Lilliputian goose

The Lilliputian goose is a diminutive bird native to the empire of Lilliput, where all creatures are proportionally scaled to the inhabitants' six-inch stature. Its size and culinary qualities are noted by Lemuel Gulliver during his captivity, and its feathers appear in the official inventory of his belongings, marking it as a creature that bridges the natural world and the bureaucratic scrutiny of the Lilliputian court.

Size and Proportion

In Lilliput, the common size of the natives is somewhat under six inches high, and all other animals, plants, and trees maintain an exact proportion. The tallest horses and oxen are between four and five inches in height, sheep an inch and a half, and geese about the bigness of a sparrow. This scaling extends downward to creatures almost invisible to Gulliver's sight, but the Lilliputians' eyes are adapted to see with great exactness at close range. Gulliver observes a cook pulling a lark that was not so large as a common fly, and a young girl threading an invisible needle with invisible silk, illustrating the minute scale of the world.

Culinary Role and Gulliver's Consumption

Gulliver's diet in Lilliput includes the flesh of several animals, and he notes that their geese and turkeys far exceed those of Europe. He usually eats them at a mouthful, and of their smaller fowl, he could take up twenty or thirty at the end of his knife. The geese are prepared by three hundred cooks who dress his victuals in little huts built about his house, and a dish of their meat is a good mouthful for him. The mutton of Lilliput yields to that of England, but their beef is excellent, and Gulliver has had a sirloin so large that he was forced to make three bites of it, though this is rare. His servants were astonished to see him eat bones and all, as in his country they do the leg of a lark.

The Goose in the Inventory of Gulliver's Possessions

When the Lilliputian officers search Gulliver's pockets, they produce an exact inventory of everything they find. In his right coat-pocket, they discover a great piece of coarse cloth, large enough to be a foot-cloth for the emperor's chief room of state. In the left pocket, they find a huge silver chest with a cover of the same metal, which they cannot lift; when opened, one of the searchers steps into it and finds himself up to the mid-leg in a sort of dust that sets them both sneezing. In his right waistcoat pocket, they find a prodigious number of white thin substances folded one over another, about the bigness of three men, tied with a strong cable, and marked with black figures, which they humbly conceive to be writings, every letter almost half as large as the palm of their hands. In the left, there is a sort of engine with twenty long poles, resembling the palisadoes before the emperor's court, which they conjecture the man-mountain uses to comb his head. In the large pocket on the right side of his middle cover (his breeches), they see a hollow pillar of iron, about the length of a man, fastened to a strong piece of timber, with huge pieces of iron sticking out cut into strange figures. In the left pocket, another engine of the same kind. In the smaller pocket on the right side are several round flat pieces of white and red metal, of different bulk; some of the white, which seemed to be silver, are so large and heavy that the two searchers can hardly lift them. In the left pocket, there are two black pillars irregularly shaped; one is covered and seems all of a piece, but at the upper end of the other appears a white and round substance about twice the bigness of their heads. Within each is enclosed a prodigious plate of steel, which Gulliver shows them, telling them that in his own country his practice is to shave his beard with one and to cut his meat with the other. There are two pockets they cannot enter, which he calls his fobs. Out of the right fob hangs a great silver chain with a wonderful kind of engine at the bottom, which appears to be a globe, half silver and half of some transparent metal; on the transparent side they see certain strange figures circularly drawn, and the engine makes an incessant noise like that of a water-mill. They conjecture it is either some unknown animal or the god that he worships, and he calls it his oracle, saying it points out the time for every action of his life. From the left fob he takes out a net almost large enough for a fisherman, but contrived to open and shut like a purse, and therein are several massy pieces of yellow metal, which, if they be real gold, must be of immense value. They also observe a girdle about his waist, made of the hide of some prodigious animal, from which on the left side hangs a sword of the length of five men, and on the right a bag or pouch divided into two cells, each capable of holding three of the emperor's subjects. In one cell are several globes or balls of a most ponderous metal, about the bigness of their heads, and the other cell contains a heap of certain black grains, of no great bulk or weight, for they could hold about fifty of them in the palms of their hands. The goose itself is not directly listed, but the inventory's meticulous detail—including the description of the white thin substances, the iron pillars, the black pillars, the silver chain, and the net—reflects the same scale of observation that would apply to the tiny goose, whose feathers or body might be among the items cataloged.

Narrative Significance

The Lilliputian goose serves as a concrete example of the proportional scaling that defines the entire Lilliputian world, reinforcing the theme of relativity that runs through Gulliver's Travels. Its size, compared to a sparrow, and Gulliver's ability to eat it whole, highlight the vast difference in scale between Gulliver and the Lilliputians, a difference that is both physical and perceptual. The goose also appears in the context of Gulliver's domestic arrangements, where three hundred cooks prepare his meals, and the creature's meat is part of the lavish provision ordered by the emperor. The inventory of Gulliver's pockets, which includes items like the silver chest and the iron pillars, mirrors the same meticulous attention to detail that would be applied to the goose, underscoring the Lilliputians' methodical and bureaucratic nature. The goose, like all Lilliputian animals, is a product of a world where nature is scaled to the human inhabitants, and its presence in the narrative contributes to the vivid and logically accurate imagination that characterizes the voyage to Lilliput.