What are the People of Lilliput?

 Part one of Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" consisted of the narrator, Gulliver, telling in detail his very odd experience. After a ship wreck, he swam to shore and passed out from exhaustion, waking up tied down to the ground. He then felt something tickling his leg and looked down to see a bunch of miniature people, approximately six inches tall who immediately attacked him. When the people of Lilliput finally calmed down, they decided to untie him a little and feed him some of their animals, amazed at his large appetite. This is the part of the story I became very confused. Not only were the people on the island very small, but the animals were as well? I found it very strange that there were completely identical species but just to another scale in another country. I am extremely aware that the story is fiction, but I found it so strange that Swift had created this miniature world in his head. Swift is often known as a satirical author, so I began to wonder if there was another hidden meaning behind this story. I then decided to look further into the story and learned it was considered to be a "satirical masterpiece." The part of the story where the narrator explains that the reason Lilliput and Blefuscu was caused by a debate on what side an egg should be cracked on. I began to believe Swift used this scene to make an example of how ridiculous some of the disputes were between many countries in the world. No matter how ridiculous Swifts stories may sound, there is always a political opinion hidden between the lines. 

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