Reviews - Guliver's Travels

1.89k reviews for:

Unsurprisingly nothing like the film, not that I can remember? The middle sections were a slight slog to get through but redeemed itself with the beginning and ending. Glad to have read it but in no rush to visit it again. Might have been novel at the time but many newer book probably explore the idea presented here in a more agreeable/contemporary way to the modern reader.

diana7011's review against another edition

5.0

Fairy tale or satire....depends on what the reader takes away from this work. I go with satire personally. As with many other writers through the different eras, writing this work gave the author the platform to present his own point of view and how he perceived the world, governments and I was somewhat startled by what I read, more because of the time it was written. So on this adventure, which incorporates a few different travels, the author is quite the loquacious scribbler. The first sully he boards a ship and is cast away onto the island of the little people, being his size, he appears to eat them out of house and home...next adventure it's the land of Giants, he doesn't eat much but he sure runs the risk of being a blot on the bottom of someones foot. Next, and I seriously find this one more than hard to believe so perhaps the island in the clouds where the continent is run by some sort of really weird people. The last land is his favorite place to be, and why not the horse is an excellent creature, unfortunately the human type (well sort of) are known as “Yahoos” , and in case your wondering, Swift does indeed get all the credit for terming us brutes as yahoos. He's more than a bit sad about having to leave this happy place because he now finds fault with all yahoos, even his family. It is a contradiction of thought when the character Gulliver speaks to the different peoples/horses in how he relates being proudly English and at the same time lays all their faults in a most profound way. Aside from that for some reason, I am destined to read works where seriously Master Swift, how many scenarios must one incorporate the “anus” and excrement in one work of literature? And that is how I see it, or read it. I do recommend reading this work as it is a classic, read between the lines and it's relative today as much as it was when published in 1726 or nearly 300 years ago. From one yahoo to another, enjoy.

pavonini's review against another edition

3.0

funny lighthearted medium-paced

It made me laugh a few times, but either I’m born too late to fully appreciate the satire or it’s a genre that wears thin after more than one chapter.

bethanymyers's review against another edition

2.0

I love the eighteenth century. I am a huge fan of Boswell's Life of Johnson. But I wasn't nearly as impressed by Gulliver's Travels. It's interesting, and complex, and I am aware that it was groundbreaking for the satire genre, but politics aren't really my thing.