Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
First published 1726.
Another book that I picked up as I was researching for Worlds and Journeys.
Gulliver's Travels is a true classic, but also one that has a number of versions of it, most of which cut out the vast majority of the original story. Anyone familiar with the various movie versions will be aware that Lemuel Gulliver is shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput, where the inhabitants are all miniscule compared to Gulliver, but less well known are the subsequent lands he visits: Brobdingnag, where Gulliver is now the only small-scaled person in a land of giants; Laputa, a flying island populated with impractical scholars who make life difficult for their ground-based subjects; and the land of the Houyhnhnms, sentient horses who rule a relatively peaceful society while the humanoid 'Yahoos' are the beasts of burden. Other lands briefly visited by Gulliver include Luggnagg, where a small population of immortal humans nevertheless age into decrepitude and dementia, and Glubbdrubdib, ruled by a necromancer who humours Gulliver by allowing him to interview various historical figures to get the 'real' story of their lives.
In carefully reading the story, we realise that Gulliver visits 'pairs' of lands, each an 'opposite' of its pair: a land of tiny people and a land of giants, a land where people are too intellectual or not intellectual at all, a land where death is avoided yet the mind is lost versus a land where the dead are free to reflect on what they have done in life. It also becomes apparent that Swift is more interested in the politics and idiosyncrasies of the lands visited than in any reason 'plot', and this is because Swift apparently wrote the work as a satire. Gulliver starts his journey praising the culture of his homeland, but by the final land he visits - the land of the Houyhnhnms - he is talking very cynically about English culture while desiring to stay in the foreign land he is a part of.
An example of his emerging cynicism is found when Gulliver tries to explain lawyers to the horses: "For example, if my neighbour has a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself. Now, in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under...great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will..." (pages 271-272).
Gulliver's Travels is interesting, quite readable for a work of its era, and often satirically humorous. It is also a bit of its time in some of its social norms. Actually, the version I read turned out to be one that had removed some of the elements that might 'offend' modern sensibilities. It hadn't mentioned being an abridged version anywhere (I try to avoid abridgements as much as possible) but one of the chapter heading included reference to a scene that didn't end up appearing in the chapter. Out of curiosity I looked it up, discovering that Gulliver saves the life of the Lilliputian queen by urinating on a fire in the castle in order to put it out! I guess some later editor decided that references to peeing were too much for a 'children's book' (not that its really a children's book) and removed it! So... I guess... if you want to read the 'extra pee-ey' original version do your research before you buy??
Completed 29 March 2023.
Comments
Post a Comment