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A review by 1969sl
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
4.0
Some four decades ago I have read obviously only shortened version that usually gets served as children's literature, therefore I was familiar with only first and the most popular chapter (A Voyage to Lilliput) but actually there is so much more to "Gulliver's Travels" than diminutive Lilliputians. Much has been made about Jonathan Swift's literary attack on various forms of than-current authorities and what it all means, was he poking fun at the church or government, crown or parliament but in all honesty it don't really matter 300 years later - what we can clearly see is that he is turning reality completely topsy turvy and gleefully chuckling to himself created fantastic world where horses talk, ministers deserve their positions by dancing on the rope, petitioners are commanded to crawl on their bellies and lick the floor in front of the throne and such.
The obvious explanation of Gulliver's timeless appeal is that the novel can be read, explained, poked, probed and analyzed from many different perspectives. It can be enjoyed as a children's story - specially the first chapter with Gulliver saving the royal castle by pissing on it - or you can see it as a sharp satire and criticism of society that he lived in. You can see it also as a either clever variation on both Marco Polo and Robinson Crusoe or as a forerunner or later widely popular novels by Jules Verne. Myself, I am tempted to see it as Swift's own version of ancient tale of Sinbad the Sailor (Odysseus?) that only on a surface describes main hero's amazing adventures but actually talks about human character and ridiculousness of our principles.
After Lilliput, Gulliver is shipwrecked time and time again (mirroring Robinson Crusoe which surely influenced him) first to the land of giants (Brobdingnag) where he becomes treasured entertainment for royal ladies ("The handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant frolicsome girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples, with many other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me for not being over particular"), than to the flying island Laputa where scientists spend their lifetimes studying the most ridiculous and pointless experiments and after many sideways & byways, he ends in the country of Houyhnhnms where horses are wise and humanoids (named Yahoos) are dangerous and ignorant. It is novel of almost ridiculously fantastic imagination, literary equivalent of paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and deservedly considered a classic, however from time to time it shows his age much more than Robinson Crusoe because Swift too often feels compelled to moralize and compare various fantastic kingdoms to what he have left at home in England - but the heart of the novel is sharp, witty and so uniquely eccentric that it is no wonder that it survived for 300 years.
The obvious explanation of Gulliver's timeless appeal is that the novel can be read, explained, poked, probed and analyzed from many different perspectives. It can be enjoyed as a children's story - specially the first chapter with Gulliver saving the royal castle by pissing on it - or you can see it as a sharp satire and criticism of society that he lived in. You can see it also as a either clever variation on both Marco Polo and Robinson Crusoe or as a forerunner or later widely popular novels by Jules Verne. Myself, I am tempted to see it as Swift's own version of ancient tale of Sinbad the Sailor (Odysseus?) that only on a surface describes main hero's amazing adventures but actually talks about human character and ridiculousness of our principles.
After Lilliput, Gulliver is shipwrecked time and time again (mirroring Robinson Crusoe which surely influenced him) first to the land of giants (Brobdingnag) where he becomes treasured entertainment for royal ladies ("The handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant frolicsome girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples, with many other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me for not being over particular"), than to the flying island Laputa where scientists spend their lifetimes studying the most ridiculous and pointless experiments and after many sideways & byways, he ends in the country of Houyhnhnms where horses are wise and humanoids (named Yahoos) are dangerous and ignorant. It is novel of almost ridiculously fantastic imagination, literary equivalent of paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and deservedly considered a classic, however from time to time it shows his age much more than Robinson Crusoe because Swift too often feels compelled to moralize and compare various fantastic kingdoms to what he have left at home in England - but the heart of the novel is sharp, witty and so uniquely eccentric that it is no wonder that it survived for 300 years.