Jonathan Swift’s renowned novel, Gulliver’s Travels, satirizes human perceptions of dignity and power through the use of physical size and appearance. Swift uses Lemeul Gulliver to exemplify how society constantly strives to obtain an “ideal” appearance in order to have as much power as possible. Lemeul Gulliver is placed in many different situations in which his, and the inhabitants’, dignity and power is “questioned”. He first ends up in Lilliput where he is bigger than the rest of the people, yet does not have much power whatsoever.Later on, Gulliver is trapped on Borbdingnag where he is much smaller than the inhabitants.

Swift uses both of these locations and their inhabitants to satirize humans and society during the 15th Century. Gulliver arrives in Lilliput to find that the inhabitants are one-twentieth his size. These people, the Lilliputians, represent the insignificance of the human nature in general. Because the Lilliputians are so small, Gulliver just notices their beauty and details in their artistry, instead of their tiny flaws.He states, “The country round appeared like a continued garden, and the enclosed fields, which were generally forty square feet, resembled so many beds of flowers” (35). Here he notices the beauty of the countryside of the land, but he is ignoring the pettiness due to the fact that he cannot see many minute details.

He looks over their pettiness and finds ways to compliment them on their forms of government. Here, Swift uses the Lilliputians to satirize England back in the 15th Century.England, during those days, was one of the fast growing countries in all of Europe. Europe could stop the English by over powering them, just like Gulliver could overpower the Lilliputians if he chose to do so.

Gulliver has a chance to seize some of the inhabitants by loosening “the strings that tied down my hair on the left side, so that I was just able to turn my head about two inches. But the creatures ran off a second time…” (28). Because of their size, the Lilliputians can be compared to lesser people and are therefore more prone to have pity put upon them.Gulliver ultimately shows them pity and looks past the little details of their society because of their size. They therefore seem much more moral than they really are.

Contrary to the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnagians are twenty times the size of Gulliver. It is because of their immense size that Gulliver notices the physical blemishes and skin discoloration upon their skin. He is disgusted at how “their skins appeared so coarse and uneven, so variously colored, when I saw them near, with a mole here and there…” (128).Because he is so small he cannot get past the terrible physical details of the Brobdingnagians, he cannot realize that high moral standards that the Brobdingnagians possess. They are much more moral than the English and Lilliputians but the physical attributes get in the way of reality. Because the Brobdingnagians are bigger, Gulliver sees his own life as more insignificant than theirs.

It is because of this mindset that Gulliver pays attention to more of the details on the Brobdingnagians physical appearance. The novel exemplifies the importance of physical appearance on the perception of one’s morals and standards.The size of the characters in the novel and the appearance satirizes the events that were happening within the government in the 15th Century. England was small and could have been easily crushed by the rest of Europe but was overlooked and England saw Europe as “bigger” and therefore missed the morals that were hidden underneath the “big” exterior. The satirical elements utilized by Jonathan Swift in his renowned novel, Gulliver’s Travels, demonstrates how physical appearance can alter human perceptions of dignity and power.