Jonathan Swift Teacher Prep Work

Four Questions:
1) How did Gulliver get to Lilliput in the first place?
2) What are the motives of Lilliputians for capturing Gulliver? Were they threatened by him?
3) Why hasn’t Gulliver attempted to escape when it is incredibly easy for him to?
4) Is Gulliver’s lack of effort to leave trying to portray something about humans?

Significant Moments:
-On page 654, Gulliver describes the fact that he can easily free himself from the Lilliputians but he is unwilling to do so because they are continuously feeding him and comforting him. However, this boggles my mind because he is still a prisoner and is away from his home. I think this just shows how gullible humans can really be and can easily feed in to things. It also represents some human’s incapability of effort to force change and their laziness.
-Another significant moment is on page 656 when Gulliver learns the Lilliputians language. This proves that body language can be stronger then oral language because Gulliver only learned the language orally by using body language to express each others feelings. Learning the language is a big step to adapting to another persons culture which I think, Gulliver has adapted at this point.

Predictions:
I think students will find difficulties discovering the satire of the story. My group will help them better understand that by having them read the historical background inserted before the story. This will help them understand the concept of humans being gullible and how Gulliver represents this.