Writing Style

Jonathan Swift brings quite an absurd writing style for "Gulliver's Travels". A lot of Swift's humor comes from his surprising twists and turns as a writer. Gulliver spends a lot of his time dwelling on minor disgressions, such as how he arranges to pee when he is kept inside a giant's home during his first night in Brobdingnag (shmoop). Throughout the entire book, there were numerous bathroom jokes mentioned. It keeps the readers interested in what is about to happen next. Here are two examples of his nice bathroom joke and an interesting line:

• I hope the gentle reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the like particulars, which, however insignificant they may appear to groveling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of public as well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this and other accounts of my travels to the world; wherein I have been chiefly studious of truth, without affecting any ornaments of learning or of style. (2.1.16)

• But my good master Bates dying in two years after, and I having few friends, my business began to fail; for my conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad practice of too many among my brethren. (1. 1. 4)

Possible Locations of Lilliput and Brobdingnag

Throughout Gulliver's journeys so far, he managed to record and redraw the shapes and relative locations of Lilliput and Brobdingnag. Here are examples of each:

Lilliput:


Brobdingnag:


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I theorize that the possible location of Lilliput might be the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, due to their closeness to the Indonesian island of Sumatra as shown in the cartography for Lilliput. What also convinces me that the Keeling Islands is the best location is that the region consists of two islands; the North Keeling Island and South Keeling Island. This may represent the two islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu, Lilliput being the southern island.

Sumatra in the real world is the island that Palembang is located in

Regarding Brobdingnag, I think that the region of Alaska would best fit its description. Alaska has a very mountainous terrain that somewhat separates it from Canada/North America, which is similar to the condition of Brobdingnag. Also, Alaska is a very large area, which might likely explain why Gulliver thought it was a place for giants since it is so big compared to the rest of North America. Lastly, Alaska is also peninsula-shaped to the left side, which is similar to how Brobdingnag is oriented in its cartography.
Here is a side by side comparison:

Brobdingnag is near the top left corner

Politics/Government

Adding to the patterns which Cody was referencing, whoever is the largest (Gulliver in Lilliput, or the Brobdingnagians in Brobdingnag) seems to think the political system of the smaller is intriguing in it's backward and seemingly primitive nature.  To this point the  King of Brobdingnag took notes on the English Parliament and politics surrounding it.

On the oddities of the Brobdingnag government, "No law in that country must exceed in words the number of letters in their alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty" (99).  Twenty-two letters would make a very concise law, which by American, and even British standards, is likely an impossible achievement.  Also the fact that speaking out against, or even for, Brobdingnagian law defeats the purpose of democratic functions such as that in the United States.

Cartography

In Chapter IV, Gulliver describes just how much Europeans must have missed in the area of cartography, saying,  "...Our geographers of Europe are in a great error, by supposing nothing but sea between Japan and California" (79).  Cartography, or map making by combining science aesthetics and technique,  creates a spatial representation of land and water.  The question that this begins to ask is whether the cartography of the world differs between Europeans, Lilliputians, and Brobdingnagians.  Do the Lilliputians see the world as a whole 12 times larger than we do?  Have they even traversed the entire world or do they prefer the safety of their homes?  Conversely do the Brobdingnagians see the world as one twelfth that which we do?  And have they traversed the world as well?  It is understandable how the Lilliputians were never discovered, due to their minuscule, but what about the Brobdingnagians?  Being 12 times our size, why were they just discovered by Gulliver in the early 1700's?  Why did Magellan not run into Brobdingnag when he circumnavigated the world, as based on Gulliver's description it is relatively close?

Swift's Satire: Part II

The King of Brobdingnag is compelled to hear Gulliver's experiences in his own native country after forming an amiable relationship with him, wishing to emulate any form of improvement worth assimilating in his own kingdom. With Gulliver as the "Lilliputian" among the Brobdingnagians, Swift makes his largest criticism yet against the 18th century English government, evident in the Brobdingnagian King's response to Gulliver's summary of the English people and its history, asserting with the utmost confidence, 

 "[British history] was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition."

This is a striking comparison to the glory and reverence Gulliver bathes the image of England as what the king brushes off as "a most admiral panegyric upon [his] country." Furthermore, Swift makes the most bold statement in the last sentence of Chapter VI:

"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."

While in the previous section Swift mocks the British in a third-person point of view from Gulliver's observations of the Lilliputians and their customs, this section reverses the previous order of point of view and makes a direct affirmation of British riddance in society. Furthermore, the giants can be seen as bastions of moral rectitude, with Gulliver (for the most part) extolling the society of Brobdingnag. 

Lilliputian to Gargantuan: Patterns and Comparisons

Gulliver's second journey concerns his trip to Brobdingnag - the antithesis in all proportion to Lilliput. The inhabitants of the land, so-called "Brobdingnagians," are of gargantuan stature - the farmer that picks Gulliver up is 72 feet tall, and everything in the country is magnified by a factor of 12:1. (A notable peculiarity of this number is that the reciprocal of that factor, 1:12, applied during his stay on Lilliput.)

Some notable patterns are beginning to surface that are characteristic of Gulliver's experiences in the various countries he visits. His remarkable ability to become shipwrecked and isolated from civilization for a duration of time (hahaha) has allowed him to meet the otherworldly civilizations he has so far without the interference of major political powers. While he does bring back evidence of his journeys to such worlds (e.g. the sheep of Lilliput), nobody but Gulliver has physically seen the inhabitants of those peoples. In addition, Gulliver has a remarkable capacity to learn language. His upper-hand aptitude is revealed in his quick mastery of the Lilliputian and Brobdingnagian languages. The story line of his stay in the countries also seems to follow a familiar pattern:

1. Shipwrecking, initial exposure to unknown environment
2. Exposure to native peoples
3. Assimilation to culture, familiarity with natives
4. Conflicting actions with the native peoples
5. Escape