Size Matters

Size is probably the most obvious metaphor in Gulliver's Travels, but I don't think most readers grasp just how important it actually is.

It seems to me that Gulliver, as the viewpoint character, is larger than the Lilliputians because it parallels the fact that he has a larger view of what is occurring. He is able to literally look down upon the Lilliputians and judge them—or, perhaps, allow us to judge them. Also, because of his size and his position, he ends up in situations where he literally pisses and craps all over some of the Lilliputians' most sacred places. If this isn't Swift casting satirical judgment upon the sanctity of certain elements of culture, I don't know what is.

Height and size are also very important to the Lilliputians as a culture. For one thing, relative heel size is stated to be very important, despite the fact that they make distinctions in social rank down to the drurr.
A drurr is "about the fourteenth part of an inch," the Lilliputians are six inches tall, and the average human is around 5'9''. Therefore, a drurr to the Lilliputians is equivalent to 3/4 of an inch to us. 3/4 of an inch isn't even enough to account for peoples' relative height difference; the idea that it could somehow denote rank is ridiculous.

The entire idea of the Lilliputians putting an emphasis on their own height is, of course, made more ridiculous by the fact that even the full height of a Lilliputian is inconsequential to Gulliver. The lesson, it seems, is that the Lilliputians—small-minded small people—are there primarily to be ridiculed by the reader.