Gulliver is a classic of children's literature and I have always read it from this perspective, but I think Swift did not think of addressing children when he wrote it and therefore I think the book should be presented a little differently. The book is divided into four parts, one for each of the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a doctor on a ship at the end of the seventeenth century. The first voyage is the most famous, the one on the island of Lilliput: Gulliver is saved from a shipwreck and reaches this island on which everything, including people, is much smaller than normal. Gulliver is captured by the small inhabitants, who then turn out to be very kind, offer him hospitality and feed him and he agrees to help them in the war against their enemies: the two peoples have been at war for years because they do not agree on the correct way to break the eggs, whether on the large side or the small side. Gulliver makes them win, but since in order to put out the burning Lilliputian Palace, he urinates on it, he is condemned to death for outrage. He then escapes by sea and is collected by a ship and brought back to England. The second trip is the one to Brobdingnag (who knows where he got these names ...) where things are the opposite, in the sense that everything is much bigger than normal. Gulliver is caught by a 22 meter tall guy who then takes him around as a circus oddity to make money. One day Gulliver is put on sale and the Queen is buying him. Gulliver becomes the toy of the king's daughter and they even make for him a bespoke box that becomes his home, a kind of dollhouse. One day Gulliver's box is clawed by an eagle and then dropped into the sea. Gulliver manages to jump into the sea and will then be saved by a ship that will bring him back to England.
The third trip is the most complex, since our hero will touch various places, all very strange. We start from Laputa, a flying island where only scientists live and where there is an obstinately rational law, which in everyday life proves absurd and inapplicable. The inhabitants of Laputa oppress the inhabitants of Balnibarbi, where Gulliver will deepen his knowledge of a world ruined by science and reason and which loses sight of practicality: exhilarating examples are the projects to extract the sun's rays from cucumbers or to soften marble to make the cushions ...
Shortly after Gulliver goes to the island of Glubdubdrid: it is an island "in the past" where Gulliver discusses face to face with Homer, Aristotle, Julius Caesar and where we see his disappointments in realizing that they are much less "great" than how they are depicted on history books. Finally, Gulliver goes to the island of Luggnagg, where he meets the "struldbrugs", that is the "immortals": men a little like Divine Comedy characters, who are not allowed to die or be eternally young, and who are therefore in a pitiful state.
On his last voyage, Gulliver is the captain of a ship but during the voyage the sailors mutiny and unload him on a land inhabited by Yahoo, monstrous beings between man and monkey. They are dominated by the Houyhnhnm, horses with intelligence. These horses look strangely at Gulliver and he desperately tries to convince them that he is absolutely not part of the breed of apes, but the Supreme Council of Horses decrees that this is not the case and forces Gulliver to leave. Back in England, Gulliver bitterly reflects on how difficult it is for him to re-enter a "normal" world, made up of people that should be his kind, but which he does not find similar at all.
A somewhat disturbing book, which can be read with the eyes of a child, but which is appreciated immensely more as adults. Swift despises humanity in general, is disgusted by certain man's attitudes, condemns the Man for how he interprets and distorts culture, religion, politics and science, ultimately representing man almost as a Yahoo. Gulliver's various journeys are just different ways of seeing reality, in the end giving a very negative judgment on man, on his pride, on his inability to see how bestial and primitive his instincts are, which he insists on present as culture, rationality, progress. This amusing and seemingly light book contains a very harsh condemnation of society that exalts reason beyond the limit and that in the name of progress no longer has moral limitations. Gulliver also experiences diversity in his travels; he finds himself bigger than the others, then smaller, then more intelligent, then almost wild, even a pet. Gulliver acts and reacts, depending on the events, but in the end he always comes to the bitter conclusion that the Man is a beast. I think that each of us, every now and then, has the same impression.

O livro “As Viagens de Gulliver” esteve na minha estante desde 2004, altura em que colecionei um número razoável de clássicos. Curiosamente, li a maior parte desses livros e este ficou por ler.
Eu tinha uma ideia geral acerca da história, mas acabei por ter algumas surpresas e nem todas agradáveis.
Eu compreendo a crítica à sociedade da época, mas tendo em conta uma visão geral achei tudo um tanto ou quanto desagradável.
Percebi, e corrijam-me se estiver errada, que este livro é recomendado para um público mais jovem. Se eu tivesse lido este livro com 14 anos como era o meu objetivo, provavelmente, teria desistido a meio.
Agora, terminei a leitura e acho que vou ficar com esta história na cabeça. Não por ter sido um livro espetacular, mas pelas descrições desagradáveis e pela visão pessimista do escritor.

Gulliver is *us*, after all. The peripatetic ship’s surgeon Lemuel Gulliver experiences what all of us experience who share his wanderlust – traveling to new lands, experiencing what is new and different in the culture and the customs of the people there, and applying one’s observations of those new lands to one’s own homeland. And while travel narratives regarding destinations that were “new lands” to the people of 17th-century Europe were a popular genre in Jonathan Swift’s time, none of those stories of real-life travel has had the power or the influence of Swift’s fictional narrative Gulliver’s Travels (1726) – a book in which travel to fictional destinations provides Swift with the opportunity to anatomize and satirize the English society of his time.

A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, and an ordained Church of Ireland cleric, Swift famously described himself as “a Whig in politics and a Tory in religion” – in other words, a reformer when it came to political life, but a High Church Anglican with regard to spiritual matters. This state of mind – one that might seem a contradiction in terms to some – served Swift well when it came to the masterworks of satire that he composed throughout his literary career. In works like A Tale of a Tub (1704), A Modest Proposal (1729), and of course Gulliver’s Travels, Swift satirized Enlightenment rationalism as often as he lampooned the follies and corruption of the politicians and governments of his time.

The storytelling pattern of Gulliver’s Travels is deceptively simple, with a recurring pattern that has made it a favourite of readers young and old for almost 300 years now. Indeed, the pattern seems quite similar to that of the seven voyages of Sinbad from The 1001 Nights. Gulliver signs on for a voyage; the voyage somehow goes wrong, stranding Gulliver in a strange and hitherto unknown land; Gulliver undergoes strange and unusual adventures, survives them, and returns home with new knowledge – and then, eventually, gets the itch to travel again.

The first and best-known of Gulliver’s adventures takes place in the land of Lilliput – an island that a map helpfully shows to be southwest of Sumatra, and a place where human beings are tiny and Gulliver is a giant. Shipwrecked on the Lilliputian coast, an exhausted Gulliver falls asleep on the beach, and – in what is certainly the most famous moment from the book – finds that he has been tied down on the sand by the Lilliputians: “I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: For as I happened to lie on my Back, I found my Arms and Legs were strongly fastened on each side to the Ground; and my Hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner. I likewise felt several Ligatures across my body, from my Armpits to my Thighs” – all of this having been done by “human Creature[s] not six Inches high” (p. 23).

Freeing himself from his bonds, Gulliver proves to the Lilliputians that he is not an enemy, and eventually he is accepted as a visitor. Gulliver’s Lilliputian interlude provides Swift with opportunities to engage in political satire, as when a Lilliputian minister explains to Gulliver how a controversy has arisen in Lilliput over the question of whether one should break an egg at the big or the small end. The issue has caused six rebellions, the death of one king, and the deposition of another, and in the meantime “It is computed that eleven thousand Persons have, at several Times, suffered Death rather than submit to break their Eggs at the smaller End” (p. 48). Swift’s audience could no doubt have identified plenty of comparably trivial controversies of those times that had absorbed the energy and awakened the passions of the British people and their Parliament.

At the same time, however, the Lilliputians seem to have the better of the British in other aspects of their government, as when Gulliver points out that “In choosing Persons for all Employments, they have more regard to good Morals than to great Abilities”, as “Providence never intended to make the Management of public affairs a Mystery” (p. 57). Might it work better, in many contemporary democracies, if public service was seen as a part-time duty rather than a permanent full-time career?

Ultimately, Gulliver not only survives his adventures in Lilliput but returns to England having prospered from the journey. But, in another echo of Sinbad’s tales, Gulliver finds that “my insatiable Desire of seeing foreign Countries would suffer me to continue [at home] no longer” (p. 74). Once again, shipwreck lands him in an exotic place – this time, the land of Brobdingnag, a map of which places it on the North American west coast north of Cape Mendocino in present-day California. The people of Brobdingnag are giants compared to Gulliver; comparing his Lilliputian and Brobdingnagian experiences, the narrator reflects that “Undoubtedly Philosophers are in the right when they tell us, that nothing is great or little otherwise than by Comparison” (p. 82).

One of the intriguing qualities of Gulliver’s Travels is the way Swift emphasizes how each of his journeys changes his perspective. Accepted as a sort of pet by the people of Brobdingnag, and taken in by a princess named Glumdalclitch, Gulliver finds that being up close to these people causes him to be acutely conscious of flaws and imperfections in their skin; as he puts it at one point, “This made me reflect upon the fair Skins of our English Ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own Size, and their Defects not to be seen but through a Magnifying Glass, where we find by Experiment that the smoothest and whitest Skins look rough and coarse, and ill-coloured” (p. 86). These feelings of aversion persist even when Gulliver is set among Glumdalclitch’s maids of honour; these young and beautiful ladies strip naked in front of Gulliver, but because of their giant size, they are ”very far from being a tempting Sight,” and instead cause him no other emotions “than those of Horror and Disgust” (p. 110).

Gulliver also learns a healthy sense of perspective from his time in Brobdingnag. After his encounter with a monkey that is a small pet for the Brobdingnagians but is a King Kong-style monster to him, Gulliver insists that he faced the giant monkey courageously, but hears only laughter from his giant hosts by way or reply. As a result, Gulliver reflects, “This made me reflect how vain an Attempt it is for a Man to endeavour doing Himself Honour among those who are out of all Degree of Equality or Comparison with him” (p. 115).

Readers who are familiar with the conventions of satire – Swift drew upon the work of Roman satirists like Horace and Juvenal – will not be surprised to hear that human beings and human society do not come off well in Gulliver’s Travels. When the King of Brobdingnag asks Gulliver to inform him regarding the society from which he has come, Gulliver dutifully complies, and the king states in response that “He was perfectly astonished with the historical Account I gave him of our Affairs during the last Century, protesting it was only an heap of Conspiracies, Rebellions, Murders, Massacres, Revolutions, Banishments, the very worst Effects that Avarice, Faction, Hypocrisy, Perfidiousness, Cruelty, Rage, Madness, Hatred, Envy, Lust, Malice, or Ambition could produce” (p. 122) – an assessment with which many historians might agree.

The King sums up his impressions of humankind by telling Gulliver that “by what I have gathered from your own Relation, and the Answers I have with much Pains wringed and extorted from you, 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” (pp. 122-23).

Gulliver once again returns home safely, but eventually his wanderlust takes him back to sea, this time on a ship bound for the East Indies. One pirate attack and one island marooning later, he finds himself beholding the floating island of Laputa – “The Reader can hardly conceive my Astonishment, to behold an Island in the Air, inhabited by Men, who were able (as it should seem) to raise, or sink, or put it into a Progressive Motion, as they pleased” (p. 146). In his sketching of the relationship between the rulers on the floating island of Laputa above and their subjects on the earthbound island of Balnibarbi below, one senses Swift’s commentary on social hierarchy – especially as the people of Laputa could theoretically lower their island to ground level and crush any city of Balnibarbi, while the people of Balninarbi have evolved their own ingenious ways to prevent Laputa from doing any such thing.

The abysmal state of scientific “experimentation” in these lands gives Gulliver little reason to want to stay. In the nearby land of Glubdubdrib, by contrast, he gets to follow the example of Odysseus and Aeneas and Dante the Poet by descending into the proverbial abyss and conversing with illustrious people of antiquity. In Gulliver’s case, his interlocutors include Homer, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Agrippa, Pompey, Brutus, Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the Younger, Sir Thomas More, and René Descartes – all of which serves, for Gulliver (and presumably Swift), to establish how far modern leaders and thinkers have fallen from their classical forebears.

And the fourth and final of Gulliver’s voyages is to the land of the Houyhnhnms – noble, horse-like creatures who live by the rule of reason. They are served by Yahoos, filthy and primitive human-like creatures whose “Shape was very singular, and deformed” (p. 207). And as it was with the King of Brobdingnag, so it is with Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm host; when Gulliver describes to his host the cruelty and knavery of which human beings in Gulliver’s society are capable, the noble Houyhnhnm is appalled, stating that “when a Creature pretending to Reason, could be capable of such Enormities, he dreaded lest the Corruption of that Faculty might be worse than Brutality itself” (p. 227). In other words, we’re worse than the Yahoos – because at least the Yahoos have the excuse of lacking our ostensibly rational minds.

And over the course of his time among the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver comes to share their grim view of humankind: “When I thought of my Family, my Friends, my Countrymen, or Human Race in general, I considered them as they really were, Yahoos in Shape and Disposition, only a little more civilized, and qualified with the Gift of Speech, but making no other use of Reason, than to improve and multiply those Vices, whereof their Brethren in this Country had only the share that Nature allotted them” (p. 255). It should be no surprise that Gulliver wants to remain among the Houyhnhnms – or that, when he must return to his own human society, he does so with reluctance, and with a certain sense of disgust toward his own species.

Gulliver’s Travels succeeds as trenchant satire, to be sure, but it is also a great adventure story – part of the reason for its enduring popularity as a book for young readers, and for its frequent adaptation for cinema and TV, as with the Ray Harryhausen film The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960). One need not agree with Swift’s unremittingly bleak view of human character and human potential to enjoy this classic of world literature.

به اندازه‌ای که فکر میکردم، برام جذاب نبود. خیلی از جاها حوصله‌م سر می‌رفت و میذاشتمش کنار.
کتاب 4 فصل داره و هر فصل، شامل جدا افتادن گالیور از کشتی‌ای که در اون سفر میکنه میشه و رسیدنش به جزیره‌ای عجیب و غریب.
با این حال فصل آخرش واقعا خوب بود بنظرم. کل حرفی که نویسنده میخواست بزنه به خوبی تو این بخشِ آخر بیان شده بود.
با این وجود، من دارم با حال و هوای امروزیم به کتاب نگاه میکنم و برام قابل درکه که زمانی، تجربه خوندنش قطعا برای آدما شگفت‌انگیز بوده.

Gulliver's travels draw upon at least five traditions of world literature, some of them active from classical times to the present: the literal travel account, realistic fiction, utopian fiction, symbolism, and the fantastic voyage. Interestingly, the use of fantasy for a serious statement, virtually eliminated by two centuries fo emphasis on realism, is reappearing in our own day.
However, it has taken a wrong turn now. Instead of making a statement in a positive way most of the authors are doing it in a negative way.

This was my favourite classic growing up, and don't ask me why! Re-reading it as an adult didn't really feel like a book a child would like but oh well, I guess I liked all that poop and pee talk!
I am not a fan of satire and political science, I also think that it's almost impossible to fully understand a book like this which is so deeply rooted in the society it was written into, but overall I think it's still very enjoyable for a modern reader, and an important - albeit weird - classic of literature. The absurdity of the society Swift describes, the imagination he's capable of and the crazy ideas he put into this work still amaze me after re-reading this for at least the third time! This is probably one of those weird books that everybody loves but you just can't quite pinpoint the exact reason why. Maybe because we're all a little gullible deep down...

I really hated the main character and couldn't see much beyond him.

Yahoo!

I knew about Gulliver, the giants and the lilliputians, Blefuscu and Lilliput ever since I was a kid...or a teenager (?!)
Fact is, lilliputian is a dictionary term...and Hollywood recently paid tribute to the famous book with a (stupid, in my view) blockbuster...
In the first place, at my first encounter with Swift, I did not get the satire, nor the reference to politics - the hidden message of the first two parts of Gulliver's Travels.
Even worse, I started reading the last two parts and abruptly stopped, because it wasn't...well, my thing...

Now that I am older (and wiser?), I am working on The Best 100 Novels (ever). And Gulliver's Travels is among them. At least that's what the writers and critics asked by The Guardian say.
In great part, my taste in literature seems to agree with them:

Now that I have finished Gulliver's Travels, unabridged, I can say that I liked Gulliver's Travels, even if the book may seem a little dated and to get the whole meaning and enjoyment from the book, the reader would better be acquainted with the history and politics of Britain and France in the XVI th century, since that is what Swift is satirising:

"Lilliput and Blefuscu were intended as, and understood to be, satirical portraits of the kingdom of Great Britain and the kingdom of France, respectively, as they were in the early 18th century..."

there is much more to say about the yahoos, the hard criticism with which Swift treats the human species, but these are only my short notes, the impressionist images left in my mind after meeting some of mankind's greatest minds, though their masterpieces

Yes, I agree with Swift: people are bad:
"Yahoos fight with other groups and each other without apparent reason..
Their avarice for certain shiny stones of no practical use lead to more fighting and theft. In more contemporary or "civilized" societies, those "shiny stones" can be paralleled to material possessions such as jewelry..."
"Swift uses the Yahoos to as an example of Locke's suggestion that humans are more easily identified by vice than virtue..."

and in conclusion, I need only to walk on the streets of my "gated community"to see that:

"...even under the guise of civilization, humans are corrupt and decadent"

Another excellent invention of the Laputan Academy is a kind of fellowship or club, which they call in their language Sdaerdoog, or superior literature; and indeed the name does not belie the thing, for it is quite the most superior manner of enjoying literature yet devized. Noting that every man will be well acquainted with the great books of the world, yet few have the inclination to read them, the Laputan savants have ordained a scheme, no less ingenious than equitable, whereby this onerous duty is divided among the members of the club. On completing the perusal of a book, the reader composes a short pamphlet, that they term a "weiver", containing all the knowledge a gentleman of good sense and education may learn from the writing in question. This he then distributes to his fellows, who can can now read a score of weivers in the time they would perforce have laid down on the reading of a single tome. There are members of the Academy who do naught but read weivers the length of the day; it is impossible to exaggerate the prodigious extent of their learning, which would be the envy of any Oxford or Cambridge professor.

A melhor forma de protestar contra os vícios da sociedade mundana, encoberta na ociosidade e sufocada nos próprios erros - tão notórios mas não enxergados - será embarcar num fuga a esta vida quotidiana e partir na descoberta de novos mundos (sejam eles melhores ou piores).
Galgando mares “nunca antes navegados”, são emergidas umas quantas novas Atlântidas, cada uma com seus habitantes peculiares: desde pequenas criaturas com um pensamento tacanho a combinar até seres equinos que domesticam humanos, numa política sem conceito do mal na ausência de sentimentos negativos, passando por gigantones que acreditam ser senhores de todo o verdadeiro saber e ainda por humanos altivos, que sem asas habitam no ar, conteúdo da sua cavidade encefálica onde se encontram também tentativas de música e matemática, numa lógica em prol do desprezo pelos outros.
Apesar de fisicamente diferentes, no seu âmago confluem o menosprezo mútuo, sem enxergar os próprios erros mas criando barreiras, numa subversão de um sistema de relações onde a meritocracia é abominada. E, como de defeitos está o inferno cheio, mais e mais vão sendo apontados ao longo da narrativa: a confinação da mulher ao papel caseiro; o bajulamento de pensamentos infrutíferos que não são concretizados; a cultura da expressão daquilo que não se pensa, como forma de aumentar a ignorância de outrém; o difusão da ociosidade, leccionada com base em 3 disciplinas - a insolência, a mentira é o suborno.
Tais mentes e personalidades poderiam apenas desenvolver invenções sem meio nem fim como uma máquina para criar todas as frases possíveis de uma língua e permitir a qualquer um (mesmo sem qualquer instrução) escrever um tratado ou uma hóstia com rica em matéria cefálica, para aprender teoremas num ápice. Não é de admirar também que por estes mundos abundem teorias de conspiração para tentar perceber ma mensagem do partidarismo oponente.
Numa súmula de crónica de costumes, vão sendo apontados as falhas a serem redimidas por um acto de contrição introspectivo, porque só quando a pátria é abandonada, lhe damos o devido valor, iniciado por um sentimento sebastianista de saudade... até ao retorno, garantido pelo nobre povo português, detentor do dom da palavra, essa riqueza sem valor.

شاید تو زمان درستش نخوندمش ولی برام چندان جذاب نبود.
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جملات ماندگار کتاب:
زمان زود می‌گذرد و خصوصیات انسان هم با گذشت زمان تغییر می‌کند!
...
گذشت زمان معیارهای انسان را عوض می‌کند.
...
هیچ چیز در اصل بزرگ یا کوچک نیست؛ بلکه در مقایسه با چیزهای دیگر است که به نظر بزرگ یا کوچک می‌آید.
...
او هر وقت که مجبور نبود پادشاهی کند می‌توانست درست فکر کند.

رحلات جيلفر

ما خلا الكتب المفقودة والتي تم دفنها أو حرقها أو تمزيقها، يمكن اعتبار كتاب (رحلات جيلفر) من أكثر الكتب التي ظلمت في التاريخ، ففي سبيل نشر هذا الكتاب وترويجه، تم تبسيطه، اجتزاءه، ومن ثم تحويله إلى مجرد قصة للأطفال.

كتب جوناثان سويفت كتابه هذا وسط عصر تميز بانتشار كتب الرحلات التي يضعها البحارة الإنجليز، ويملئونها بالأكاذيب لجذب الناس، كما تميز بالصراع السياسي بين حزب المحافظين – الذي ينتمي إليه سويفت – وحزب الأحرار، وقد انعكس هذا كله في الكتاب والذي جاء كمحاكاة ساخرة جداً لكتب الرحلات، ونقد سياسي لتسلط حزب الأحرار وسياساته.

يخوض جيلفر بطل سويفت أربع مغامرات، ففي كل مرة تتحطم سفينته لتلقيه في جزيرة غريبة، مرة بين أيدي مملكة من الأقزام، وأخرى قوم من العمالقة وثالثة عند جزيرة طائرة، ورابعة عند شعب من الخيول، وفي كل مرة نعاين وجهاً من وجوه السياسة الأوروبية أو الإنجليزية، كيف يحاول مثلاً ملك الأقزام القضاء على المملكة المجاورة بالاستعانة بجيلفر، وهي صدى للحرب بين إنجلترا وفرنسا، الاضطهاد والتسلط الذي يمارسه ملك الجزيرة الطائرة وهو تورية لاضطهاد الإنجليز للايرلنديين والذي وقف سويفت ضده وبقوة، هذا غير السخرية المبطنة من كتب الرحلات وأسلوبهم وأكاذيبهم التي لا يسهل ابتلاعها.

سويفت ساخر لاذع، وكتابه هذا مذهل بجماله وذكائه، وترجمة الدكتور محمد الديريني أوفت الكتاب حقه، بجودة الترجمة، وبالهوامش التي تشرح مقاصد المؤلف وإشاراته المدفونة في الكتاب، كتاب لا يفوت.