Theory of Relativity in Big Brobdingnag
“I assured his Majesty that I came from a country which abounded with several millions of both sexes… where the animals, trees and houses were all in proportion… to this they only replied with a smile of contempt.”
After concluding his adventures in the miniature country of Lilliput, Lemuel Gulliver in Jonathan Swift’s fictional satire Gulliver’s Travels ends up in yet another country called Brobdingnag, inhabited by huge giants. In addition to the physical difficulties which Gulliver’s tiny size imposes upon him, he also meets with other problems, such as those of making himself heard, understood and believed. For instance, upon their first meeting, the king of the giants refuses to believe that Gulliver is not a small animal or a piece of clockwork. Gulliver experiences the feelings of the tiny Lilliputians and becomes, as he admits himself, more understanding of the Lilliputians’ attitude towards him.
On account of his relative weakness and smallness, Gulliver is also unable to prevent the giants from taking advantage of him in several situations. His first owner, the farmer, discovers in him a profitable source of income and forces him to perform for crowds until Gulliver nearly dies with exhaustion and ill-use. He is then sold like a piece of goods to the queen, who treats him (though not unkindly,) like a toy. In his many discussions with the king, that monarch generally treats him condescendingly, even contemptuously at times, as when he exclaims, “I cannot but conclude that 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.” Gulliver’s seriousness is rarely taken seriously, and his skills in navigation and music are treated as clever tricks of a little circus dog.
More than anything it is Gulliver’s pride that is most injured, especially when one of the royal ministers “observed how contemptible a thing was human grandeur which could be mimicked by diminutive insects as I… and thus he continued on, while my color came and went several times with indignation to hear our noble country… so contemptuously treated”…
However in the next paragraph he continues – “But… I began to doubt whether I were injured or no.” Because after he has been in Brobdingnag for awhile, he begins to see himself as abnormally small while the giants seem completely normal in stature, “so that I really began to imagine myself dwindled many degrees below my usual size.”
This phenomenon is very well explained by Aristotle’s definition of large and small, in which he says objects are only “large” or “small” in comparison to even larger or smaller things. Thus Gulliver, after residing among the giants of Brobdingnag, comes to see himself as strange and them as perfect, though at first he was highly critical of their vast sizes and disgusted by their giant coarseness. This demonstrates that humans can generally become accustomed to anything, and may come to easily change their views if everyone around them does so.
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