Gulliver's Travels: Part 4, Chapter 12 - Summary

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THE END

SUMMARY

      This last chapter of Gulliver's Travels has been written by the author to provide a deep insight into the motive behind his accounts of the travels. He asserts the veracity of his accounts. For the author, the motive of a traveler is to improve the minds of his readers by the good and bad examples he encounters in his explored lands. Here, he criticizes those authors who provide exaggerated and false accounts of their journeys. He desires a law to prevent the publishing of such false and misleading stories. Further, he answers those critics who want him to guide the army of England to invade those strange countries whose account he has provided. The author rejects their demand as he feels that there would be no use of invading those islands since the Lilliputians are too diminutive to be of any advantage for England, while the Brobdingnagians are too big and dangerous to be attacked. Similarly, it is not possible to conquer the Laputians with their flying island. As for the Houyhnhnms, the author has other designs; he wants the; European community to learn the qualities of prudence, unanimity, justice, friendship, benevolence and the like from them. Moreover, he warns that Houyhnhnms are too smart, strong and united to invade, for they would soon learn to defend themselves and would crush the Europeans, that too, in the middle of Europe.

      As the author proceeds, his opinion regarding the brutish mentality of the princes of Europe and England becomes more conspicuous. He sternly condemns the motives of these princes behind invasions of distant lands. The author exposes the inhuman acts of plundering and slaughtering of the innocent people of the invaded lands who are looted, tortured and forcibly converted to Christianity in the name of making them civil and righteous. To defend himself from the wrath of the English Court, he praises the refined and human ways of England. He pretends to admire the way Christianity is propagated in the English colonies. Thus, after answering the objections of his critics, the author takes leave of his readers to instill the virtues of Houyhnhnms in the Yahoos of his own family.

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