I wasn't aware of the true nature of Swift's classic. I always thought it was a fairytale about the extraordinary lands and people Gulliver finds on his travels. What Swift actually does in Gulliver's Travels, is take a huge dump on the status quo of his all times. He does so through a delicate, witty satire and a subtle sense of humor. The amazing thing is that he touches subjects that must have been considered taboo back then and suggests ideas rather heretic. As a result, he delivers a work of fiction that today seems modern as ever. So, what happened to those two stars?

Original as his ideas may be, his writing style made reading it a struggle. At times, it felt like I was stuck at the same point for pages. Maybe it's just me, but it was the first time I read something that totally hit home and at the same time it was so difficult for me to enjoy. A few times I felt my patience running low and flirted with the idea of giving it up but I never do that and besides, I really liked the ideas behind the words. Story-wise, it gets 5 stars, but as a whole I give it 3.

“...me enteré de que durante largas épocas aquel pueblo había sufrido la enfermedad que padece toda la especie humana: la lucha frecuente de la nobleza por el poder, del pueblo por la libertad y del rey por el dominio absoluto.”

En este libro nos encontramos frente a una sátira total, una crítica ante todos los problemas sociales y conflictos que afloraban desde los tiempos de Jonathan Swift, y que han perdurado hasta nuestros días.

Dentro de sus cuatro viajes, Lemuel Gulliver descubre el modo de vivir de cada nación que visita, sus formas de pensar, costumbres, leyes, etcétera; se intenta integrar a ellos y compara lo que ve y lo que siente con la realidad de su país natal.

Las similitudes que hallé en la novela con la actualidad, o con cualquier periodo histórico del pasado, dan una muestra de que las organizaciones en la sociedad no han cambiado mucho. Las reflexiones que plantea el autor son en verdad para sentarse a platicar con alguien y daría pie a una larga y prolongada charla.

Por otro lado, y aquí lo admito, me causó gracia descubrir que se burla de las novelas de aventuras; leí unas líneas que me recordó casi en su totalidad a la trama de Robinson Crusoe, uno de mis libros favoritos, y esa astucia de hacer ‘quedar mal’ a un tipo de novelas que en esa época eran muy comunes es incomparable. ¡Genio Swift!

Volviendo al libro, la forma en la que está escrito fue lo que más me impresionó. Esto es, que uno podría leer cualquiera de las cuatro partes de manera independiente sin perderse de (casi) nada, incluso dentro de cada viaje cada capítulo está muy bien diferenciado, ya que si se abre al azar y se lee lo que se tiene delante, difícilmente el lector se confundirá en la lectura y fácilmente hallará un mensaje que le hará sumergirse en sus pensamientos.

En conclusión, una obra que me dio más de lo que esperaba; una historia que me puso a reflexionar y echar a volar mi mente más de lo que me imaginaba; un autor que me hizo caer en la cuenta (aún más) de que el tiempo pasa pero que las malas costumbres se quedan, para el perjuicio de unos y para el beneficio de otros.

“Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.”

Swift’s masterpiece, brilliant satire Gulliver's Travels was published in 1726. Swift lived in the 18th century, times of great societal changes when the legacy of Enlightenment culminated in French Revolution and caused a great political and cultural change. Also, European exploration of the world advanced, resulting in growing colonization of the Americas and other parts of the world. That intensified mass migrations as well as expanded the slave trade on a global scale.

The novel is dived into four parts, each describing one of Gulliver's adventures. It has an epistolary form as the narrator is Gulliver himself, Swift is laying out the events as they happened, striving to be emotionally detached and as objective as he can, without deeper reflections. Swift never breaks character, and we see the world exclusively through Gulliver’s eyes, making the narration unreliable to an extent. The language is quite similar to Robinson Crusoe's, in long, detailed descriptions, somewhat dry and preachy tone with racist and imperialist overtones, but Swift uses the form to ridicule the adventure genre of novels and break out some inappropriate jokes, with unexpected descriptions of excretory bodily functions or genitals. Swift also writes a fantastic story, that could be in parts even considered as speculative fiction. With imaginative events the narrator claims have happened, he precisely mocks those who include untrue events in their travelogues and claim them to be true. Through his satirical overtones, Swift gives a critique of colonialism and slavery, European governments, rulers and scientists, doctors and attorneys, the complete human nature.

The first Gulliver adventure is the most famous one, in the land of Lilliputians, people 15.24 centimeters tall. Here Swift highlights the human tendency to consider themselves the most important creatures despite their small size, being unaware of their insignificance in the universe. The government of Liliput is unable to make and adhere to important decisions and their ruler abuses power. Lilliputians have a heavily bureaucratic society, with absurd rules and social conventions and brutal punishments if one does not adhere to them. Their obsession with rules comes from an inflated ego, where they have to have a rigid system that will hide their insignificance. They also want to use Gulliver as a weapon in their petty wars, which shows that someone's grandiosity is a reason for calculation and exploitation by others, and Gulliver is endangered by their number and eventually accused of high treason. Their system of court and punishment is not a reflection of justice - the more innocent a man is, the heavier and more brutal is the punishment, and the absurdity of the legal system is highlighted. They have a conflict with other nation in regards to what is the best way to break an egg - on a smaller or larger end. Here Swift comments on the conflict between Catholics and Protestants - and Gulliver is not surprised by the absurdity of the conflict over breaking an egg, which shows how people are well adapted to insignificant differences causing large divisions and violence among menkind.

On the next adventure, Gulliver visits the land of Brobdingnag, a land of giants. The giants of Brobdingnag are in contrast to the Lilliputians, showing that the concept of a person's size, significance, and power differs as the world around him changes. Gulliver's dominance and grandiosity, but also vulnerability is a relative concept, dependant on the size of those around him. Gulliver here has constant anxiety and feeling of inferiority as he goes from being colossal to smallness and endangered insignificance in Brobdingnag. Residents of Brobdinagnag have a tendency towards extremes, they are prone to both greed and tenderness. Here Gulliver is being exploited again by a farmer, which shows that exploitation is a matter of opportunity, not size, social status, or wealth. The king and queen of Brobdingnag are not malevolent, and they care for Gulliver, but at the same time regard him as a funny puppet. For them, it is unimaginable that Gulliver is a complete person, a man with a homeland with history, laws, philosophy. The king is interested in Gulliver's stories but only as entertainment, mirroring the European sentiment of the time, towards foreigners and other cultures, considering them fun and interesting, but not to be taken seriously. The king also has a very narrow, limited perspective of the world - he has absolute authoritarian power, the country is isolated, they do not travel, they learn only a few subjects in education, only ones with practical significance and they are not interested in philosophy and abstract ideas. They are very bodily, sensual and sexual, prone to pleasures and celebrations, with no interest in the progress of mind or culture. Their king does not understand war or democracy, representing the peaceful but limited and isolated monarchy. After the rescue from the land of giants, Gulliver can't get used to the size of normal people and he consideres himself bigger than them.

Gulliver’s third adventure is in the land of Laputa, floating island Swifts uses for satire of scholars and scientists, philosophers, Pythagoreans, and Enlightenment. In the contrast to Brobdinagnag, in the land of Laputa mathematics and music are of the highest importance, and the importance of theory and science is taken to an extreme. Lauptans know complex geometry but are at the same unable to build proportionate houses or make a decent suit. Their theoretical knowledge is deeply impractical, they do absurd experiments that are useless or even destructive, they complicate to an obscure level that becomes counterproductive. The wise man of Laputa embodies the futility of the search for knowledge as a means to an end, without taking into account the practical and concrete world. This is a reflection of Swift’s thought that the philosophers of the Enlightenment were theoretical in their thinking to the point of obscurity. It is a critique of schools and educational institutions, societies of top intellectuals. Gulliver also goes to the land of sorcerers where he encounters the spirits of the past - Alexander the Great, Caesar, Homer, Aristotle, Descartes. Gulliver here realizes how knowledge of history is used manipulatively for someone's interest as the history he knew was full of misinterpretation and learns that all knowledge of history is subjective.

The last adventure takes Gulliver in the land of noble talking horses, Houyhnhnms. Houyhnhnms use the benefits of a rational mind combined with moral virtues, creating a country where the common good is of the greatest value. Houyhnhnms tell only truth and live without lies, injustice, corruption, class, diseases, in an atmosphere of seemingly minimal suffering and inequality. They maintain domination with physical strength and reason. Here, friendship and goodwill replace romantic love and family. The marriages are arranged for the production of specifically two children of different sexes and they exchange of children if they are of the same sex, granting absolute gender equality, but with loss of emotional connections. Houyhnhnms have no emotional experiences of love (the death of a member of society is insignificant) which gives meaning to life, they do not celebrate and do not rejoice, creating a peaceful, but somewhat cold utopia with loss of individual identity and diversity.
In this utopian society, the ideal of Enlightenment, where reason rules everything, horses rule over the Yahoos- the savage, hairy, primitive, animal-like men. Houyhnhnms reject the primal human nature reflected in Yahoos, exposing their tendency toward superiority if one looks and behaves differently, rejecting everything that is not in line with their ideal of culture and reason. Benevolence and friendship are reserved only for their kind, embodying the basic idea of colonialism. Gulliver idealizes Houyhnhnmas, and being blind to their hypocrisy and narcissism, he wants to integrate into their society. In a quest in merging with the collective, he tries to give up the human identity that makes him different, being ashamed of his similarity to Yahoos.
But Gulliver is deceived because he identifies with the horses. Houyhnhnms are a reflection of himself — his superiority he felt towards every culture he came to, but also his superiority he feels towards the European society.

Gulliver is ultimely the antihero that used the exploration of the world and different societies for making the faults of human nature visible to him, but not being aware he himself is also part of society, akin to human nature he keeps critiquing, full of flaws. Gulliver is both “gullible” and full of prejudges and false concepts. He is grandiose, egocentric, pliable, without a firm attitude, restless, adventurous, insensitive, unsympathetic, always running from everything less than ideal, even if that means running away from his pregnant wife and children. Gulliver seeks the fantom of a perfect society and rejects the dark and primal side of human nature as unworthy of love. He criticizes and mocks others but never ridicules himself and his shortcomings. It is not a great wonder that Gulliver becomes the figure of repulsion and rejection in any society - he ultimately cannot integrate even in the society of narcissistic horses he regards as ideal. Unlike Don Quixote, his illusions and prejudices remain to the end, as well as disgust of others.

Through the novel in each adventure and the culture Gulliver encounters, we see a progression of the political systems from the unjust, brutal authoritarian bureaucracy of Liliput, to benevolent but ignorant monarchy of Brobdinagnag, to leaders that value science and philosophy of Laputa, and, in the end, to land of Houyhnhnms, the society that values reason, morality and equality - the utopian society that revolutions promised in the 18th century. But even the ideal society enlightened by reason and morality dominates tribes and races that are different, the ones they decide are not decent, or cultural enough to be equal. The morally superior horses push violently against the primal part of human nature symbolically represented by Yahoos, revealing the criticism of enlighted, morally superior European societies that continue to flourish in colonialism and the exponentially growing slave trade, brutal oppression of different cultures they call “savages” in the period that is known as "century of lights" or the "century of reason". Colonization is the ultimate expression of pride and narcissism. Even worse than open tyranny, is the oppression that comes from moral superiority.

Recommended for the readers going through the literary canon, lovers of satire, misanthropes and social critics but also for narcissists who think all humans are corrupt, except themselves.

There are plenty of times in this novel that a person is greatly aided by understanding the historical and political events happening during Swift's time, but by and large, this fantastic satire is about the process of politics, thought, and folly, rather than a roman a clef kind of flogging, and so the careful modern reader should be fine.

And man! Biting social satire, from the means in which we elect politicians (and the very pursuit of politics) to the ridiculousness of intellectual pursuit when it comes at the expense of physical awareness or practicality, Swift takes up the silliness of the entire world and pokes fun at it with a sharp wit. This is a book that is eminently quotable, often laugh out loud funny, and is a thoughtful and thought provoking look at things commonly accepted that perhaps shouldn't be.

This is one of those classics, by the way, that everyone thinks they know, but don't. Yes, I know you have seen the island of Lilliput, with the tiny people tying Gulliver up on the beach, but no, this is not what the book is about. Unfortunately, none of the adaptations of this book have been nearly as funny (and while the funny ones are indeed funnier than the stodgy tv miniseries that have come, they are generally brainless and spineless), nor striking or bold, so what people think of the book is almost entirely wrong and misguided. For the reader who is not particularly aware of satire, this might, at times, be a little obtuse, but a little concentration (wait, they are elected to political office by jumping higher than anyone else on a tightrope?) will unveil a bounty of mirth and delight.

Please read this. It's a delight to reread each time, and while it takes some wrangling, it is something that even manages to delight the jaded and bored kids of Brit Lit class I teach.

This was truly a struggle to get through. It's an older classic, and you can definitely tell. The writing is so boring, with long sentences and paragraphs that are pages long with no breaks. The language is super old, and the story isn't that great.

The story follows this man traveling to 4 different destinations. The first where people are tiny, the second where people are giants, the third where people are too smart/philosophical, and the fourth where people and horses are equal but the people are barbarians(?). Every place he visits has bizarre situations. It was very strange.

I understand that this is satire and the author has a bigger message, but it is soooo boring. You couldn't pay me to read this again.

Literature doesn't get any better than this.

“I had been for some hours extremely pressed by the necessities of nature; which was no wonder, it being almost two days since I had last disburdened myself. I was under great difficulties between urgency and shame …I went as far as the length of my chain would suffer, and discharged my body of that uneasy load …due care was taken every morning before company came, that the offensive matter should be carried off in wheel-barrows, by two servants appointed for that purpose.” (pg 22)

I should like to know what hellish contrivance of employment could possibly be worse than that of the two Lilliputian servants and their trusty wheelbarrows.

Everyone remembers poor Gulliver in breeches and three-cornered hat, pinned down with cords on a beach, by an army of minute soldiers. A young boy’s nightmare, no doubt, but there is much more to this book than this rosy image, reproduced endlessly on the pediments of toy shops and theme parks. This is indeed an astonishing book.

Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World presents itself as the plain and faithful account of the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon from Redriff and a captain of ships. The name of Jonathan Swift is omitted, as well as the fact that the whole narrative is a heap of whoppers from cover to cover. Moreover, the straight-faced narrator, fooling his “candid” reader’s credulity, concludes the books and declares that he “rather chose to relate plain Matter of Fact in the simplest Manner and Style; because my principal Design was to inform, and not to amuse thee” (IV, 12).

Swift’s novel — a masterful sham — is indeed written in the detailed and earnest manner of an ethnographic documentary. Through the four parts of this book, Gulliver first discovers the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu, with its diminutive inhabitants, off the coast of Java (if you ever fancy going there, the narrator provides a few maps and GPS coordinates); he then sails to the West coast of America and discovers Brobdingnag, where people are, on the contrary, of gigantic proportions; later on, he travels across the Pacific Ocean and visits the flying island of Laputa (no pun intended?) and Balnibarbi, as well as the necromancers of Glubbdubdrib, the immortals of Luggnagg, and finally Japan (spot the odd one out, if you can). On his last trip, around New-Holland (aka Australia), he travels to the idyllic island of the neighing and rational Houyhnhnms and of the despicable Yahoos — the most politically loaded and, in my opinion, best part of this book. A total of seven discoveries.

Each time, Gulliver’s ship is caught in a storm and shipwrecked, he lands on a strange island, meets the inhabitants, is the host of an important figure of that country, relates a couple of toilet-humour anecdotes, learns their tongue-twisting language, describes their strange manners, laws, gastronomy and architecture, provides — to his host’s great surprise and dismay — an account of the Europeans habits and customs.

However, what makes Gulliver’s Travels one of the significant works of the early 18th century is, apart from the Irish clergyman’s zany imagination in devising fictional countries and populations, his astounding deadpan humour, tongue-in-cheek mockery, and even savage assault, against his contemporaries and human nature in general. The universal ridicule and relentless attacks aim at practically everything, in a sort of encyclopaedic undertaking: nobility titles, impractical scientific achievements and Royal Academies, philosophical jargon, the quackery of physicians, the general falsehood that runs among lawyers, the foolish wish for a long life, European politics and wars, the English constitution, Western colonialism, human grandeur (i.e. vanity) itself, and — apologies to half my Goodreads friends! — the fake gloss of women’s skin.

Some of the fiercest invectives against the human race are, of course, put in the mouths of Gulliver’s non-human hosts; for instance, the Prince of Brobdingnag: “I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth” (II, 6). Sometimes, Gulliver speaks for himself: “having strictly examined all the Persons of greatest Name in the Courts of Princes for an hundred Years past, I found how the World had been misled by prostitute Writers, to ascribe the greatest Exploits in War to Cowards, the Wisest Counsel to Fools, Sincerity to Flatterers, Roman Virtue to Betrayers of their Country, Piety to Atheists, Chastity to Sodomites, Truth to Informers”; adding just after that, with a magnificent irony: “I hope I may be pardoned if these Discoveries inclined me a little to abate of that profound Veneration which I am naturally apt to pay to Persons of high Rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost Respect due to their sublime Dignity, by us their Inferiors” (III, 8). However harsh and offensive these comments might sound, even today, I must confess, there is always something extraordinarily amusing and toe-curling, invigorating even, about Swift’s prose. It is, all in all, an essential book on the human condition.

Needless to say, Gulliver’s Travels it at the epicentre of a literary tradition of both adventures on sea (to which it is an obvious parody) and social satire, that goes as far back as Homer’s Odyssey, through Sindbad’s tales, the Travels of Marco Polo, Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly, Thomas More’s Utopia, Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Montesquieu's Persian Letters, up to a significant part of modern literature: Voltaire’s Candide and Micromégas, James Cook’s Voyages of Discovery, Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Wells’ Island of Dr Moreau, Orwell’s Animal Farm, and all their more recent avatars — say, The Hitchicker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to name just one book, or even Godzilla and King Kong, on the big screen.

En realidad 4'5.
Me han encantado y enganchado el estilo, imaginación y creatividad de Swift. No sólo crea mundo diferentes, sino que detrás de cada párrafo, de cada pagina hay algo más: pura crítica política y social. Me ha sorprendido mucho la actualidad de su crítica.
Me chirrían mucho las adaptaciones que se han realizado tanto en el cine, series,...como libros para niños, quedándose muy en la superficie de lo que quería el escritor.
Para nada es un libro para niños.
Durante casi todo el libro ha sido uno de 5 estrellas; (spolier: sin embargo el tono triste y lúgubre que adquiere no lo disfrute tanto, quizás por culpa mía).
Jonathan Swift: magistral.

Let’s face it….
n  n
Jonathan Swift was a snarky, snarky bitch.

Gulliver’s Travels is like a giant pimp slap across the human race face and I am so glad I finally read this in a non-school, non-structured environment because I had a whole lot more fun with it this time around. Swift’s wit, insight and delivery are often, though not always, remarkable and he crams more well thought out jabs and toe-steppings in this slim 250 page novel than I would have thought possible in a work twice this long.  
 
This is certainly a classic that I believe people should read and experience for themselves outside of any required scholarly endeavors because I think that many of the ills, injustices and idiocies that Swift addresses in this novel are still, unfortunately, very relevant today. While Swift is short on resolutions or ideas for improvement (one of my disappointments) he does a marvelous job of exposing the problems that he perceived as existing within the 18th Century world, most particularly England, and opening the door for a more expansive, popular discussion on these issues.

Kudos for that, Mr Swift. 
 
From a plot perspective, Gulliver’s Travels is a series of adventures by Lemuel Gulliver to various undiscovered, fictional worlds that act as a backdrop for Swift, through his main character/mouthpiece, to scathe, rebuke, poke fun at and/or question all manner of political, religious  and social institutions, philosophies and groups. Everything from blind adherence to political ideologies or religious dogma, to ideological intolerance, to arbitrary social divisions and even the non-practical aspects of the rampant scientific explorations so in vogue at the time. Few groups were spared from Swift's caustic lens and many of his attacks are vehement bordering on brutal. 

Good. That is how such a work should be IMHO. 
 
Overall, I thought this was very worthwhile and many of Swift’s commentaries were piercing,  brilliant and exceptionally well done. Some of my personal favorites include: 
 
** Parodying the massive waste of energy and resources expended in political infighting in Great Britain between the Whigs and Tories by having the two Lilliputian political parties separated solely by the aesthetic choice between wearing high heels and low heels. I can only imagine how this parody played out among the MP of England at the time. 
 
** Making light of the tremendous importance placed on seemingly trivial differences in religious doctrine that often lead to the most acrimonious wars and civil strife by explaining that the genesis of a long and bloody war between rival factions of Lilliputians stems from a disagreement over where to crack eggs. One group break their eggs on the small end (Small Endians) and the other break their eggs on the large end (Big Endians). What I found most clever about this attack was the use of an ambiguous reference in each side's “holy book” that states, “all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.” That is just about perfect satire Mr. Swift.
 
** A biting jab at traditions and customs that people cling to long after there is no practical reason to do so is eloquently made when Gulliver describes the Lilliputians custom of burying their dead head first.

n   They bury their dead with their heads directly downwards, because they hold an opinion that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again, in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be found ready standing on their feet. The learned among them confess the absurdity of this doctrine, but the practice still continues, in compliance to the vulgar. n

When Swift is on his game, he is very, very effective.

** A wonderful anti-war statement is made through the horror and disgust with which the King of the giant Brobdingnagians (their size depicted as representing moral superiority) reacts to Gulliver’s description of gunpowder and his offer to teach the Brobdingnagians the formula for producing it:

n   I told him of ‘an invention, discovered between three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder…[t]hat a proper quantity of this powder…would drive a ball of iron or lead, with such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its force. That the largest balls thus discharged, would not only destroy whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the ground, sink down ships, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of the sea, and when linked together by a chain, would cut through masts and rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them. That we often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near…
...The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. ‘He was amazed, how so impotent and groveling an insect as I…could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines; whereof,’ he said, ‘some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver.’ As for himself, he protested, that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a secret; which he commanded me, as I valued any life, never to mention any more.n

Sorry for the long quote, but I thought that was a particularly moving passage.
 
** My personal favorite (purely from an enjoyment standpoint) is the depiction of the scientifically adept and common-senseless Laputans  who exemplify Swift’s serious gripe against scientific research that doesn’t have a practical and foreseeable benefit to society.

n  The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face…[H]e has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor’s gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate….n

Gulliver’s exploration of the scientific academy of Laputa was my favorite part of the novel and I thought Swift’s satiric chops were at there sharpest in relaying the societal dysfunction of the Laputans. 
 
Now I must drop some ice in the bath water. 

As much as there was to enjoy in this work, I was not as blown away by it as I would have liked to have been. For one thing, I thought that Swift’s prose was merely serviceable and I didn’t find much in the way of eloquence in his delivery. It was missing the ear-pleasing lyrical quality that I have come to expect when reading classic literature. The writing wasn’t bad by any means but it wasn’t as enjoyable or memorable as I had hoped. This may be an unfair critique given that this book’s legacy lies with its content, but the lack of beautiful prose kept me from being able to enjoy the interludes and non-meaty passages of the work.   
 
Also, some of Swift’s critiques fell a bit flat and didn't resonate with me as much as those mentioned above. For instance, the recasting of famous historical figures like Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar as being more subject to the moral frailties of the human animal than the established texts would have us believe. Swift uses this as the springboard to discuss the less than wholesome practices of securing political power today and that is a good thing. I just found the use of the legends of antiquity unnecessary and not particularly effective. That’s probably a personal bias of mine as I have always found those figures fascinating to read about.   
 
Here's my biggest problem. One of the principal arguments that Swift makes in his novel is that balance and moderation are the keys to success both individually and as a people. Extremes of behavior and belief are the seeds from which disastrous consequences are born, according to Swift. That’s easy to say and it has an attractive ring to it, but I wish Swift had done a little more with it. This walkmy right into my biggest complaint about the story…the ending.
 
I thought that the ambiguity of Gulliver’s condition at the end of the novel was a bit of a cop out. It appears as though the reader is left to determine whether Gulliver was (1) a man disgusted with humanity as a result of his exposure to the morally righteous and logically rational Houyhnhnm or (2) a man whose ill-conceived and intemperate worship of, and infatuation with the Houyhnhnm made him just another unbalanced yahoo whose loss of perspective and left him deranged.  
 
Part of the answer of this would stem from determining whether Swift was holding up the Houyhnhnms as a model to follow or whether their own passionless adherence to logic was itself a subject of parody. However, as with the end, I think Swift was less than certain of his position (or of the position he wanted to state) and thus left too much ambiguity to the reader.
 
Now I understand that often these kinds of soft endings are perfect as they allow the reader to interpret the work for themselves. However, here where Swift has been bludgeoning the reader with his opinions throughout the entire work, to suddenly punt and not clearly express a case for his protagonist seems to be a miss.
 
That said, I am the first to acknowledge that it is anywhere from a distinct possibility to a metaphysical certainty that the “miss” here is on my part, but that was how I saw it. I wanted Swift to wrap up and summarize the effect of the journey on Gulliver and provide a statement about what should be drawn from his experience so that a better road could be paved for using his travels to address the problems on which it shined its light.  
 
3.0 to 3.5 stars. Still…HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

Relectura con mi hija

"This is a giant rip off of Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Honey I Blew up the Kid." This is a line from Paul Bryant's review,which made me smile.

Gulliver's Travels works equally well as a biting satire on the human condition,as a children's story,a morality play,and for that matter as the source for some fun movie adaptations.

First read in my childhood as an Urdu translation,later as a textbook and finally went through the whole thing by choice.

The first two voyages to Liliput and Brobdingnag are a lot of fun. After that,the two remaining voyages to Laputa and the land of the yahoos,though laced with deep meaning are not as memorable.

An interesting series of adventures,or rather misadventures.It entertains as well as vexes the reader.