The Annotated Gulliver's Travels

Oh man.

This book was sheer torture. It was truly a difficult read.

The writing style was extremely dry, bland, and boring. It lacked any sort of excitement or vividness.

Swift indeed had some really interesting ideas. There was an island of people no larger than your finger, which was quite a unique concept. Another island had people that were 60 feet tall, which was also quite astonishing. There was a floating island, an island of scientists, and the island of Yahoos. However, despite these interesting ideas, the execution was really hard to appreciate. The way the story was told and the ideas were presented just didn't engage me.

I came very close to putting this novel down many many times. It was a struggle to keep reading.

I admit to not being a fan of early Victorian literature in general, but this particular book was just painful to get through. It didn't hold my attention and I found myself constantly looking forward to the end.

Overall, I was quite disappointed with this book.

Lol, I love this book!

It is truly a remarkable piece of work. From the moment I picked it up, I was completely engrossed. The story is so captivating, filled with twists and turns that keep me on the edge of my seat. The characters are well-developed and relatable, making it easy for me to invest in their lives and emotions. The writing style is engaging and流畅, making it a pleasure to read. I find myself constantly thinking about the book even when I'm not reading it. It has become one of my all-time favorites. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a great read. Whether you're a fan of fiction or non-fiction, this book has something for everyone. So, go ahead and pick it up. I guarantee you won't be disappointed!

Lol, I really do love this book!

Okay, I didn't manage to complete this thing. It was really bad. I was quite shocked actually. I kept wondering why no one has pointed out that this is a blatant rip-off of "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" and "Honey I Blew Up the Kid". It's so painfully obvious. I just don't understand why this Daniel Defoe wannabe hasn't had his butt sued. Maybe he managed to avoid that by writing his rip-off in a really long and frankly boring old-world style. So much so that all the lawyers would probably fall asleep before they could even type up the writ. The other stuff in there that isn't about Lilliput and Brobdingnag or whatever, like talking horses and such, and I'm pretty sure they're also in "Lord of the Rings". So it's more rip-off. Although I never watched that movie all the way through because it's kind of boring and also kind of gay.

Ps - Some real geek types have private messaged me saying that it wasn't Daniel Dafoe who wrote this but Jonathan Swift. I mean, seriously, get a life. They're all dead anyway, right? They're like deader than dead. Who really cares. Lol.

There are many here among us

Who think that life is but a joke.

Bob Dylan

When Gulliver first emerged into the light of day for a more genteel, Georgian reader than those who read Pilgrim's Progress in the previous century, the echoes of its hero, Christian, must have reverberated through that reader's mind!

This fantasy has haunted my steps and dogged my days throughout my life. It represents a Pilgrim's Progress for me as well - as for Dean Swift, an Anglican priest - through the unwholesome and most depressingly harrowing moral landscape that was my and Swift's life.

But placed in a historical context, it's a tirade against religious narrow-mindedness, liberalism, and intellectual freedom. A real mixed bag!

Nevertheless, the politely Houyhnimic, and thus archly knowing Philosopher-Kings of Georgian Britain judged Swift to be rather strange, as their modern counterparts judged me. For we were both bipolar.

Just outside the bounds. Beyond simple decency. A stranger to intellectual progress. Why?

You see, when a kid first wakes up and chooses ethical behavior, he often feels catapulted into a Land of Liliputians. If he rebels, he's blacklisted by their establishment, tied to the ground with tiny, inextricably knotted threads while he sleeps, and roundly criticized by their tiny, tinny middle-class voices.

In short, he's just too proud by an unhealthy margin. In my case, to make matters worse, I just laughed at them. Hence my bipolarity. I needed an outlet!

If he still isn't tamed, he'll then be courted and disgusted by the humungously odorous Brobdingnagians. That's his second temptation, and it's seldom met with hesitation. Gulliver, though, reacts with panic. As did I.

If still unrepentant and self-willed, his next stop will be Laputia and its surrounding archipelago of islands. For he must at least learn humility.

There he'll be seen as a danger to himself and polite society when he continues to value himself over others.

Refusing to recant, his final stop is the Isle of enervatingly intellectual Houyhmnms. Who despise him. And rightly so, for they outshine him in their paradoxical intelligence.

He'll be exiled into ignominy from thenceforth - up a creek without a paddle: he's condemned to swim back to Ireland. Thank heaven, then, for the small mercy (a canoe) he's then given!

And like Gulliver, crushed, I was finally humble.

Oh, and it's not a fantasy.

It's the enforced progress of a half-baked pilgrim who STILL only regresses until he learns. That was me.

John Bunyan would have just sighed and said that's life for us Christians as we grow in faith, pride intact at first.

If we want to be saved, we must swallow that pride. All at once.

We must not live a life that is a Slaughterhouse Five -

For you MAY be saved (and maybe not, if you haven't survived the trial).

For just like Billy Pilgrim, we still have a chronically enlarged ego that has simply got to go:

By letting the Lord "trample out His wine press where His Grapes of Wrath are stored." And believe me, we all deserve it. But how.

And so we reach Heaven.

The end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive at the place we started

And know the place for the first time.

Gulliver's Travels is a remarkable work that offers a plethora of insights. The quote "“...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.” highlights the universal nature of human conflicts. In this book, we are presented with a total satire, criticizing all the social problems and conflicts that have persisted since Jonathan Swift's time and continue to this day.

Throughout his four travels, Lemuel Gulliver discovers the unique ways of life, thoughts, customs, and laws of each nation he visits. He attempts to integrate with them and compares what he sees and feels with the reality of his homeland. The similarities found in the novel with the present or any historical period show that social organizations have not changed much. The author's reflections truly invite us to sit down and talk with someone, leading to a long and in-depth conversation.

On the other hand, I must admit that I found it amusing to discover that Swift makes fun of adventure novels. I read some lines that almost entirely reminded me of the plot of Robinson Crusoe, one of my favorite books. His cleverness in making a certain type of novel that was very common at that time look bad is incomparable. What a genius Swift is!

Returning to the book, the way it is written is what impressed me the most. One could read any of the four parts independently without missing much. Even within each travel, each chapter is well-differentiated. If one opens the book at random and reads what is in front of them, the reader will hardly get confused and will easily find a message that will make them immerse themselves in their thoughts.

In conclusion, this is a work that gave me more than I expected. It is a story that made me reflect and let my mind soar more than I imagined. The author made me realize (even more) that time passes, but bad habits remain, to the detriment of some and the benefit of others.

There is so much bitterness in this book. Its fierceness is terrifying; it is no wonder that it has been emptied and dismembered until it has been transformed into a shapeless narrative to be presented as a "children's book." That version has its adventurous charm, but this novel was conceived by the author as a severe criticism of so-called civilized humanity, and indeed children seem to be the only ones to whom this reproach is not addressed. I like to remember my first contact with Gulliver: I was about nine years old, I happily read adventure novels and my mother bought me a sumptuous illustrated edition of this book, then lamenting for months because, for some reason, I avoided it and preferred to read others. (I have tried to ask, to verify the reliability of my memory: she remembers the affront very well. :P) When I finally read it, I was ecstatic: it was a different, surprising adventure book, and over time I remained affectionate towards Swift, later discovering his qualities as a satirical author.

That is the effect that the brutally mutilated version can have on a child. Adults, however, must know that the real Gulliver is quite another thing. Swift seems to be moved, in his criticism, mainly by political reasons, and in particular by the disappointments that led him to be marginalized from the London politics of the time, regarded with suspicion by both parties in which he had been active. A political party of any era can only fear such a critical and satirical mind: there seems to be in Swift an almost anarchic inspiration, even if expressed in democratic terms, and some of his ideas appear strangely moderate, as if he had limited himself to avoid censorship, or worse troubles in case he was discovered (the first edition of the book, like others of Swift, was indeed published anonymously). The same impression is given when reading his ideas on religion: he, a clergyman more by necessity than by vocation, seems to know perfectly well that he is responsible for more than one heresy.

None of his contemporaries is spared; not even the queen, ridiculed in a scene that leaves little to the imagination and that makes evident the reason for the cuts in the children's version. The English nobility and the ruling class are harshly criticized: Swift finds in the social order of the European countries of the time something deeply inhuman, a society based on corruption and the privileges of a few so-called nobles. The parliamentary system, in particular, seems to him particularly corrupt; the book collects numerous short "treatises" on politics disguised as conversations between Gulliver and the monarchs of the islands he visits during his travels. Many of his criticisms could also be applied to modern Europe, but I think it is good to be honest in this: Swift was writing about his time and it is better not to abuse his honesty.

His criticism is made particularly sharp by satire: from the little Lilliputians whose ministers, to prove that they deserve their position, must perform circus exercises on the rope in front of the king (:D); to the scientist-philosophers who inhabit the flying island of Laputa (...), who take hours to make any decision, and whose abstractions lead them so far from reality that they need servants to remind them to speak or listen to their interlocutors; up to the horses (Houyhnhnm) of the last island, whose intelligence produces in Gulliver a strong aversion to the human race. Swift seems to feel the need for a different species, contests the supposed superiority of the human race, and (from a cultural point of view) of the rich European nations, whose civilization is often harshly criticized. His ability makes it difficult to understand which of Gulliver's statements about the English government are the result of his fantastic sarcasm and which instead correspond to the author's thought.

Among Swift's obsessions there seems to be a strong aversion to scientific progress. In reality, in my opinion, his criticism is directed at the application of scientific disciplines in the social field, and this is at least in part shareable: deciding the destiny of one's subjects according to calculations, measurements, mathematical formulas certainly does not make those sovereigns more just. Swift is an independent thinker; his isolation is responsible for many of the virtues and defects of his thought, and this is precisely his strength: more than many others he was able to see far beyond his era, and I am very happy to have been able to reread this book. When one can agree with his ideas (a bit boring in some "political" chapters, to tell the truth) one is happy to read it; and when instead one disagrees - well, the book is so full of crazy and surprising adventures that at least one has fun, becoming a bit like children again. A very melancholy book, dominated by a resignation that is, at the same time, a regret and a desire for independence.

I am glad to have obtained the references now. Although I could have simply read Wikipedia, which tells me that the Lilliputians are small, the Brobdignagians are big, the flying city is something, and the Houyhnhnms are really great. However, the author is rather unpersuasive on this point. Why are they so great? Just because they don't have a word for lying? Gulliver grows to love horses so much that he can't even speak to his own family when he gets home. I don't buy it. I just think he's a misanthrope.

I suppose the most significant use of reading this book is to understand the etymology of the word "Yahoo." Now I will call people "Yahoos" with much more relish than before. But the book itself doesn't have much substance. It's a methodical, list-like satire on travel books, which are already dull. There is no real plot, and no character development to speak of, except for Gulliver's persuasion that horses are better than people because people are so awful. He dwells at length on how terrible people are, but in the end, this just makes me think that Gulliver is a nasty person who enjoys making big, PJ-O'Rourke-ish generalizations. If I want to hate people, I'll just take the subway. I expect books to do more than that for me.

My class read this right after finishing Robinson Crusoe, and I firmly believe it was a brilliant decision by my professor.

Swift, in Gulliver's Travels, not only makes bold critiques of colonialism and slavery but also satirizes European government, rulers, scientists, and just about everything else. He uses this work to create the longest and best parody of Robinson Crusoe.

Taking Defoe's long-winded, preachy, and often boring survival story with its racist and imperialist undertones, Swift transforms it into a fun adventure that constantly mocks the exploration-story genre and throws in inappropriate jokes.

The book is divided into four parts. Part I is about Lilliput, which is well-known. Part II is Brobdingnag, where everyone is much bigger than Gulliver. Part III is Laputa and some other stuff, which is the weakest part. And Part IV was my favorite, as Gulliver visits an island of super-intelligent horses.

Overall, it's a funny and exciting read (except for Part III), although it does have some dull moments. For example, Gulliver's detailed descriptions of voyages and nautical terms can be tiresome. But that's the point: it's a satire of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

Swift also has fun with dirty jokes. The mention of Master Bates is clearly intentional. And on Lilliput, the king's request for Gulliver to stand with his legs apart leads to some humorous implications.

In conclusion, Gulliver's Travels is a unique book that offers a satirical take on colonialism and exploration while also providing entertainment. It's a must-read for those interested in the colonial imagination.