Book: Gullivers Travels

Author: Jonathan Swift

Rating: 4/5

Summary: Lemuel Gulliver is an educated and trained surgeon. He speaks to the readers retelling his experiences at sea. Presented as a simple traveler’s narrative, Gulliver’s adventures are divided into four parts. The first part is situated in Lilliput where he finds himself in the company of thousands of miniature people called Lilliputians. The second is on the peninsula-type land of Brobdingnag, an opposite world from Lilliput where Gulliver becomes the Lilliputian and everyone is a giant to him. The third part moves to the island of Laputa, a floating island inhabited by theoreticians and academics which oppresses the land below, called Balnibarbi. Finally in the fourth part he arrives in an unknown land. This land is populated by Houyhnhnms, the rational-thinking horses who rule, and by Yahoos, the inferior brutish servants to the horses who bear the image of a human. Get this e-book now at a very low price.

Social/Historical context: Gulliver’s Travels was an extremely controversial book from its very first publication in 1726. Ever since, many of its sections were deleted and it was also often set aside as a book for children in an attempt to depoliticize its interpretations and camouflage its insight into colonial practice. It was not until almost ten years after its first printing that the book appeared with the entire text that Swift had originally intended it to have. However it remains Swift's most prolific and well-known work, spanning a literary sixteen years in physical journey and countless more in personal exploration.

Writing Style: Gulliver’s travels is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the “traveler’s tale” literary sub genre. The fascination of the tale lies in the fact that although every phase seems immediately comprehensible, the whole subject matter is endlessly complex. The novel offers a clear parody of colonialism and its working against what is conventionally known. Swift takes up the different ideas surrounding the working of colonialism and gradually debunks them by offering a reversal of scales. He redirects the tropes of colonial discourse and turns them against the masters in a very adroit manner. And interestingly all this is done with great wit and slapstick humor: be it Gulliver’s urinating to extinguish the fire or the experiments taking place at the Grand Academy of Lagado.

My Thoughts:The novel is arguably Swift’s greatest satiric attempt to “shame men out of their vices”. The structure and the choice of metaphors also serve Swift’s purpose of attacking politics, religion, morality, human nature and of course colonialism which is at the heart of the novel. Swift clearly undercuts the ideas endorsed by colonialism by putting forth a reverse scenario and demonstrating how the truth about people and objects is heavily influenced by the observer’s perception. In Gulliver’s Travels the scales are manipulated to show the politics of representation thus bringing forth a comfortless and disturbing satire.

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Book Reviewed By Ridhi Kukreja

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