The Giant and the Thread: A Lilliputian Fable

As told by Lemuel Gnatpicker, Third Clerk of Ribbons and Restraints

We Lilliputians are a practical folk. We measure twice, cut once, and mind the threads that bind the seams of things—be they coats or constitutions. So you can imagine our dismay when, one golden morning, a great tremor shook the ground and a shadow blotted out the sun.

It was a giant.

Not just any giant. A loud, lumbering, orange-tinted colossus with hair like scorched hay and hands that—though he swore otherwise—were perfectly proportional to his lies. He called himself Trump the Great, though he had neither earned the title nor understood its burden. He came stomping across the plains of Lilliput, flattening grain stores and courthouses alike, demanding loyalty oaths from chickens and tribute from windmills. When we politely pointed out he had no authority here, he called us traitors and “vermin-class citizens.” Then he started building walls—though mostly around himself.

Some said he was mad. Others said he was merely misunderstood. But the wise among us knew better: he was something far more dangerous. He believed his own reflection.

He claimed he had once ruled a distant empire across the sea, and had returned to finish the job. He promised to make Lilliput great again—though none could recall a time we had ever required his help to be so. He raved about a stolen crown and a rigged game of marbles. And with every word, he grew larger, inflated not by magic, but by echo: a chorus of parrots repeating his phrases until the air itself felt heavier.

We convened a council. The tailors proposed sewing his lips shut. The librarians favored satire. The milliners suggested a very large hat.

But it was the children who saw it most clearly. “He’s like the Wizard in the old tales,” said one. “Loud behind the curtain, but afraid of the truth.” And so, we did what Lilliputians do best. We wove.

Each thread, spun from a lie he had told. Each knot, tied with the care of a people who’ve seen storms and demagogues come and go. We spun threads from his broken promises, his bankruptcies, his tantrums, and tweets. From every insult hurled and scapegoat blamed, we made cordage fine and strong. We didn’t need swords. We needed memory.

One night, as the giant slept—head resting on a courthouse he’d mistaken for a pillow—we crept forth with our thread. Not to harm him. No. That would have made him a martyr. We merely bound him. Gently. Deliberately. Not in vengeance, but in consequence.

When he awoke, he screamed of injustice. Of witch hunts. Of persecution. He demanded we unbind him at once.

But the people—left, right, and center—stood firm. Not in unity, perhaps, but in understanding: that giants, however noisy, are still subject to the fabric of the law. And that no man, however large he imagines himself, can escape the net of his own making forever.

And so, dear reader, should a shadow darken your doorstep, and a booming voice promise only itself, remember us. Remember the thread. For in every boastful giant lies a small, frightened man—who only grows when we forget how to weave.

—Lemuel Gnatpicker, who once stitched the truth into a tyrant’s trousers

Author’s Note:

This fable was inspired a Trip to Mars, a sstire written in 1941 by my grandmother, Pauline Swerdlow Silver. Its themes are as timely now as they were then. Before I turned to anthropology, I was an English major—and this was an itch I had to scratch.