What’s the best way to remind human beings that they’re not gods? In the days of Jonathan Swift and the other English satirists and comics of the 18th century, you did it by reminding them of their often ridiculous bodies. It’s hard to think that you’re some intellectual center of the universe when you’ve got the hives — or the shakes, the runs, the grippe, the gout, or any of a couple of other “the-bodily-troubles” that are even more embarrassing than those. The irony is that the Lilliputians think of themselves as so high and mighty, even though the tallest of them is only a shade over six inches tall. Yet they’re going to get a reminder in this chapter of just how small — and we’ll also say, how petty — they are. Gulliver then, for Fireman of the Year? Well, the Lilliputians are just ordinary human beings with their ordinary human follies, writ large — by being writ small!
