Pedro de Mendez
Encyclopedia
Pedro de Mendez is the name of the Portuguese captain who rescues Lemuel Gulliver
in Book IV of Jonathan Swift
’s Gulliver’s Travels. When Gulliver is forced to leave the Island of the Houyhnhnms, his plan is "to discover some small Island uninhabited" where he can live in solitude. Instead, he is picked up by Don Pedro’s crew. Despite Gulliver’s appearance—he is dressed in skins and speaks like a horse—Don Pedro treats him compassionately and returns him to Lisbon.
Though Don Pedro appears only briefly, he has become an important figure in the debate between so-called soft school and hard school readers of Gulliver's Travels. Soft school critics contend that Gulliver is a target of Swift’s satire and that Don Pedro represents an ideal of human kindness and generosity. For hard-school critics, Gulliver sees the bleak fallenness at the center of human nature, and Don Pedro is merely a minor character who, in Gulliver’s words, is "an Animal which had some little Portion of Reason."
Lemuel Gulliver
Lemuel Gulliver is the protagonist and narrator of Gulliver's Travels, a novel written by Jonathan Swift, first published in 1726.-In Gulliver's Travels:...
in Book IV of Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
’s Gulliver’s Travels. When Gulliver is forced to leave the Island of the Houyhnhnms, his plan is "to discover some small Island uninhabited" where he can live in solitude. Instead, he is picked up by Don Pedro’s crew. Despite Gulliver’s appearance—he is dressed in skins and speaks like a horse—Don Pedro treats him compassionately and returns him to Lisbon.
Though Don Pedro appears only briefly, he has become an important figure in the debate between so-called soft school and hard school readers of Gulliver's Travels. Soft school critics contend that Gulliver is a target of Swift’s satire and that Don Pedro represents an ideal of human kindness and generosity. For hard-school critics, Gulliver sees the bleak fallenness at the center of human nature, and Don Pedro is merely a minor character who, in Gulliver’s words, is "an Animal which had some little Portion of Reason."