Gulliver Travels eBook Jonathan Swift
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Gulliver's Travels is a novel by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. The book became popular as soon as it was published. John Gay wrote in a letter to Swift that "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." Since then, it has never been out of print.
The book begins with a short preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver, in the style of books of the time, gives a brief outline of his life and history before his voyages. He enjoys travelling, although it is that love of travel that is his downfall. During his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck and finds himself a prisoner of a race of tiny people, less than 6 inches tall, who are inhabitants of the island country of Lilliput. After giving assurances of his good behavior, he is given a residence in Lilliput and becomes a favorite of the court. From there, the book follows Gulliver's observations on the Court of Lilliput. He is also given the permission to roam around the city on a condition that he must not harm their subjects. Gulliver assists the Lilliputians to subdue their neighbors, the Blefuscudians, by stealing their fleet. However, he refuses to reduce the island nation of Blefuscu to a province of Lilliput, displeasing the King and the court. Gulliver is charged with treason for, among other crimes, "making water" (urination) in the capital, though he was putting out a fire and saving countless lives. He is convicted and sentenced to be blinded, but with the assistance of a kind friend, he escapes to Blefuscu. Here he spots and retrieves an abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a passing ship, which safely takes him back home. This book of the Travels is a topical political satire.
Gulliver Travels eBook Jonathan Swift
I read the Illustrated Classics version as a kid and when I was in my mid-teens, I read the full version. To this day, I am still enjoying both versions; which one I read depends on my mood and how I feel.The author uses great metaphors, like storms, to transition between different islands. Each change in setting teaches many important lessons without the reader really realizing it. How the author does this is a mystery and keeps the reader hooked,, wanting to know what will happen next snd if the characters will ever retturn home. You also wonder how things will change for thr main character if their journey does end and what the long lasting effects will be. Not just on that person, but those around them and where they live.
This is an interesting, intriguing, edge of your seat book that you don't want to miss!
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Gulliver Travels eBook Jonathan Swift Reviews
I chose this edition of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS because it has an accompanying narration available from Audible.com. It features WhisperSync, so you can switch back and forth between reading and listening without losing your place. Also, the price is right!
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS is a very early novel, first published in 1726 – just seven years after ROBINSON CRUSOE, often cited as the first modern novel. It has no dialogue at all, since it’s in the form of a memoir narrated by Gulliver of his travels, and it can be rather tough sledding to read it. However, listening to it (I mostly listened to it, instead of reading it) makes it much easier to comprehend, especially when it is read/performed as well as this was, by David Hyde Pierce (from “Frasier”). I really enjoyed this classic, a lot more than if I had simply read it.
Gulliver's Travels documents the unfortunate journeys of a fictitious character by the name of Gulliver. During the book Gulliver stumbles upon 4 majorly different civilizations, with each having a specific theme that sets them apart from the world we know. The minuscule Lilliputians, the gargantuan Brobdingnagians, the impractical Laputians, and the noble Houyhnhnms.
First, Gulliver is shipwrecked onto the shores of Lilliput, and finds himself tied down by hundreds of tiny ropes. He makes contact with the people native to the island, and is shocked to find them only a few inches tall. He is taken into servitude by the tiny race and learns their language. He soon finds out of another civilization of little people across the small body of water that is a sea to them. They were originally members of the same nation, but they rebelled over a dispute over which end of an egg should be cracked. Political issues lead to plans of Gulliver's execution, but he is informed by a friend of this and moves to the other civilization. Here he repairs a boat of his size that is found in the water and leaves the island, taking a few small animals to use as proof of his journeys.
For his second adventure, Gulliver is stranded on Brobdingnag, and island of giants. Here, even the smallest man is the size of a house. He is discovered by a farming family, and is put on display across the country as a novelty. The family makes its way to the capital and sells Gulliver to the queen. He spends many months as a joke and in severe danger by even the smallest creatures. He is nearly killed by rats and wasps, giving him a true sense of his powerlessness. The king of Brobdingnag inquires with him about the state of the world off the island, and is in tears with laughter. He finds the squabbles of such a small race endearing and cannot take any of it seriously. The king has created a society where free speech is not a right given to the people and finds it absurd to be any other way. Gulliver's stay is interrupted by a bird carrying him off into the ocean, where he finds a ship and gains passage back to England.
Gulliver only stays home for two months before he goes out into the sea once again - and is attacked by pirates. After offending the captain, he is set free into the ocean with only a boat and four days of food. He makes his way to an island and discovers a floating landmass nearby. He hails it and is brought up into the island and meets the king. The people of the island, Laputa, are constantly absorbed in thought, and care only for mathematics and music. Their entire society spurns practicality and suffers for it, houses are poorly made and crops barely grow. Gulliver is sent to a scientific conference, and discovers hundreds of experiments that are all heavily impractical and most are failures. One such presentation hopes to propagate a breed of hairless sheep. He leaves peacefully by travelling to Japan through trade routes.
For his final voyage, Gulliver captains his own ship. That is, until a mutiny left him on the shores of Houyhnhnm. He discovers a race of humanoid savages and a race of intelligent horses. The horses think he is one of the savages, "Yahoos," but are surprised by the civility he displays. He is taken to the leader of their village, and is instructed in their language. To the disbelief of all the horses, "Houyhnhnms", he is as intelligent as they are. Their leader inquires about his world, and is stunned to find that the roles of horses and men are reversed. He is disgusted by the society Gulliver reveals. The society of the Houyhnhnms is much friendlier, but less personal. They do what needs to be done to survive, and don't nurture hate nor encourage violence. Gulliver's eyes are opened by the Houyhnhnms, and finds himself progressively more disgusted by humanity. It slowly dawns on Gulliver that the repulsive Yahoos are actually humans who arrived on the island far earlier. He falls in love with the society of the Houyhnhnms and no longer wishes to leave the island. He is sadly forced off of the island and tries to live in seclusion on a nearby one. He is discovered by sailors and taken aboard against his will. The captain is a very kind and patient man and cares for Gulliver despite his repulsion.
When he arrives home he is disgusted by his own family and can't stand their presence for over a year, instead conversing with a pair of horses he purchased. He ends with a statement about how these islands he visited are technically property of England but that he sees no advantage to colonizing any of them. He desires to protect the Houyhnhnms most of all, as their noble society is something he believes we should all strive for.
While I found the book fairly interesting at times, the language used was hard to follow, and it often went off onto rants that were both uninteresting and irrelevant. However, I do know that this book was intended to be a satire, and the boredom experienced may be an intentional act by Swift. I found many of the ways these societies operated purely ridiculous and totally unsustainable, but perhaps this was also intentional. I would assume that this was done to make me think about WHY I found them ridiculous, and if it was the product of close mindedness or fact. After looking into the story more when writing this, I found many small hints that indicate the satirical tone of the book.
While the first reading was a little grueling, the review and discovery of small hints was very enjoyable. I would recommend this book to anyone with the perseverance to get through the dry parts, as the rest of it is truly interesting.
[Note the free edition, titled _Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World_, includes only the first two parts of the four sections that make up Swift's book. In this review, however, I consider _Gulliver's Travels_ in its entirety, hence the five-star rating.]
When I was a child, growing up in Latin America, my parents would buy me a magazine that included the classics of world literature in simplified versions. There were at least two collections, and they include such works as _The Little Prince_, _The Iliad_, _The Jungle Book_, _Romeo and Juliet_, _Don Quixote_, _Robinson Crusoe_, _Around the World in 80 Days_, and of course, _Gulliver's Travels_. Swift wrote an acid satire on politics, reason, science, and humanity in general, yet his book metamorphosed into children's literature. Even this transformation attests to the greatness of _Gulliver's Travels_. In order for a book to transform itself that way, it has to be more than a simple artifact; this book is a living organism.
While _Robinson Crusoe_ (1719) can be described as a novel (some call it the first English novel), _Gulliver's Travels_ (1726) falls into a different category. The best way to describe Swift's book would be as a fake travel narrative. Swift, in other words, was playing with genre conventions the way postmodernists would, some 200 years later. _Gulliver's Travels_ can be filed--with some alterations--under Children's Literature because it is an adventure story, and because of its unforgettable images. This is what generally comes to mind when _Gulliver's Travels_ is mentioned a race of minute beings, a race of gigantic beings, a flying island, rational horses. Yet this book features a good deal of scatological humor. Gulliver extinguishes a fire by urinating on it. In the flying island, a group of scientists try to find a way to turn feces back into food. There are also many instances of the grotesque, especially the description of breastfeeding in the second voyage.
_Gulliver's Travels_ is divided into four parts, each of which could be read independently. The most famous, and perhaps the most "harmless" is the first, the voyage to Lilliput, during which Gulliver meets a race of tiny people. This first voyage satirizes politics in Swift's time. For example Gulliver is criticized by the creative way in which he extinguished the fire, and even though he had good intentions, he achieved a good result through a foul method. Gulliver is, in this particular case, Swift, writing biting satires in order to inspire change in his society. The second voyage takes our "hero" to Brobdingnag, where people are huge. It is all a matter of comparison now, Gulliver is the Lilliputian. (Voltaire would write on the exact same theme, under the direct influence of Swift, his 1750 story _Micromégas_.) The third voyage was the last to be written, and it is, in my opinion, the most imaginative. A flying island sounds like a wonderful thing. This island is called Laputa, a name you're familiar with if you're a Miyazaki fan. If you know Spanish you'll laugh, and you're meant to. (In my children's edition of the book, by the way, the island's name was changed to Lupata, for obvious reasons.) Laputa is a satire on the Royal Society, which was dedicated to knowledge through science, following the Cartesian belief that knowledge should be objective and the product of reason. Laputa rules since it is in the sky, it can fly over any potential rebellious region below and block the sun and rain. The third voyage also includes visits to other lands, such as Luggnagg, where Gulliver meets a race of immortals, and Glubbdubdrib, where the traveler can talk with ghosts.
The fourth and last section of the book requires a separate paragraph. This is the voyage to the land of the Houyhnhnms, a word that appears impossible to pronounce until the reader is told that it is basically the neighing of a horse. Houyhnhnms are just that, horses, but these animals are pure reason. They show no emotions, and they have subjected a grotesque, nearly human race known as the Yahoos (Swift coined this term, incidentally). Gulliver loves the Houyhnhnms, and he cannot stand the fact that, to them, he is simply a more sophisticated type of Yahoo. This voyage is the one that has the deepest effect on Gulliver. His return to England, and the way it affects him after life among the Houyhnhnms, is perhaps the most pathetic episode in the book.
Swift has been labeled a misanthrope because of the view of humanity conveyed by _Gulliver's Travels_. The reader must remember, however, that the narrator of this book is not Swift, but Gulliver. In fact, Swift's works were published anonymously, as if the author wore a different mask each time he wrote one of his satires. Gulliver criticizes humanity, but he is even more worthy of criticism himself. Regarding Swift, he once wrote that he hated "that animal called man," but he loved individual human beings. This is not such an uncommon attitude. Other people feel the exact opposite. Many of us have heard the saying, "I love humanity, but people annoy the hell out of me." In any case, satire implies caring. If one didn't care about humanity and its institutions, one wouldn't bother to write about them. Behind the acerbic criticism lies a concern for what the satirist is criticizing, and a desire for improvement. Gulliver's Travels is one of the highlights in the immortal tradition that goes back to Petronius' _Satyricon_ and Apuleius' _Metamorphoses_, and which includes such varied works as Rabelais' _Gargantua and Pantagruel_ and William S. Burroughs' _Naked Lunch_.
If you are looking for a physical copy of the book, I recommend the one that belongs to the Ignatius Critical Editions series. The quality of the paper and the binding are excellent. I decided to get this edition because it includes the text of Gulliver's Travels with its original typography (Nouns are capitalized, some Words or Phrases are in Italics, though sometimes it is hard to figure out the Reason why), and footnotes. Since these editions are meant primarily for students, many of the footnotes clarify terms that I myself did not need clarified (“inimitable,” for instance), but others are helpful when it comes to background and symbolism. The book also includes six critical essays, and I liked the variety of these. I especially enjoyed the essays by Mitchell Kalpakgian ("Gulliver the Epic 'Hero' and 'Great' Travel Writer A Modern Battles the Ancients") and Dutton Kearney ("The Man Who Is Not Virtue, Politics, and Gulliver's Travels).
If _Robinson Crusoe_ is a realist novel, _Gulliver's Travels_ is a work of fantasy. Both are great traditions in English literature, and both of these books constitute early examples that have stood the test of time. Both works, furthermore, are highly moralizing, though the difference lies in the focus. Defoe's novel presents a positive example; Swift's book, several negative ones. In a sense, these works are two sides of the same coin. There is something for everyone in _Gulliver's Travels_. I don't hesitate to call it one of the most amazing books I've ever read. Some might say it is not a book for children, but I disagree. It is a book for children, but that is only one of the many things that it is.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy the book!
We read this for book club and I did not realize there were 2 more parts of the story missing, felt a little foolish, wished I would have realized it was not complete.
I read the Illustrated Classics version as a kid and when I was in my mid-teens, I read the full version. To this day, I am still enjoying both versions; which one I read depends on my mood and how I feel.
The author uses great metaphors, like storms, to transition between different islands. Each change in setting teaches many important lessons without the reader really realizing it. How the author does this is a mystery and keeps the reader hooked,, wanting to know what will happen next snd if the characters will ever retturn home. You also wonder how things will change for thr main character if their journey does end and what the long lasting effects will be. Not just on that person, but those around them and where they live.
This is an interesting, intriguing, edge of your seat book that you don't want to miss!
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