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Summary of Gulliver’s Travels Part 1 Chapter 7
Summary of Gulliver’s Travels Part 1 Chapter 7
The narrator, being informed of a plan to accuse him of high-treason, makes his escape to Blefuscu.
For two months an intrigue had been forming against Gulliver. One day, when Gulliver was preparing to visit the emperor of Blefuscu, Gulliver received a ‘secret visit’ from a government official whom he had helped when the emperor was displeased with him. He told Gulliver that Flimnap, Skyresh, Bolgolam and others had approved articles of treason against him. The emperor and the council were preparing a list of articles for Gulliver’s impeachment. He showed Gulliver the document calling for his execution. The charges included: 1. urinating in a public place; 2. having refused to destroy all the Blefuscudians who wouldn’t forsake the ‘Big-Endian heresy’; 3. having helped the Blefuscudians with the terms of the peace treaty; 4. preparing to go to Blefuscu. for which the emperor had given only verbal permission.
In spite of this, the emperor showed many signs of his great leniency; he urged others to consider the services Gulliver had done him and endeavoured to lessen the magnitude or seriousness of his crimes. Some in the council, including the treasurer and the admiral, insisted that Gulliver immediately be put to a painful death. Their plan was to set Gulliver’s house afire and then shoot him with poisonous arrows as he tried to escape. His sheets and clothes would already have been treated with a poison that would have him tearing his flesh and die in the utmost torture. The general came into the same opinion; so that for a long time there was a majority against Gulliver.
However, the emperor was resolved, if possible, to spare Gulliver’s life. Gulliver was told that Reldresal, principal.secretary for private affairs, who had always been Gulliver’s friend, had asked for his sentence to be reduced, calling, not for execution but for putting his eyes out. This punishment had been agreed upon, along with a plan to starve him to death slowly. The official told Gulliver that the operation to blind him would take place in three days. Fearing this resolution, Gulliver crossed the channel and arrived in Blefuscu where the people had long expected him.
Two guides guided him to the capital city, also called Blefuscu. At the gates the Blefuscudian emperor and his retinue came to greet him. Gulliver told His Majesty that he had come to Blefuscu as promised and with the permission of the emperor of Lilliput. He offered the Blefuscudian emperor any service in his power, consistent with his duty to the emperor of Lilliput. The Blefuscudian emperor was generous but Gulliver faced a number of difficulties as he had no house or bed there.