific principles. The narrator
invokes the mystery of the human mind, pointing out how little we actually know about what motivates
the actions of our fellow beings. The “quiet servants” to whom the narrator refers are the factory
Hands. In representing these people as an unknown quantity, the narrator counteracts Bounderby’s
stereotypes of the poor as lazy, greedy good-for-nothings. While he suggests that we need to
understand these people better, the narrator also implies that this knowledge cannot be attained through
calculation, measurement, and/or the accumulation of fact.

3. Thou art an Angel. Bless thee, bless thee!


More a symbol than a fully developed character, Rachael is often referred to as an angel by Stephen.
Like Sissy Jupe, whom she later befriends, Rachael represents the qualities necessary to counteract the
dehumanizing, morally corrupting effects of industrialization. She is compassionate, honest, generous,

21

and faithful to Stephen, even when everyone else shuns him and considers him a thief. As this remark
illustrates, Rachael also draws out Stephen’s good qualities, making him realize that joy can be found
even in the moral darkness of Coketown. Rachael and Sissy are both socially marginal characters—the
former is a Hand, and the latter is the daughter of a circus entertainer. Likewise, they are both relatively
minor characters in the novel. Through their marginal status, Dickens implies that the self-serving
rationalism that dominates Coketown threatens to exclude the morally pure people who are necessary
to save society from complete corruption.

4. Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only
knew the town was there because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the
prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way,
now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell,
or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed nothing
but masses of darkness—Coketown in the distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it
could be seen.


Like many other descriptions of Coketown, this passage, from Book the Second, Chapter 1, emphasizes
its somber smokiness. The murky soot that fills the air represents the moral filth that permeates the
manufacturing town. Similarly, the sun’s rays represent both the physical and moral beauty that
Coketown lacks. While the pollution from the factories makes Coketown literally a dark, dirty place to
live, the suffering of its poor and the cold self-interest of its rich inhabitants render Coketown
figuratively dark. In stating that Coketown’s appearance on the horizon is “suggestive of itself,” the
narrator implies that Coketown is exactly what it appears to be. The dark “sulky blotch” hides no
secrets but simply represents what is, on closer inspection, a dark, formless town. Built entirely of hard,
red brick, Coketown has no redeeming beauty or mystery—instead, it embodies Mr. Gradgrind’s
predilection for unaccommodating material reality.

5. Look how we live, an’ wheer we live, an’ in what numbers, an’ by what chances, an’ wi’ what
sameness; and look how the mills is awlus a-goin’, and how they never works us no nigher to onny
distant object-‘ceptin awlus Death. Look how you considers of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and
goes up wi’ your deputations to Secretaries o’ State ‘bout us, and how yo are awlus right, and how we
are awlus wrong, and never had’n no reason in us sin ever we were born. Look how this ha’ growen
an’ growen sir, bigger an’ bigger, broader an’ broader, harder an’ harder, fro year to year, fro
generation unto generation. Who can look on’t sir, and fairly tell a man ‘tis not a muddle?


Stephen Blackpool’s speech to Bounderby, from Book the Second, Chapter 5, is one of the few
glimpses that we receive into the lives of the Hands. His long sentences and repetition of words such as
“an’” and “Look” mimic the monotony of the workers’ lives. Similarly, Stephen’s dialect illustrates his
lack of education and contrasts with the proper English spoken by the middle-class characters and by
the narrator. In spite of his lack of formal education, however, Stephen possesses greater insight about
the relationship between employer and employee than does Bounderby. Stephen notes that “yo” (the
factory owners and employers) and “us” (the Hands) are constantly opposed, but that the Hands stand
no chance in the contest because the employers possess all the wealth and power. However, he does not
blame the employers solely for the suffering of the poor, concluding instead that the situation is a
“muddle” and that it is difficult to determine who is responsible for society’s ills. Stephen also suggests
22

that the monotony of factory labor seems futile to the Hands, who need to strive for some larger goal in
order to make the endless round of production seem worthwhile. The “distant object” or larger goal that
he mentions here is later symbolized by the bright star on which he gazes while trapped at the bottom
of the mine shaft.

23

The 20th century
The Great Gatsby
Jazz Age
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Plot Overview

Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn
about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but
unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to
have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nick’s next-door
neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion
and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.
Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social connections
in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class. Nick drives out to
East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile
classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young
woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Tom’s
marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray
industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick
travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom
keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.
As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties.
He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who
affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone “old sport.” Gatsby asks to speak
to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby
tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many
nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s
extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick
to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she
knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby
will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection.
Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.
After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby. At a
luncheon at the Buchanans’ house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom
realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is
deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive
into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and
Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a
criminal—his fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that

24

her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting
to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.
When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby’s
car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from
Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame.
The next day, Tom tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who
has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds
Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself.
Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the
Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and for the emptiness
and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as Gatsby’s dream
of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism
has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s power to transform his dreams into
reality is what makes him “great,” Nick reflects that the era of dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the
American dream—is over.

Analysis of Major Characters

Jay Gatsby
The title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an
impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved
this lofty goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in
stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and
sophistication—he dropped out of St. Olaf’s College after only two weeks because he could not bear
the janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich,
his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young
military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War I in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in
love with Daisy’s aura of luxury, grace, and charm, and lied to her about his own background in order
to convince her that he was good enough for her. Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the
war, but married Tom Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby was studying at Oxford after the war in an
attempt to gain an education. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back,
and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg, and his lavish
weekly parties are all merely means to that end.
Fitzgerald delays the introduction of most of this information until fairly late in the novel. Gatsby’s
reputation precedes him—Gatsby himself does not appear in a speaking role until Chapter 3. Fitzgerald
initially presents Gatsby as the aloof, enigmatic host of the unbelievably opulent parties thrown every
week at his mansion. He appears surrounded by spectacular luxury, courted by powerful men and
beautiful women. He is the subject of a whirlwind of gossip throughout New York and is already a kind
of legendary celebrity before he is ever introduced to the reader. Fitzgerald propels the novel forward
through the early chapters by shrouding Gatsby’s background and the source of his wealth in mystery
(the reader learns about Gatsby’s childhood in Chapter 6 and receives definitive proof of his criminal
dealings in Chapter 7). As a result, the reader’s first, distant impressions of Gatsby strike quite a
different note from that of the lovesick, naive young man who emerges during the later part of the
novel.
Fitzgerald uses this technique of delayed character revelation to emphasize the theatrical quality of
Gatsby’s approach to life, which is an important part of his personality. Gatsby has literally created his
own character, even changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby to represent his reinvention of
himself. As his relentless quest for Daisy demonstrates, Gatsby has an extraordinary ability to

25

transform his hopes and dreams into reality; at the beginning of the novel, he appears to the reader just
as he desires to appear to the world. This talent for self-invention is what gives Gatsby his quality of
“greatness”: indeed, the title “The Great Gatsby” is reminiscent of billings for such vaudeville
magicians as “The Great Houdini” and “The Great Blackstone,” suggesting that the persona of Jay
Gatsby is a masterful illusion.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.

As the novel progresses and Fitzgerald deconstructs Gatsby’s self-presentation, Gatsby reveals himself
to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dreams, not realizing that his
dreams are unworthy of him. Gatsby invests Daisy with an idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly
attain in reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations. His dream of
her disintegrates, revealing the corruption that wealth causes and the unworthiness of the goal, much in
the way Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, as America’s powerful optimism,
vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.
Gatsby is contrasted most consistently with Nick. Critics point out that the former, passionate and
active, and the latter, sober and reflective, seem to represent two sides of Fitzgerald’s personality.
Additionally, whereas Tom is a cold-hearted, aristocratic bully, Gatsby is a loyal and good-hearted
man. Though his lifestyle and attitude differ greatly from those of George Wilson, Gatsby and Wilson
share the fact that they both lose their love interest to Tom.

Nick Carraway
If Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgerald’s personality, the flashy celebrity who pursued and glorified
wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective
Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. A young man (he turns thirty during the course of the novel) from
Minnesota, Nick travels to New York in 1922 to learn the bond business. He lives in the West Egg
district of Long Island, next door to Gatsby. Nick is also Daisy’s cousin, which enables him to observe
and assist the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his relationship to these
two characters, Nick is the perfect choice to narrate the novel, which functions as a personal memoir of
his experiences with Gatsby in the summer of 1922.
Nick is also well suited to narrating The Great Gatsby because of his temperament. As he tells the
reader in Chapter 1, he is tolerant, open-minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend
to talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in particular, comes to trust him and treat him as a
confidant. Nick generally assumes a secondary role throughout the novel, preferring to describe and
comment on events rather than dominate the action. Often, however, he functions as Fitzgerald’s voice,
as in his extended meditation on time and the American dream at the end of Chapter 9.
Insofar as Nick plays a role inside the narrative, he evidences a strongly mixed reaction to life on the
East Coast, one that creates a powerful internal conflict that he does not resolve until the end of the
book. On the one hand, Nick is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York. On the
other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging. This inner conflict is symbolized throughout
the book by Nick’s romantic affair with Jordan Baker. He is attracted to her vivacity and her
sophistication just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people.
Nick states that there is a “quality of distortion” to life in New York, and this lifestyle makes him lose
his equilibrium, especially early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsby’s party in Chapter 2.
After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsby’s dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of
Gatsby’s funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying
moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight
demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by more traditional moral
values.

26

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