n the first part, Gulliver sees the world of the Lilliputians from the perspective of a giant. In the second part, he views the reality of the Brobdingnagians through the eyes of a tiny creature. In the third part, Gulliver confronts the absurdities of scholarship, science, and repressive government when he visits the island of Laputa. In the fourth part, Gulliver is forced to undertake a new perspective on humanity by seeing the horse-like Houyhnhnms as rational beings and the human-like Yahoos as primitive animals. With these four different points of view, Swift is able to make a powerful commentary on the nature of human life. Furthermore, it has been noted that Swift used these four perspectives as a commentary on the scientific developments of his own time. Thus "the microscope was represented by the Lilliputian view; the telescope by the Brobdingnagian view; Isaac Newton's mathematics and gravitational theories by the scientists of Laputa; and the ideal of Reason by the Houyhnhnms" (Wolf 455).
The relationship of the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians to human beings can be seen in the fact that Swift standardized their dimensions to a human scale. Whereas the Lilliputians are 6 inches tall, the Brobdingnagians are 60 feet tall. Thus, the pygmies of Lilliput are an inch to the human foot, and the giants of Brobdingnag are a foot to the human inch (Van Doren 33). It is interesting to note that the Lilliputians are petty and smallminded, just as their bodies are small. By contrast, the Brobdingnagians are broad-minded and virtuous. It is apparent that Swift created the Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians with the intention of providing a satiric portrait of humankind. In t
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