Temple of Lilliput
The Temple of Lilliput is the ancient, profaned structure that serves as Lemuel Gulliver's prison and lodging during his captivity in Lilliput, a building whose physical dimensions and symbolic status as a polluted sacred space define the conditions of his confinement and the Lilliputian state's pragmatic approach to housing him.
Location and Physical Description
The temple stood at the place where the carriage carrying the sleeping Gulliver stopped, within two hundred yards of the city gates. It was esteemed the largest in the whole kingdom. The great gate, fronting to the north, was about four feet high and almost two feet wide, through which Gulliver could easily creep. On each side of the gate was a small window, not above six inches from the ground. The building had been polluted some years before by an unnatural murder and, according to the zeal of the Lilliputians, was looked upon as profane; consequently, it had been applied to common use, and all its ornaments and furniture had been carried away. Over against this temple, on the other side of the great highway at twenty feet distance, there was a turret at least five feet high, where the emperor ascended with many principal lords of his court to have an opportunity of viewing Gulliver.
Gulliver's Confinement and Lodging
Into the window on the left side of the gate, the king's smith conveyed four score and eleven chains, like those that hang to a lady's watch in Europe and almost as large, which were locked to Gulliver's left leg with six-and-thirty padlocks. The chains that held his left leg were about two yards long, and gave him not only the liberty of walking backwards and forwards in a semi-circle, but, being fixed within four inches of the gate, allowed him to creep in and lie at his full length in the temple. When the workmen found it was impossible for him to break loose, they cut all the strings that bound him; whereupon he rose up, with as melancholy a disposition as ever he had in his life. Towards night, he got with some difficulty into his house, where he lay on the ground, and continued to do so for about a fortnight, during which time the emperor gave orders to have a bed prepared for him. Six hundred beds of the common measure were brought in carriages and worked up in his house; a hundred and fifty of their beds, sewn together, made up the breadth and length, and these were four double, which, however, kept him but very indifferently from the hardness of the floor, which was of smooth stone.
Symbolic and Narrative Significance
The temple's status as a profaned sacred space is central to its function. Having been polluted by an unnatural murder, it was no longer fit for religious use and had been stripped of its ornaments and furniture, making it available for the practical purpose of housing the Man-mountain. This transformation from a place of worship to a prison for a giant foreigner mirrors the Lilliputian state's ability to repurpose its own history and sacred spaces for immediate political and logistical needs. The temple's dimensions—a gate four feet high and windows six inches from the ground—are precisely calibrated to Gulliver's scale, allowing him to enter only by creeping and to lie at full length inside. The structure thus becomes a physical manifestation of his captivity: he is contained within a space that was once holy but is now defiled, just as he himself is a prodigy that defies the natural order of their world. The temple also serves as the stage for the emperor's first close inspection of Gulliver, with the turret across the highway providing a vantage point for the court to observe him. The building's transformation into a prison, complete with chains and padlocks, underscores the Lilliputians' methodical and engineering-minded approach to managing the threat and opportunity presented by Gulliver's presence.
