Gulliver's Travels (Signet Classics)
by Jonathan Swift
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jonathan SwiftIntroduction: Leo Damrosch
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-06-01
ISBN: 0451527321
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Signet Classics
Book Reviews of Gulliver's Travels (Signet Classics)
Book Review: Is ethnic cleansing justified by natural reason?
Summary: 5 Stars
I am rather disappointed by the book that definitely is a classic. Lilliput is just another image of monarchy, but in no way different from what Swift knew. The criticism comes from the scale of the people who are extremely small. Brogdingnag does not change this approach, only the scale of the people who are extremely big, though in this case there is a direct criticism of the exploitation the « grotesque » Gulliver is the object of. Laputa, Balnibarbi and Luggnagg show a strange floating saucer in a kingdom dominated by unpractical scientists who try to do everything upside down. It is a satire of scientists in general who are so little concerned by the welfare of the community that they can ruin just for the sake of implementing their hypotheses. Glubbdubdrib is funnier because it enables Gulliver to meet all kinds of people from the past and this leads to remarks about philosophers or politicians or generals that show how small and little and even tiny they were. Japan only shows the extreme anti-christian policy that can be reached there and the extreme self-centeredness of the Dutch, which is probably a criticism of the crown in England. But the last voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms is by far the best because here we reach both a severe criticism of the human race reduced to its animal instincts and behaviors, and a utopian society in which evil does not exist because it cannot even be conceived, because it is totally out of reach for these kind reasoning and reasonable horses. And yet Gulliver is expelled because he is a Yahoo, no matter what, and the natural reason of these dominant horses leads to rejection, after having found in Gullivers explanations a solution to get rid of the Yahoo by sterilizing them into extinction, just the way men do with horses in European countries, just a little bit more systematically. This leads to the idea that genocide and ethnic cleansing is a natural attitude, an attitude that goes along with natural reason that says that the species standing in the way of reason have to be exterminated. But the book never reaches that level of thinking, since Swift could not know about such policies that will flourish in later centuries, and yet the Irish occupation should lead him to some idea of what such a principle can lead to. Thus at a second level of reading we find a criticism of « natural reason » though it is not fully expressed and developed. After all it is that « natural reason » that led, already in Swifts times, to the genocide of Indians in America : they were not human, they were attributed all kinds of shortcomings like aggressivity, the love of war, the lack of cleanliness, a strong stench, and many other elements of the type. We can even note that beyond the genocide, the sterilisation policy will be implemented, but not on males, rather on females, and this in some US states up to the 1950s and maybe the 1960s. And this policy initiated by the Scandinavians in the early 20th century (and it was to last at least fifty or sixty decades) was to be systematically used against physically or psychologically impaired people. Hitler will follow that model, pushing it one bit further. In a way the book becomes then some vision of the future. This book hence is a prefiguration of many other books on the subject, such as « The time Machine », « Brave New World », « Animal Farm », etc. This book seems to be the archetype of a literary genre in English literature, and of course the archetype of many films dealing with the same subject, particularly extraterrestrials.To conclude I will say that such a book is definitely not for children even if it is often assigned to young children in some schools.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Summary of Gulliver's Travels (Signet Classics)
This masterpiece tells the incredible tale of Lemuel Gulliver, an English ship's surgeon. He is shipwrecked upon the shores of Lilliput, where the residents are only six inches high, then journeys takes him to the land of Brobdingnag, populated by giants, a floating island in the sky, and a land where horses have intelligence and man lives as a beast. His adventures, while read by children as an adventure story, are a devastating satire of society and human foibles. Part travelogue, part realism, part symbolism, Gullivers Travels remains a treasured classic of literature.Classics Books
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