Book Report: Gulliver’s Travels
Recently I read a novel named Gulliver’s Travels. It is written by Jonathan Swift, an Irish priest, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, and poet. When this book was first published in 1726, it became a huge success and was sold out within just a week. Gulliver’s Travels was so popular that it was translated into French, Dutch and German within only two years. The novel tells the adventure of Lemuel Gulliver, a practical-minded Englishman trained as a surgeon who goes on voyages when his business fails. By describing Gulliver’s travels in four places---- Lilliput, Brobdingnag, the flying island of Laputa and the land of the Houyhnhnms, Swift not only provides an interesting and adventurous travel experience but also bitterly satirizes the petty, envious, selfish, foolish, and cruel traits of humanity and its corrupt institutions, especially government.
Gulliver's Travels is one of the most eminent literary work in English history. I have read it when I were a child.Frankly speaking,this outstanding book is usually treated as a child's fairy tale,children like it because of the luxuriant imagination and humorous words. The stories are so exciting and interesting that many children find it hard to lay down. It seems that Gulliver’s Travels is a travel journal, which is just designed for recording Gulliver’s journeys. However, in fact, it is by talking about Gulliver’s experience that the author mirrors British society in the eighteenth century, and presents the theme of the novel and his viewpoints.
Gulliver is the leading role in this whole story.Generally speaking,he is a adventurer just like Robinson.However, different form Robinson Crusoe,Gulliver's Travels is a satire to the adventure fictions which admires human ability and compliment the mighty of human beings.Jonathan Swift built his leading role in another way to suspect the desire and evil of human beings. Gulliver is a positive and idealized image in this fiction.He is diligent and smart, has a great memory and a strong hunger to truth. Of course he is also good at observing and thinking.In a word, he is a wise warrior. The author wants to express his complains and give advice to English society by buliding this image. He puts all the merits on Gulliver and treats him as the deputy of his idea.
People comment the book as a satire to England even to the whole Europe. The novel devotes a considerable amount of space to criticize the corrupt and degraded institutions and government especially in the voyage to Lilliput. Here, the Lilliputians, despite their tiny size, wiled tremendous influence over giant-like Gulliver, taking advantage of his kind, non-aggressive and gullible nature to attack him with arrows and fasten him with ropes and manacles. This indicates the ruthlessness and remorselessness of government against any stranger which derives from their military capability they are proud of. Also, the emperor of Lilliput, who’s arrogant, vain and despotic, selects his high-ranking official not through fair competitions but their skill in “leaping and creeping”. That is to say, anyone who can jump the highest will serve his majesty the emperor. What’s more, the book offers a detailed description. For instance, the author mentions a diversion practiced by candidates for great employments and high favor, at court. These men perform the show to run for “great offices by entertaining the emperor when they are vacant and whoever jumps the highest without falling succeeds in the office.” This amusing but scathing satire reflects the abuse of power and absurdity of selection of officials in English monarchy and government. Furthermore, another powerful attack is leveled on the fact that the empire of Lilliput is at war with a neighboring country over the question whether eggs should be broken at larger end or smaller end, revealing the reality that human are petty in their petty hair-splitting quarrels over trivial matters which can never lead to conflicts and the ignorance and stupidity of people in government.
The last part of this novel, a voyage to the country of houyhnhnms, focuses on the Swift’s ultimate satiric object -- human nature especially those of evil. In this part, the author depicts a remote country where the masters are horses while servants are human-like creature called Yahoos. Here, through the sharp contrast between the nobility and kindness of horses and greed, ruthlessness, brutality and frivolity of yahoos, it reveals the undeniable fact that on one hand human race are evil, depraved, corrupted despicable and even inferior to horses and on the other extols great virtues like reason, wisdom, knowledge and self-control. Moreover, the novel presents a vivid picture of the nature of yahoos from the observation of houyhnhnms. For instance, the horses once described yahoos like this: if you throw among five yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, and instead of eating peaceably, fall together by ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself.” This saying explicitly shows the insatiable greed of yahoos. More can be found in the further description of yahoos by the horses. For example, houyhnhnms commented on the cunning and brutality of yahoos by saying “when two yahoos are contending for something they both want a third would take the advantage and carry it away from them both and battles are fought with each other without any invisible cause.”
To conclude, the great satire work Gulliver’s Travels still has its current significance for the modern society and there are many things in it deserving our deep thinking.
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