Title: Gulliver’s Travels
Author: Jonathan Swift
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Genre: Satire and Adventure Fiction
Year of Publication: 1726
“Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.”
About Novel
Jonathan Swift’s book Gulliver’s Travels is one of the most well-known classic novels, featuring a British surgeon’s voyages throughout the world in his capacity as a ship captain. This book gained popularity right away after its 1726 release and has never stopped being printed. Jonathon Swift, an Irish author who was also a clergyman, wrote Gulliver’s Travels, a parody of the “traveler’s tales” literary subgenre and is a satire on human nature.
This book is said to have been inspired by Swift’s novel Cavehill in Belfast, which is likewise regarded as his best work and a classic of English literature. The novel also parodies the condition of European politics. As well this book can be considered as a satire on the European government’s state.
One of the most enduring works of literature in English, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift has been read for nearly three centuries. Although it is debatably more of a satire than a book and it has remained popular due to its storytelling abilities, however, the relevancy of that satire may have faded over time.
Swift wonders if a man is corrupt from birth or if his corruption develops over time and in the company of others. This novel is still relevant now, and one may connect the incidents to the politics, hypocrisy, and corruption of the human race that are still prominent in the modern world.
Plot of Gulliver’s Travels
Lemuel Gulliver, the main character of the book “Gulliver’s Travels,” starts on a journey in each of its four novels, only to find himself stranded in a foreign area owing to shipwrecks or other dangers. In the first novel, Gulliver visits Lilliput, a place where everyone is under 6 inches tall.
By wading into the water and capturing an invasion fleet from a neighboring land, Gulliver establishes himself as a giant among these diminutive beings and gains the respect of the haughty and self-important Lilliputians. But he leaves the island after finding out about a scheme to accuse him of treason.
Gulliver visits the giant-populated town of Brobdingnag in the second novel. Although a nine-year-old girl named Glumdalclitch takes good care of him, his diminutive size leaves him open to hazards and humiliations, such as getting his head snagged in the mouth of a crying infant. He finds the slight physical flaws of the giants disconcerting and exceedingly apparent. He is eventually lifted up by an eagle and put into the water, but he survives and makes it back home.
Gulliver visits Laputa, a floating island whose absent-minded residents are so absorbed with higher ideas that they are constantly at risk of colliding with one another, in the third novel. Here, Gulliver meets a group of academics who are so engrossed in their theoretical constructs that they are cut off from the world.
In the last book, Gulliver visits the Land of the Houyhnhnms, a group of stern, thoughtful, and honorable horses. But there is another race on the island as well—the nasty and physically repulsive Yahoos— who the Houyhnhnms grudgingly tolerate and employ for menial tasks.
Although Gulliver originally pretended to not see the Yahoos as beings, he eventually had to concede their humanity. While he is just a more developed Yahoo, the Houyhnhnms reject him in the general assembly and send him back to England, despite the fact that he finds absolute contentment there. He is unable to tolerate the society of his fellow citizens in his native nation.
Finally, “Gulliver’s Travels” comes to an interesting conclusion. The journey taken by Gulliver to the Realm of the Houyhnhnms serves as a parable for the human condition, showing the shortcomings and shortcomings of our species.
According to the novel, despite our brains and reason, people are frequently motivated by instincts and primal appetites, and we are capable of heinous acts of cruelty and violence. Gulliver ultimately questions the fundamental nature of society and humanity as a result of his travels as he tries to make sense of what he has witnessed and his personal experiences.
Even though it has fantasy elements, “Gulliver’s Travels” is a profoundly philosophical work that examines some of the most important issues surrounding the existence of humans.
The story challenges readers to reevaluate their own presumptions and views about the world they live in by providing a variety of alternative planets and societies. “Gulliver’s Travels” is fundamentally a sharp critique of human nature and the society we construct, imploring us to work towards a better future.
Narrative of Gulliver’s Travels
The narrator of the novel, Gulliver, writes in the first person. The text is then easy to read and almost feels bland. The narration lacks any self-reflection or emotional undertones. The plan and execution of the plot
are precise. And it demonstrates that Swift was completely clear about what he desired from each scene and each character in the novel. Also, the character’s growth is laudable, and each change in behavior in their personalities can be visualized and connected to by the reader.
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Review of Gulliver’s Travels
Gulliver’s Travels, which is regarded as Swift’s masterpiece, is his most brilliant satire as well as the most harsh and divisive. The work defeats oversimplified explanations since it is written in a straightforward manner with a sense of serious truth. Is it primarily humorous or does it represent a misanthropic denigration of humanity?
Swift clearly seems to ridicule many of the mistakes, follies, and weaknesses that people are prone to by using the many races and societies that Gulliver encounters while traveling. As imbalanced beings lacking common sense and even decency, the warlike, argumentative, but ultimately insignificant Lilliputians in the first section and the insane impractical pedants and intellectuals in the final segment are shown.
In contrast, the Houyhnhnms represent the model of virtue and simplicity. Gulliver’s prideful connection with these horses and his subsequent contempt for fellow humans, however, shows that he has also become unbalanced and that people are unable to aspire to the noble rationality that Gulliver has glimpsed.
There is no denying how poorly we treat both animals and outsiders. It demonstrates to us that if we treat people the way we want to be treated, we will be able to comprehend their issues. The fact that the planet is so big and many uncharted regions are totally cut off from the outer world is another thing we learn from Gulliver’s Travels.
This book and every lesson it conveys are both wonderful. In ninth grade, this book was part of the curriculum, which I greatly appreciate. Only one aspect of this narrative bothers me, and that is that it can become monotonous to read after a while. The story becomes extremely long and tedious to read until the next key section since there are so many details in the middle of significant shifts.
Conclusion
You become a satire enthusiast after reading this book, which is skillfully written as an engaging travelogue. You’ll want to keep turning the pages of this book since it features a lot of imagery, imaginative play, and reality. Although the narration is excellent, the language is not quite straightforward or simple to understand. There aren’t many profound meanings in the story overall.
The story has so many subtle implications that you absolutely must own a copy of it. Although Gulliver’s Travels is fiction and has done exceptionally well among books, the author has done great justice to the plot, language, and characters in this action novel and in this ostensibly sarcastic work. I heartily recommend this book to everyone who appreciates traveling.
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Authored by Daksh Jain, a 2nd year Student at National Law University Odisha.