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Book Review Gullivers Travels Jonathan Swift

Book Review: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

July 6, 2018 By Jessica Filed Under: Book Review 2 Comments

Gulliver's Travels

'I felt something alive moving on my left leg ... when bending my Eyes downwards as much as I could. I perceived it to be a human Creature not six inches high' Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters - with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms and the brutish Yahoos - give Gulliver new, bitter insights into human behaviour. Swift's savage satire view mankind in a distorted hall of mirrors as a diminished, magnified and finally bestial species, presenting us with an uncompromising reflection of ourselves. This text, based on the first edition of 1726, reproduces all its original illustrations and includes an introduction by Robert Demaria, Jr, which discusses the ways Gulliver's Travels has been interpreted since its first publication.

Gulliver’s Travels immediately reminded me of the Princess Bride. They are both travel novels that make fun of travel novels by having the author retell someone else’s story but edit out the things they don’t like from the “original” story. For Princess Bride, it was pages and pages of packing and unpacking from the fictional novel it’s based on. For Gulliver’s Travels, it was “innumerable passages relating to the winds and tides… (pg 9-10)” although some overly technical passages were left in for kicks and giggles. Another hilarious stab at travel novels was when Gulliver says, “This is enough to say upon the subject of my diet, wherewith other travellers fill their books, as if the readers were personally concerned whether we fared will or ill. (pg 215)” I wonder how many travel novels Jonathan Swift read before he thought, “Shut up about the food!!”

Part I is about the little people and is obviously the most famous part of Gulliver’s Travels, but I didn’t realize that their trees and animals were small, too. Cute! I was surprised by the dark humor in this part, but I enjoyed it. The best example is when the little people discuss the problems of killing Gulliver and the huge carcass that they would have to deal with and the awful plague that would probably come from it.

The little people going through his things and describing them had me as confused as they were. I couldn’t figure out what some of the things were, either, because this book was so old. But their descriptions were delightful.

We saw a hollow pillar of iron, about the length of a man, fastened to a strong piece of timber larger than the pillar; and upon one side of the pillar, were huge pieces of iron sticking out, cut into strange figures, which we know not what to make of. -Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (pg 35)

The little people took themselves way too seriously. They pick their leaders based on tight rope walking and not actual skills. This strange scene led me to Sparknotes where I learned that Gulliver’s Travels was a political satire. I just thought it was a fairy tale. It’s enjoyable as both though it’s less confusing when I knew what he was making fun of. Now I get the tight rope walking thing-it’s about politics and power. Throughout the book, some of the social commentary seemed universal and some seemed to go over my head since I didn’t know some of the context of the time period. The footnotes in this Penguin edition helped a lot.

I couldn’t believe the audacity of the little king asking Gulliver to let them poke his eyes out and calling it lenient. Gulliver says he must not be smart because it seemed the opposite of lenient to him. That’s because it’s not lenient!! Gulliver actually considers doing it because they did give him a nice noble title. I can’t imagine in what universe a noble title would be more useful than your eyes (and I’m pretty sure that’s the point.)

I was also shocked by Part II . I was familiar with the part where he becomes small in a land of giants. But they do whatever they want to him since he’s small including the women playing with him naked. Um…what?! His reaction is to be repulsed by their smell and blemishes that he can now see because of his size. This was disturbing on so many levels (luckily it’s short and not graphic.) According to Sparknotes , the microscope was new at the time and they were interested in the small details of things that actually made them gross.

The political satire became more and more blatant (even without reading Sparknotes, I knew the dispute about the eggs in Part I was referring to Catholics and Protestants) with ironic criticisms of the places he visited, like this example for the giant king in Part II:

He confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and reason, to justic and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes; with some other obvious topics, which are not worth considering. -Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (pg 126)

A more indirect criticism of English politics is when the king doesn’t want to learn about gun powder from Gulliver because he says must have been invented by Satan (which was actually an idea from Milton, according to the footnotes). The king from part II is the one who says this famous quote:

“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” -Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (pg 123)

Part III was the strangest part and the least familiar to me. The society is full of people called flappers who are always getting the attention of people by flapping them with a padded stick so they know when to talk and when to listen. The whole society seemed as zoned out as someone who is severely addicted to their smartphone. The flappers were weird, but maybe they would be useful today going around whacking people when they are on their phone too much. Just a thought.

As strange as part III is, I found it the most relevant. The whole section is a satire on technology. They have such high and unrealistic aspirations that they neglect the present. The experiments they did were absolutely crazy like extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. But according to Sparknotes , all the experiments mentioned were either proposed or actually carried out at the time this was written. After reading this section, I couldn’t help but think that we often use technology to come up with unnecessarily complicated solutions to things or that in the pursuit of advanced technology, we’ve come to neglect basic things. We value innovation at the expense of maintenance .

Allow me to geek out about one interesting fact. In Part III, Jonathan Swift made a fictional predition that Mars had 2 moons that turned out to be true. So cool!!!

Part IV probably had the best wisdom and advice. He visits a utopia populated by intelligent horses. I listened to the audiobook read by David Hyde Pierce and it was delightful, especially in part IV where he pronounces all the horse words like a horse would – neighing and all. Probably my favorite tidbit of wisdom from the horses was when Gulliver was explaining wars. He talks about the reasons and that the worst wars were caused by different opinions especially if they were about “things indifferent. (pg 226)” Sad, but true.

I found this to be another piece of good advice:

He could not understand why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given; that neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies. -Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (pg 219)

I was surprised that they believed at the time that depression only hit the lazy, luxurious, and rich. They believed hard work was the cure. I’m glad we know more about depression now and this isn’t true. However, this old fashioned perspective reminded me that the lazy and luxurious lives we as modern people does not always make you happy. I would rephrase his statement and replace “depression” with “unhappiness” and it’s a good reminder to me that hard work is more likely to make you happy than laziness.

What’s this? Is that a flash of feminism in this book written over two hundred years ago? The horses thought it “monstrous” that women were educated differently than men. It made half the population “good for nothing but bringing children into the world. (pg 247)”

At the end when Gulliver finally makes it home, instead of trying to improve society from what he learned from the horses, he despairs that the world he lives in isn’t as perfect as theirs and does nothing. He becomes almost crazy by talking to horses and becoming disconnected with his family. It’s quite a jarring ending to a fairy tale. I didn’t like it at first, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that maybe his point was that we often give up when things need to be fixed. We read satires or the news and see the many, many problems in the world and make no effort to fix any of them because we can’t fix them all. And honestly the society of horses that he thinks is so perfects sounds downright boring. No family connections, all logic, no emotions etc. Even so, I wished Gulliver had at least tried to do something. What a great insight, though. Don’t be like Gulliver – do something .

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About Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gulliver's Travels , A Modest Proposal , A Journal to Stella , The Drapier's Letters , The Battle of the Books , and A Tale of a Tub . Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift published all of his works under pseudonyms — such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier — or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

Classics Club

October 20, 2020 at 9:10 pm

I just am finishing up Gullivers Traveld. Our Classics book club will be discussing it this Saturday. I found your review and absolutely loved it! I will be sharing it with our book club and will definitely give you props!

I too loved part three the best in the book! Your techno observation of that Section was great!

Looking forward to following you on Instagram!

May 13, 2021 at 11:01 am

Well thank you! I read this book for my book club as well and we had a lot of fun talking about it. I hope your book club had fun too!

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Gulliver’s travels by jonathan swift | book review.

Posted by: Editor October 29, 2011 in Author , Books , Classic , English 78 Comments Updated: May 12, 2015

First published in 1726, this collection of Lemuel Gulliver’s fascinating voyages all over the world, has been loved, read and re-read by every child and adult familiar with the English language. The story appealing the children for its fictional quotient made of wonderful creatures ranging in size from a few inches to several feet, flying island, etc. and to adults for its keen representation of human nature and European society. The witty and satiric style of Jonathan Swift’s narrative has an universal appeal to every intelligent reader while the circumstances and surroundings aid in accomplishing the tale by providing the elements of fantasy and thrill.

Gulliver’s Travels – Book Cover (Published in year 1900)


Author		Jonathan Swift
Publisher		Wordsworth Classics (Dec 1999), Harpercollins (2010) and Others

A short introduction in form of a letter by Gulliver to his readers precedes the travel chronicles, which comprises of four parts, each containing Gulliver’s experiences in a different land. Following is the synopsis of each story:

Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput (4 May 1699 — 13 April 1702)

Gulliver, a surgeon on a merchandising ship, finds himself to be the lone survivor after a shipwreck on an unknown shore where he falls asleep out of weariness. The next morning, he wakes up to find himself bound by tiny threadlike ropes and surrounded by a crowd of people, less than 6 inches high. After a while, “the Lilliputians” are convinced of his being harmless to them and slowly Gulliver gets accustomed to the people and the place. His observations of this race and their way of living, their king and his court, Gulliver’s accommodation and way of living form the next few chapters of the book. Gulliver also assists the king in a war with their enemies, the Blefuscidians, by depriving them of their entire feet but refuses to help the king in enslaving them. This and the strong dislike for him by some of the king’s ministers bring on Gulliver the dislike and penalty of the king. To escape from this, he runs away to the island of Blefuscu, from where he manages to leave the country in an abandoned boat. A passing ship rescues him and brings him back to England.

Gulliver’s travels – English movie
Jajantaram Mamantaram – A Bollywood movie (in Hindi and English)

Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag (20 June 1702 — 3 June 1706)

Gulliver ventures to a sea voyage again on a ship called Adventure which facing a storm goes off course and is forced to land at an island for fresh water. Gulliver goes on the shore and finds himself abandoned while roaming around as his fellow shipmen are driven away from the land by a monster. On the island he finds himself with the race of giants with height more than 70 feet. A farmer brings Gulliver home where his daughter nurses him. The farmer treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money. The Queen of Brobdingnag takes a liking to Gulliver and buys him off along with hiring his nurse as governess. Gulliver becomes a favourite of the royal family and discourses with the king at length about his native country and the rest of mankind. Though treated kindly, he keeps encountering many ridiculous accidents due to his puny size. Finally, one day, when on sea-shore, a giant eagle takes away Gulliver’s wooden house with him inside and drops him in the sea, from where he is rescued by some sailors and comes back to England.

Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan (5 August 1706 — 16 April 1710)

This time, Gulliver’s ship is attacked by pirates who force him to leave the ship and the guy finds himself on a desolate rocky island, from where he is rescued by the inhabitants of a flying island, called Laputa. The description that Gulliver gives of the Laputians, is a strong caricature of that of musician and mathematicians, describing them as totally impractical race dwelling in the theoretical arts only. Laputa flies over a bigger island called Balnibarbi by virtue of its magnetic properties. Gulliver describes the people, the king and his kingdom, and his method of ruling from sky. He next ventures to visit the capital city of Lagado and its grand academy where all kinds of disgusting, ridiculous and fruitless research work is done.

Waiting for a ship to go to Japan, Gulliver takes a short trip to the island of Glubbdubdrib, which is inhabited by magicians. The chief of magician has power to bring back the dead and Gulliver enjoys conversations with all his favourite philosophers, politicians and other great men from history of his choice. In Luggnagg, he comes across immortals called struldburgs and for the first time starts considering the problems that immortality will bring in form of old age and infirmity. Finally, he goes to Japan, and from there to England with an intention for staying home for the rest of his life.

Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms ( 7 September 1710 – 2 July 1715)

But the sea calls Gulliver again, and he starts his journey as a captain of a ship. During the voyage he loses some men due to illness and is forced to recruit others from different places, who finally turn the crew against him. This band of seamen is going to become pirates and hence casts away Gulliver in a landing boat. On this island, he first encounters a deformed, hideous and savage race of animals and later the masters of this land, apparently horses with advanced and reasoning intellectual capacity, who call themselves Houyhnhnms. The savage race is nothing but uncivilised and brute humans known as “yahoo” on this island.

Gulliver becomes a member of the horse’s household, and slowly becomes extremely fond of their lifestyle and way of thinking, realising all the follies and vices of humankind during his conversations with his master horse. He reloves to spend rest of his life on this island but the Assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization, and expels him.

He is then rescued, against his will, by a Portuguese ship, and is surprised to see that Captain Pedro de Mendez, a Yahoo, is a wise, courteous and generous person. He returns to his home in England, but he is unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos and becomes a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family and his wife, and spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables.

Gulliver’s Travels is often considered to be a children’s book, mainly due to the wide publicity and popularity that the first part of the novel describing Gulliver’s adventures in Lilliput has received. But, the book in reality, is a reflective and mufti-dimensional work that addresses and represents many a traits of the human nature and human society. The chronicles are full of metaphors and the best part that links these together is the change of perspective. In every part of his voyage, Gulliver encounters a different race i.e., small, big, scientific and eccentric, wise and natural, and hence, starts viewing himself and rest of his brethren with a different point of view, identifying the evils in the human society and their root causes step-by-step. At the end of his voyages, Gulliver is a changed man, so much so that he abhors the mankind in general.

The book consists of ever-lasting wisdom and though the metaphors become crude and complex, especially in the last part, is still a worthy read. “Gulliver’s Travels” is one of those books that never lose its contemporariness …

Enjoy… 🙂

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We Need to Talk About Books

Gulliver’s travels by jonathan swift [a review].

Lemuel Gulliver, a young man from Nottinghamshire, has considerable difficulty setting himself up in life. Unable to afford a Cambridge education, he becomes an apprentice surgeon, then serves as ship’s surgeon on a voyage of three and a half years. Returning to England, he marries and tries to set up a practice in London but still can’t earn enough to sustain himself and so sets off on voyage again aboard the Antelope .

Shipwrecked after a storm somewhere in the eastern Indian Ocean (or western Pacific Ocean), Gulliver manages to swim to shore and collapses from exhaustion. When he awakens, he finds he has been tied to the ground. Little people, not six inches high, are crawling all over him, speaking to him in a language he does not understand. When he tries to get up, they sting him with their arrows. Apparently great engineers, they load Gulliver onto a contraption to wheel him into their capital city, Lilliput, where they chain him.

While the Lilliputians discuss how to feed him, take care of him and what they are ultimately to do with him, Gulliver learns their language. He learns about their culture and customs, their systems of government and justice. The Lilliputians release Gulliver with a set of conditions and Gulliver tries to make himself amusing and useful to them. When a fire breaks out at the palace, Gulliver promptly puts it out by urinating on it which does not amuse everyone!

Gulliver also learns of Lilliput’s enemy – Blefuscu – the France to Lilliput’s England. Gulliver plans and carries out an attack on Blefuscu, snaring their entire navy together and pulling it away. But Gulliver stops short of annihilating Blefuscu and will not allow Lilliput to subjugate them.

Not long after, Gulliver learns of a plot to eliminate him and that articles of impeachment have been drafted against him. Most concern his refusal to destroy the Blefuscudians and suspicions as to why, but his urinating on the palace is still offensive to some.

WHEREAS, by a Statute made in the Reign of his Imperial Majesty Calin Deffar Plune, it is enacted, That whoever shall make water within the Precincts of the Royal Palace, shall be liable to the Pains and Penalties of High-Treason: Notwithstanding, the said Quinbus Flestrin [Gulliver], in open breach of the said Law, under colour of extinguishing the Fire kindled in the Apartment of his Majesty’s dear Imperial Consort, did maliciously, traitorously, and devilishly, by discharge of his Urine, put out the said fire […]

Gulliver escapes Lilliput, finds a boat and, with the help of the Blefuscudians, makes it ready to sail. With luck, he is found by an English ship returning from Japan and makes his way home. But Gulliver spends only two months with his wife and children before he decides to sail again.

In all Gulliver survives four voyages to bizarre lands and lives to tell the tale. He visits Brobdingnab where, in the converse of his experience of Lilliput, Gulliver is tiny and everyone in Brobdingnab is gigantic relative to him. On his third voyage he encounters flying islands and witnesses the folly of pursuing science for its own merit and of immortality without eternal youth.

His final voyage seems to have had the most impact on Gulliver. He finds himself in the land of the Houyhnhnms where humans are unintelligent animals and it is a species of horse that are intelligent. Explaining the ways of humans to the Houyhnhnms – of war and lawyers, money and trade – leaves Gulliver disgusted with his own species and he resolves to find a deserted island to spend the rest of his life.

I was chiefly disgusted with modern History. For 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. How many innocent and excellent Persons had been condemned to Death or Banishment, by the practising of great Ministers upon the Corruption of Judges, and the Malice of Faction. How many Villains had been exalted to the highest places of Trust, Power, Dignity and Profit: How great a share in the Motions and Events of Courts, Councils, and Senates might be challenged by Bawds, Whores, Pimps, Parasites, and Buffoons: How low an Opinion I had of human Wisdom and Integrity, when I was truly informed of the Springs and Motives of great Enterprises and Revolutions in the World, and of the contemptible Accidents to which they owed their Success.

Though he is persuaded to return to England he can barely stand the company of his own species, even his own family.

Gulliver’s Travels reminded me of a couple of other books I have read. The first is Don Quixote by Cervantes. Gulliver is very satirical and full of political allusions. It would probably be fair to say that the novel is mostly a vehicle for making such satirical and political points. Swift covers Torys and Whigs, Catholics and Protestants and various British and European monarchs in veiled and naked references. For example, during Gulliver’s Lilliput adventure, allusions are made to Charles I, the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Carteret, the Duchess of Kendal and several other political figures and events.

[The King] 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. […] then taking me into his Hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these Words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in [: …] I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many Vices of your Country. But, […] I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.

At times it verges on the cynical. For example, Gulliver’s third voyage experiences of witnessing people pursuing science for its own sake and not for practical purpose, of ‘absurd’ research and of being so obsessed with it that they are themselves absent-minded and clumsy is apparently a dig at the Royal Academy and at Newton.

Gulliver’s Travels is very clever in its satire and a reader can’t help but admire its wit and imagination. But, like Voltaire’s Candide , this aspect to the story may have lost its relevance over time and may only endure in general terms. Coupled with the fact that it is not the most engrossing read, it reminded me of Don Quixote in that my admiration for the skill of its satire was almost matched by the effort that I had to make to keep reading it.

It helps that the story at times moves very quickly with little build up. It also helps that the story, especially the first voyage to Lilliput is often funny as well.

Another Professor showed me a large Paper of Instructions for discovering Plots and Conspiracies against the Government. He advised great Statesmen to examine into the Diet of all suspected Persons; their times of eating; upon which side they lay in Bed; with which hand they wiped their Posteriors; To take a strict view of their Excrements, and from the Colour, the Odour, the Taste, the Consistence, the Crudeness, or Maturity of Digestion, form a Judgement of their Thoughts and Designs. Because men are never so Serious, Thoughtful, and Intent, as when they are at Stool, which he found by frequent Experiment: For in such Conjunctures, when he used merely as a Trial, to consider which was the best way of murdering the King, his Ordure would have a Tincture of Green, but quite different when he thought only of raising an Insurrection or burning the Metropolis.

The other book Gulliver reminded me of was Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe , for a couple of reasons besides the obvious one of both being first-person accounts of far-off adventure. Firstly, like Robinson Crusoe , Gulliver was one of my favourite stories from childhood. Unfortunately, my love for them may only be for the abridged children’s versions I read as a child and will not transfer to the original texts. The original versions still contain the essence of what made these stories compelling for me as a child, whether it was the fantastic settings and events or the appeal of the characters. But that leaves long periods of story that are less interesting, written in English that is a little difficult for the modern reader.

Which brings me to the second thing they have in common. Robinson Crusoe (first published in 1719) and Gulliver’s Travels (1726) both represent early forms of the novel in English and should be understood in that context. They are the literary equivalent of watching silent film and ought to be appreciated and respected for the ground they broke but are understandably less engrossing to modern readers. An example for how the passage of time impacts the reading of Gulliver comes from the words used (the edition I read is based on the 1726 first edition). In almost any book from the past the writer will be using words that are unfamiliar to us or using them in unfamiliar ways. In Gulliver I found this to be more extreme; sentences that seem perfectly sensible to a modern reader actually have a very different meaning because one familiar word, still in use, is being used with a very different meaning no longer in use.

Otherwise the two works contrast each other quite strongly. Crusoe is a self-sufficient individualist who masters his predicaments though the use of reason and who tries to make the reader believe his story by emphasising its realism. Gulliver, whether in London or a fantastical land, is a somewhat impotent person, sceptical of reason and encourages the reader to doubt the veracity of whatever they read with his dubious tale.

Robert Demaria Jr, a Professor of English at Vassar College, echoes some of these thoughts of mine in his introduction to the Penguin black classic edition I read. He suggests that Gulliver’s Travels is more of a satire than a novel or a story, but its storytelling qualities explain its durability and repeated adaptation even though the satire is often lost in such retelling.

Demaria describes Swift’s deep involvement in politics during a tumultuous time including the execution of Charles I, the Tory crisis and the death of Queen Anne. Swift only wrote Gulliver’s Travels after leaving his political life behind, suggesting that the fictional medium was a safer place for him to say what he thought. Despite this Demaria cautions readers for assuming that Gulliver, his thoughts and beliefs, are a reflection of Swift, saying the relationship between the two is complex.

The original Gulliver’s Travels may have been a little disappointing to me having been fond of an abridged version in childhood. Its format and style is not very difficult given its age, but it may not be very engaging to a modern reader and most of the targets of its satire have ceased to be relevant. Still, it ought to be appreciated for the ground it broke and the inspiration and influence it provided future satirists, two in particular that I have read recently – Butler’s Erewhon and Voltaire’s Candide .

Gulliver’s Travels

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Table Of Contents

Gulliver’s Travels , four-part satirical work by Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift , published anonymously in 1726 as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World . A keystone of English literature , it is one of the books that contributed to the emergence of the novel as a literary form in English. A parody of the then popular travel narrative, Gulliver’s Travels combines adventure with savage satire , mocking English customs and the politics of the day.

Gulliver’s Travels is a first-person narrative that is told from the point of view of Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon and sea captain who visits remote regions of the world, and it describes four adventures. In the first one, Gulliver is the only survivor of a shipwreck, and he swims to Lilliput, where he is tied up by people who are less than 6 inches (15 cm) tall. He is then taken to the capital city and eventually released. The Lilliputians’ small size mirrors their small-mindedness. They indulge in ridiculous customs and petty debates. Political affiliations, for example, are divided between men who wear high-heeled shoes (symbolic of the English Tories ) and those who wear low ones (representing the English Whigs ), and court positions are filled by those who are best at rope dancing. Gulliver is asked to help defend Lilliput against the empire of Blefuscu, with which Lilliput is at war over which end of an egg should be broken, this being a matter of religious doctrine. Gulliver captures Blefuscu’s naval fleet, thus preventing an invasion, but declines to assist the emperor of Lilliput in conquering Blefuscu. Later Gulliver extinguishes a fire in the royal palace by urinating on it. Eventually he falls out of favour and is sentenced to be blinded and starved. He flees to Blefuscu, where he finds a normal-size boat and is thus able to return to England.

Gulliver’s second voyage takes him to Brobdingnag, inhabited by a race of giants. A farm worker finds Gulliver and delivers him to the farm owner. The farmer begins exhibiting Gulliver for money, and the farmer’s young daughter, Glumdalclitch, takes care of him. One day the queen orders the farmer to bring Gulliver to her, and she purchases Gulliver. He becomes a favourite at court, though the king reacts with contempt when Gulliver recounts the splendid achievements of his own civilization. The king responds to Gulliver’s description of the government and history of England by concluding that the English must be a race of “odious vermin.” Gulliver offers to make gunpowder and cannon for the king, but the king is horrified by the thought of such weaponry. Eventually Gulliver is picked up by an eagle and then rescued at sea by people of his own size.

On Gulliver’s third voyage he is set adrift by pirates and eventually ends up on the flying island of Laputa. The people of Laputa all have one eye pointing inward and the other upward, and they are so lost in thought that they must be reminded to pay attention to the world around them. Though they are greatly concerned with mathematics and with music, they have no practical applications for their learning. Laputa is the home of the king of Balnibarbri, the continent below it. Gulliver is permitted to leave the island and visit Lagado, the capital city of Balnibarbri. He finds the farm fields in ruin and the people living in apparent squalor. Gulliver’s host explains that the inhabitants follow the prescriptions of a learned academy in the city, where the scientists undertake such wholly impractical projects as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Later Gulliver visits Glubbdubdrib, the island of sorcerers, and there he speaks with great men of the past and learns from them the lies of history. In the kingdom of Luggnagg he meets the struldbrugs, who are immortal but age as though they were mortal and are thus miserable. From Luggnagg he is able to sail to Japan and thence back to England.

In the fourth part, Gulliver visits the land of the Houyhnhnms , a race of intelligent horses who are cleaner and more rational, communal, and benevolent (they have, most tellingly, no words for deception or evil) than the brutish, filthy, greedy, and degenerate humanoid race called Yahoos, some of whom they have tamed—an ironic twist on the human-beast relationship. The Houyhnhnms are very curious about Gulliver, who seems to be both a Yahoo and civilized, but, after Gulliver describes his country and its history to the master Houyhnhnm , the Houyhnhnm concludes that the people of England are not more reasonable than the Yahoos. At last it is decided that Gulliver must leave the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver then returns to England, so disgusted with humanity that he avoids his family and buys horses and converses with them instead.

A Summary and Analysis of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Gulliver’s Travels , first published in 1726 and written by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), has been called one of the first novels in English, one of the greatest satires in all of literature, and even a children’s classic (though any edition for younger readers is usually quite heavily abridged).

How should we respond to this wonderfully inventive novel? Is it even a ‘novel’ in the sense we’d usually understand that term? Before we launch into an analysis of Gulliver’s Travels and consider some of these questions, it’s perhaps worth recapping the plot (briefly).

Gulliver’s Travels : summary

Gulliver’s Travels is structurally divided into four parts, each of which recounts the adventures of the title character, a ship’s surgeon named Lemuel Gulliver, amongst some imaginary fantastical land.

In the first part, Gulliver is shipwrecked and knocked unconscious on the island of Lilliput, which is inhabited by tiny people. They take Gulliver prisoner, tying him to the ground, and he encounters the rival factions among the Lilliputians, such as the Big Endians and Little Endians, whose enmity started because they disagree over which side of a boiled egg to cut.

Then, he is enlisted into a campaign the Lilliputians are waging against a neighbouring island, Blefuscu. Gulliver drags the enemy fleet ashore so their invasion is foiled, and the Lilliputians honour and thank him – that is, until he refuses to be further drawn into the two countries’ war, at which moment they turn against him. It doesn’t help when he urinates on a fire to help put it out.

Gulliver takes refuge on Blefuscu, until a boat is washed ashore and he uses it to return to England, where he raises money for his family before embarking on a second voyage.

This time, in the second part of Gulliver’s Travels , our hero finds himself in Brobdingnag, a country which is inhabited by giants, rather than miniature people. When his ship runs aground, it is attacked by giants, and Gulliver is taken prisoner and given to the princess of Brobdingnag, a forty-feet-high girl named Glumdalclitch, as her plaything.

After arguing with the King over political matters – with Gulliver defending English attitudes and the King mocking them – Gulliver is picked up by a giant eagle and plopped into the sea, where he is rescued by a ship.

In the third part of the novel, Gulliver finds himself taken prisoner once again, this time by pirates, and taken to the floating island of Laputa. On a nearby island, Balnibarbi, he meets mad scientists and inventors who are engaged in absurd experiments: trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, or building a house from the roof down.

On a neighbouring island, Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver meets some magicians who can summon the dead; they summon numerous historical figures for him, including Julius Caesar, Homer, and Aristotle.

After this, on the island of Luggnagg, Gulliver meets the Struldbrugs: creatures who are immortal. However, this simply means they are foolish and weak than old men back in England, because they’ve had much longer to develop more folly and more illnesses.

Gulliver leaves Laputa behind, becoming a ship’s captain and continuing his voyages. Next, he encounters apelike creatures who, when he attacks one of their number, climb a tree and start discharging their excrement upon his head. (Excrement turns up a lot on Gulliver’s Travels , and Swift seems to have been obsessed by it.)

Gulliver is saved from a literal shower of sh … dung by the arrival of a horse, but this turns out to be a horse endowed with reason and language. Indeed, Gulliver soon learns that these horses rule this strange land: the horses, known as Houyhnhnms, are the masters, and the apelike creatures, known as Yahoos, are their semi-wild slaves. What’s more, Gulliver is horrified to learn that the Yahoos bear more than a passing resemblance to him, and to the human form!

What follows in this fourth part of the novel is a lengthy debate between Gulliver and the Houyhnhnms, who repeatedly show up the folly or evil of human behaviour as Gulliver describes it to them: war, money, and the legal system are all calmly but firmly taken apart by the intelligent horses.

However, Gulliver comes to prefer the company of the Houyhnhnms to the Yahoos, especially when he discovers, to his shock, that female Yahoos are attracted to him as one of their own kind. Gulliver resolves to stay with his new equine friends and shun humanity forever. He admires, above all else, the Houyhnhnms’ devotion to reason over baser instincts or desires.

But he is not allowed to stay with them for long. Fearing that he may inspire the Yahoos to rise up against their horsy overlords, they tell him to leave, and Gulliver regretfully builds a boat, is picked up by a Portuguese ship, and makes his way back to England. However, he struggles to readjust to human society, after he has spent time among the Houyhnhnms, and he prefers to pass his time in the company of the horses in his stable.

Gulliver’s Travels : analysis

We often celebrate great works of literature for their generosity of spirit: we talk of Shakespeare’s ‘humanity’, of Wordsworth’s empathy, George Eliot’s humanistic ability to feel for another person. But Swift is in quite a different tradition. He was disgusted by us all with our filthy bodies and rotten, wrong-headed attitudes.

Yet he wrote a great work of literature in Gulliver’s Travels , which tells us much about who we really are, especially through his depiction of the Yahoos, and who we could be, through Gulliver’s conversations with the Houyhnhnms.

Perhaps the key aspect of the novel here is its satire: it means that we can never be sure when Swift is being serious and when he is pulling our leg, when he is inviting us to share Gulliver’s views and when he wishes us to long to clout the silly fool round the head. That, too, is one of the signs of a timeless novel: its multifaceted quality. Gulliver’s Travels has more facets than you can shake a mucky stick at.

The same difficulty of interpretation – or divining authorial intention and meaning – often attends great works of satire. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), which was probably an influence on Swift and Gulliver’s Travels , is similarly difficult to analyse in terms of its author’s own views. Critics can’t quite agree whether More is pulling the reader’s leg in Utopia or sincerely offering a vision of a perfect world.

There are, however, some clues that much of the book, if not the whole thing, is supposed to be satirical: it’s hard to see the staunchly Roman Catholic More seriously advocating divorce by mutual consent, something that is encouraged in the book, nor is it likely that he was in favour of women priests, very much a feature of More’s looking-glass island republic.

So the same issue probably attends Gulliver’s Travels . Is Gulliver right to view the Houyhnhnms as the pinnacle of rational humanism – something that actual humans should aspire to emulate? Or should we be shocked by the Houyhnhnms’ proposal that the Yahoos should be forcibly sterilised, even exterminated, as a decisively in human attitude towards their fellow living creatures?

Swift’s disgust with his fellow humans was real, especially in the last few decades of his life when he wrote Gulliver’s Travels , but this does not mean he was not acutely aware of the dangers attendant on such misanthropy. It’s one thing to have a dim view of the human race as falling short of what they could achieve; it’s quite another to suggest that, because they succumb to wars and other dangerous follies, they deserve to be wiped from the face of the earth.

It’d be like a satirist writing in the present century suggesting that, because humans have been the main drivers behind climate change, the best thing would be for all human life to be annihilated from the planet. It’d be a solution to the problem (or part of it), but it wouldn’t be a very morally humane one.

And is Swift’s book, for all that, a novel as such? Like Robinson Crusoe , Defoe’s pioneering work published seven years earlier, Gulliver’s Travels presented itself to the reader as a genuine account, recounting four voyages made by Lemuel Gulliver.

Readers embarking on their journey of reading the book in 1726 may well have been forgiven for thinking it a travel book, like the bestselling books by explorers of the day such as William Dampier (who was one of the first to travel to Australia, around whose coast Swift locates the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu). But then the book takes a fantastical turn and we gradually realise we are in a work of the imagination.

So it’s perhaps best to answer the question ‘is Gulliver’s Travels a novel?’ with a cautious ‘yes … but only if we bear in mind it was written before the word “novel” had even first been applied to works like Gulliver’s Travels .’

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4 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels”

I heard that the severe-faced Swift claimed to have laughed only twice in his life – once when Tom was swallowed by a cow on stage in Henry Fielding’s “Tom Thumb the Great” (the little man with a great soul – or mirror image of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, aka “The Great Man” – presumably “with a diminutive soul” in Fielding’s satire). I can’t remember the other time Swift laughed. But he can sure get others to do so!

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Gulliver’s Travels. By Jonathan Swift.

LITERATURE MATTERS

In 1726 essayist and poet Jonathan Swift published his magnum opus , now regarded as an indisputable classic of English literature. Gulliver’s Travels is both a satire on human nature and a parody of popular travel narratives of the day. Swift’s satirical fury — William Makepeace Thackeray called it “furious, raging, obscene” — is directed against almost every aspect of early-18th-century British life. The tale recounts the expedition of Lemuel Gulliver, a practical-minded former surgeon turned captain of the high seas, who sets sail in his aptly named ship, The Adventure , to visit “several remote nations of the world.”

The most well-known scene of Swift’s satirical tour de force is Gulliver’s shipwreck on Lilliput, an island inhabited by a race of six-inch-tall people who enjoy arguing over trivial matters, such as whether boiled eggs ought to be cracked open at the big end or little end, a clever parody of contemporary British political and religious disputes. It is here on the shores of Lilliput where the brave traveler awakes to finds himself a god-like giant bound by a thousand tiny threads. His Lilliputian captors regard him with awe — and later use him as their personal Goliath to subdue the neighboring Blefuscudians. Swift’s satire is on full display when Gulliver is charged with treason for publicly urinating in the capital, even though he was doing so in order to douse a raging fire.

Later, in the kingdom of Brobdingnag, Gulliver (like Lewis Carroll’s 19th-century Alice) finds the tables have turned: Here, he is a tiny man in a country of giants who treat him as a zoological curiosity and exhibit him for money.

Through Gulliver’s subsequent experiences with the philosopher-citizens on the flying island of Laputa, Swift spoofs the speculations of scientism. The Laputans are so obsessed with theoretical science — they contemplate ways to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, for example — that they have to be reminded to listen to and speak with one another. Then there’s the land of the virtuous horse-like Houyhnhnms, whom Swift contrasts with the Yahoos, vicious brutes who bear a disturbing resemblance to humans.

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Book Review

Gulliver’s travels.

Jonathan Swift

Readability Age Range

Year published.

This political satire by Jonathan Swift is published by Sterling Publishing and is written for adults but is sometimes studied by kids ages 16 and up.

Plot Summary

Lemuel Gulliver is a ship surgeon whose voyages frequently end in shipwreck. He washes up on various islands where he meets, among others, tiny people called Lilliputians, giant Brobdingnagians, a race of horses morally superior to man known as Houyhnhnms, and the repulsive Yahoos who closely resemble humans. Jonathan Swift wrote the book as a satirical commentary on the political and social conduct of his day.

Christian Beliefs

If a Lilliputian doesn’t believe in “divine Providence,” he cannot hold a public office. The people of the islands Gulliver visits have holy men and religious rituals. There are a few brief mentions of the Christian faith, mainly as Gulliver enlightens his masters about European belief systems.

Other Belief Systems

Lilliputians believe the earth is flat and that people would be resurrected when the earth flips over. Therefore, they bury their dead upside down so that when they rise from death, they’ll be upright. Lilliputian children are removed from their families at infancy and raised by public institutions. The people of Laputa believe the stars play a major role in human affairs, and they are deeply concerned about the health of the sun as it relates to their survival. The island of Glubbdubdrib is named for its people, who are sorcerers. There, Gulliver is given the opportunity to conjure up spirits of many historical figures. Gulliver expresses his desire to be like the Struldbruggs, who live forever on earth.

Authority Roles

Most of the leaders Gulliver encounters are eager to learn more about his and generally treat him with respect. They are frequently perplexed, however, by his stories of human wars, weapons, excesses, deceit and man’s general treatment of one another. Gulliver’s first master in Brobdingnag tries to exploit him by forcing him to speak to the point of exhaustion before audiences. Although Gulliver loves living with the Houyhnhnms, he is eventually forced to leave because those in power believe him to be a vile Yahoo.

Profanity & Violence

None, per se, but Gulliver makes frequent references to urination and defecation. A few examples: In Lilliput, he angers a member of the royal family by urinating on her burning home to put out the fire. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver tries (and fails) to jump over a pile of dung. He is bothered by the torrential sound of the Brobdingnagians’ urination. On a later journey, he meets a researcher who attempts to create food from human waste. Gulliver often mentions private body parts. For example, he asks that the Lilliputians avert their eyes when walking under his legs, and he talks about the Brobdingnagian women stripping him naked and having him walk on their bare breasts.

The word anus appears a half-dozen times. One Laputan scientist attempts to cure a disease by inserting an apparatus there, and Gulliver describes the Yahoos as vile creatures with hair around the anus.

Sexual Content

Gulliver discovers that many of the historical characters he conjures up are whores, pimps and sodomites, some of whom are involved in incest or prostitute their own wives and children. Gulliver tells the Houyhnhnms about the excesses and unhealthy behavior of humans, including prostitution and its related diseases. Gulliver also comments on the Yahoo females’ aberrant sexual behavior, and he mentions how one, whom he believes to be about 14 years old, threw herself at him after seeing him bathe in the river.

Discussion Topics

If your children have read this book or someone has read it to them, consider these discussion topics :

Lying is so foreign to the Houyhnhnms that they don’t even have a word for it. What do you think our society would be like if lying didn’t exist?

Gulliver initially thinks that being immortal like the Struldbruggs would be wonderful. The people of the Laputa nation inform him otherwise. Would you like to live without dying? What would you do with your time? How would living forever on a new earth with Jesus be better?

What do you think are some of the most valuable things Gulliver learns on his journeys?

By the end of the book, Gulliver is convinced that he and all humans are descended from Yahoos. Can you name any aspects of the Yahoos that are similar to human traits or behaviors?

Which of the places Gulliver visits would you most like to see? Why?

Why do you think the book spends so much time discussing excrement and private body parts? Did that bother you, or did you think there was a purpose for it? Explain your answer.

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Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan swift.

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Gulliver's Travels: Introduction

Gulliver's travels: plot summary, gulliver's travels: detailed summary & analysis, gulliver's travels: themes, gulliver's travels: quotes, gulliver's travels: characters, gulliver's travels: symbols, gulliver's travels: literary devices, gulliver's travels: quizzes, gulliver's travels: theme wheel, brief biography of jonathan swift.

Historical Context of Gulliver's Travels

Other books related to gulliver's travels.

Full Title: Gulliver’s Travels , or, Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships
When Written: 1720-1725
Where Written: Dublin, Ireland
When Published: 1726
Literary Period: Augustan
Genre: Satire
Setting: England and the imaginary nations of Lilliput, Blefuscu, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms
Climax: Gulliver’s decision to reject humankind and try his best to become a Houyhnhnm
Point of View: First person

Extra Credit for Gulliver's Travels

By Gulliver, About Gulliver. Although contemporary editions of Gulliver’s Travels have Jonathan Swift’s name printed as author on the cover, Swift published the first edition under the pseudonym Lemuel Gulliver.

Instant Classic. Gulliver’s Travels was an immediate success upon its first publication in 1726. Since then, it has never been out of print.

Quizzes, saving guides, requests, plus so much more.

Book Review: Gulliver's Travels

Part of the reason I rated this book low is because I had high expectations. I read an abridged version as a kid and I thought the general story was cool. Part of the reason I rated this book low is because Swift fills the reader's head with unnecessary details until important plot points are lost in the middle of description paragraphs. The events that take place in Gulliver's Travels are interesting, sometimes clever references to 19th century politics and general social commentary: Gulliver passes through a variety of islands with caricatured citizens. Although I do not expect Gulliver or the citizens of these islands to be developed characters, as their only purpose is to serve as a means to tell the story, the intrigue of the plot dissolves when paired with Swift's writing style. Swift is a meticulous writer who insists on heavy descriptions of every detail and, consequently, there is little to no stylistic separation between key points in the story and the personal life of a particular citizen. Gulliver's Travels is also a relatively short read at around 300 pages, so it is fast-paced compared to other books written in similar detail, which further muddies the plot. The dialogue in this book is also near nonexistent; I can't recall a single line. When Swift means to relay information between characters, he will most often do so in paragraph format. As someone who usually enjoys classics, I am disappointed to say I really only valued the skeletal plot outline rather than the book itself. Grade: 11

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Gulliver’s Travels | Jonathan Swift | Book Review | A Must Read Classic Book

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift is one of the most popular classic books. Featuring an English Surgeon’s adventures as a ship Captain as he travels to the remote parts of the world, this book is a popular children’s book too! So, read book summary, age rating, release date, genre, book quotes, and book review of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift in this post below.

About Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift:

No. of Pages: 240 Pages

Release Date: 1726

Genre: Humour, Satire, Classics, Action, Adventure

Age Rating: 8 years and above

Buy From: AMAZON

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift Book Summary:

Lemuel Gulliver was a surgeon and also loved to travel. This book, divided into four parts, narrates his adventures travelling to the remote parts of the World. During his travels, he is shipwrecked and washed ashore on an island inhabited by tiny people called the Lilliputians who make him a prisoner.

The first part deals with his adventures on Lilliput. Then the second part of the book tracks his adventures on Brobdingnag where he is abandoned by his companions and found by a farmer. Thus starting his misadventures on this land inhabited by huge people.

Then the third part takes Gulliver to the flying Island of Laputa. This is the home of mathematicians and artists who are unable to use their talents to practical ends. And finally, the final part of the story leaves Gulliver meeting the Houyhnhnms who are a race of horses ruling the Yahoos, the humans in their base form.

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift Book Review:

First published in 1726, this book got immediate popularity and has never gone out-of-print since . Gulliver’s Travels, written by Jonathan Swift who was a clergyman as well as an Irish writer, is a satire on human nature as well as a parody of the “traveller’s tales” literary sub-genre . Also considered the best work by Swift and also an English literature classic , Cavehill in Belfast is thought to be the inspiration for this book .

The book is also a satire on the state of the European government . Swift questions whether a man is inherently corrupt or does he become corrupt with time and company. This book is valid even today and one can relate the events to the hypocrisy, corruption and politics of the human race prevalent in the present times.

Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.” Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift Book Quote

Writing style, Plot, and Characterisation:

This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.” GULLIVER’S TRAVELS BY JONATHAN SWIFT BOOK QUOTE

The book is written in the first person with Gulliver as the narrator.

Then writing is simple and feels almost bland. There is no self reflection or any emotional touch to the narration.

The plot is meticulously planned and executed. And it shows that Swift knew exactly what he wanted from each scenario/character in the book.

Also the development of the characters is admirable and the reader is able to visualise and connect with each behavioural shift in their nature . Gulliver, who is practical and initially abhorred by politics and the viciousness of people. But, he, gradually, changes to a man with a hard attitude who is no longer shocked by the hypocrisy and the politicking nature of the humans.

So, a satire that is valid even today, Swift is successfully able to shed light on several aspects of human nature.

Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine.” GULLIVER’S TRAVELS BY JONATHAN SWIFT BOOK QUOTE

Conclusion:

This is an intelligent piece of work and I was hooked till the very end. And then was left to reflect on what I had just read. So, a book that raises questions when read by adults, it is also capable of being read by children who will find it humorous, witty and imaginative. This is the beauty of the book as well the genius of the writer. A must read. 4.5 out of 5 stars to Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, and Njkinny recommends this book to everyone.

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Book Review: Gulliver's Travels , by Jonathan Swift

May. 11th, 2011 at 8:24 PM

Gulliver's Travels is Jonathan Swift's satiric masterpiece, the fantastic tale of the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, an English ship's surgeon. First, he is shipwrecked in the land of Lilliput, where the alarmed residents are only six inches tall. His second voyage takes him to the land of Brobdingnag, where the people are sixty feet tall. Further adventures bring Gulliver to an island that floats in the sky, and a land where horses are endowed with reason and beasts are shaped like men. Read by children as an adventure story and by adults as a devastating satire of society, Gulliver's Travels remains a fascinating blend of travelogue, realism, symbolism, and fantastic voyage--all with a serious philosophical content.

The captain was very well satisfied with this plain relation I had given him, and said, "he hoped, when we returned to England, I would oblige the world by putting it on paper, and making it public." My answer was, "that we were overstocked with books of travels: that nothing could now pass which was not extraordinary; wherein I doubted some authors less consulted truth, than their own vanity, or interest, or the diversion of ignorant readers; that my story could contain little beside common events, without those ornamental descriptions of strange plants, trees, birds, and other animals; or of the barbarous customs and idolatry of savage people, with which most writers abound."

Several Remote Nations of the World

Lilliput: big-endian and little-ending.

This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for great employments, and high favour at court. They are trained in this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or liberal education. When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens,) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office. Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset several times together, upon a trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a common packthread in England.

Brobdingnag: Giant nipples

The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in morality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed to excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful in life, to the improvement of agriculture, and all mechanical arts; so that among us, it would be little esteemed. And as to ideas, entities, abstractions, and transcendentals, I could never drive the least conception into their heads. No law in that country must exceed in words the number of letters in their alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty. But indeed few of them extend even to that length. They are expressed in the most plain and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial enough to discover above one interpretation: and to write a comment upon any law, is a capital crime. As to the decision of civil causes, or proceedings against criminals, their precedents are so few, that they have little reason to boast of any extraordinary skill in either.

Laputa, Lagado, Glubbdubdrib: Flying Islands and Necromancy

It seems the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole ) in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk abroad, or make visits, without him. And the business of this officer is, when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the kennel.

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He 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: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me “to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers.” I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them. I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost overcome with a horrible stink. My conductor pressed me forward, conjuring me in a whisper “to give no offence, which would be highly resented;” and therefore I durst not so much as stop my nose. The projector of this cell was the most ancient student of the academy; his face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands and clothes daubed over with filth. When I was presented to him, he gave me a close embrace, a compliment I could well have excused. His employment, from his first coming into the academy, was an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food, by separating the several parts, removing the tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odour exhale, and scumming off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance, from the society, of a vessel filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol barrel. I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise showed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended to publish. There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to the foundation; which he justified to me, by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider. There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own condition: their employment was to mix colours for painters, which their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their lessons, and the professor himself happened to be generally mistaken. This artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity. In another apartment I was highly pleased with a projector who had found a device of ploughing the ground with hogs, to save the charges of ploughs, cattle, and labour. The method is this: in an acre of ground you bury, at six inches distance and eight deep, a quantity of acorns, dates, chestnuts, and other mast or vegetables, whereof these animals are fondest; then you drive six hundred or more of them into the field, where, in a few days, they will root up the whole ground in search of their food, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time manuring it with their dung: it is true, upon experiment, they found the charge and trouble very great, and they had little or no crop. However it is not doubted, that this invention may be capable of great improvement.

Houyhnhnms and Yahoos: The thing that is not

But this description, I confess, does by no means affect the British nation, who may be an example to the whole world for their wisdom, care, and justice in planting colonies; their liberal endowments for the advancement of religion and learning; their choice of devout and able pastors to propagate Christianity; their caution in stocking their provinces with people of sober lives and conversations from this the mother kingdom; their strict regard to the distribution of justice, in supplying the civil administration through all their colonies with officers of the greatest abilities, utter strangers to corruption; and, to crown all, by sending the most vigilant and virtuous governors, who have no other views than the happiness of the people over whom they preside, and the honour of the king their master.

The problem with 18th century satire is that it doesn't adapt well to a 20th century audience

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GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

adapted by Martin Rowson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2013

A filthy, fantastic and fitting continuation of a misanthropic classic.

Cartoonist and novelist Rowson revisits Jonathan Swift’s classic caustic exploration of human nature in this visceral, contemporary graphic-novel sequel.

Some 300 years after his ancestor first encountered a series of bizarre cultures strewn across the seas, a new Gulliver begins his own travels. Rowson ( The Wasteland , 2012, etc.) situates his adaptation squarely in the present, tracking in from a celestial event, through a sky littered with satellites and contrails, to the silhouette of our hero—who holds a degree in “Socio-Anthropological Epidemiology” and a senior post at the “Secretariat of the World Institute of Forensic Therapy”—wading through surprisingly shallow waters. While this Gulliver is only vaguely aware of his ancestor (our hero was tellingly shanghaied during “a Global Forum on Trepanation and Kinship Autotomy”), he soon regrets not paying more attention to the “fantastickal stories” told to him by his aging father when he wakes in the custody of an exceptionally tiny people who mistake him for his forebear. Eventually retracing his ancestor’s path, from Lilliput to the country of the Houyhnhnms and all stops in between, this Gulliver learns that the original Gulliver’s influence on those he encountered has not always proved to be positive. The new Lilliput presents itself as a nigh-utopian consumer society, though the source of its prosperity is puzzling and its citizenry hide behind ubiquitous smiley-face masks. During a rousing speech about Lilliput’s boundless progress, Rowson undercuts the propaganda with an image of riot police violently suppressing the grinning populace while everyone else goes shopping. Gulliver himself faces extraordinary rendition and deportation during his increasingly desperate and scatological journey. (Excreta is essentially a character in the story.) Rowson gleefully plays with language, particularly in the impenetrable pomposity of Gulliver’s guides and the blatherskites of Brobdignag, which hilariously reveals itself when read aloud. The fastidiously crosshatched ink illustrations—part Ralph Steadman, part Heironymous Bosch—match the soiled material wonderfully, buzzing with decrepitude and madness. One suspects that Swift would approve.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-78239-008-4

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Atlantic/Trafalgar

Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013

GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

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by John Cleese ; illustrated by Martin Rowson

THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN

by Martin Rowson

THE CANTERBURY TALES

A retelling.

by Geoffrey Chaucer and Peter Ackroyd and illustrated by Nick Bantock ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 16, 2009

A not-very-illuminating updating of Chaucer’s Tales.

Continuing his apparent mission to refract the whole of English culture and history through his personal lens, Ackroyd ( Thames: The Biography , 2008, etc.) offers an all-prose rendering of Chaucer’s mixed-media masterpiece.

While Burton Raffel’s modern English version of The Canterbury Tales (2008) was unabridged, Ackroyd omits both “The Tale of Melibee” and “The Parson’s Tale” on the undoubtedly correct assumption that these “standard narratives of pious exposition” hold little interest for contemporary readers. Dialing down the piety, the author dials up the raunch, freely tossing about the F-bomb and Anglo-Saxon words for various body parts that Chaucer prudently described in Latin. Since “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale,” for example, are both decidedly earthy in Middle English, the interpolated obscenities seem unnecessary as well as jarringly anachronistic. And it’s anyone’s guess why Ackroyd feels obliged redundantly to include the original titles (“Here bigynneth the Squieres Tales,” etc.) directly underneath the new ones (“The Squires Tale,” etc.); these one-line blasts of antique spelling and diction remind us what we’re missing without adding anything in the way of comprehension. The author’s other peculiar choice is to occasionally interject first-person comments by the narrator where none exist in the original, such as, “He asked me about myself then—where I had come from, where I had been—but I quickly turned the conversation to another course.” There seems to be no reason for these arbitrary elaborations, which muffle the impact of those rare times in the original when Chaucer directly addresses the reader. Such quibbles would perhaps be unfair if Ackroyd were retelling some obscure gem of Old English, but they loom larger with Chaucer because there are many modern versions of The Canterbury Tales. Raffel’s rendering captured a lot more of the poetry, while doing as good a job as Ackroyd with the vigorous prose.

Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-670-02122-2

Page Count: 436

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009

RELIGIOUS FICTION | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

More by Geoffrey Chaucer

by Geoffrey Chaucer adapted and illustrated by Seymour Chwast

by Geoffrey Chaucer & translated by Burton Raffel

by Geoffrey Chaucer ; translated by Burton Raffel

More About This Book

Rereading, and Remixing, ‘The Canterbury Tales’

PERSPECTIVES

HEART OF DARKNESS

by Peter Kuper ; illustrated by Peter Kuper ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2019

Gorgeous and troubling.

Cartoonist Kuper ( Kafkaesque , 2018, etc.) delivers a graphic-novel adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s literary classic exploring the horror at the center of colonial exploitation.

As a group of sailors floats on the River Thames in 1899, a particularly adventurous member notes that England was once “one of the dark places of the earth,” referring to the land before the arrival of the Romans. This well-connected vagabond then regales his friends with his boyhood obsession with the blank places on maps, which eventually led him to captain a steamboat up a great African river under the employ of a corporate empire dedicated to ripping the riches from foreign land. Marlow’s trip to what was known as the Dark Continent exposes him to the frustrations of bureaucracy, the inhumanity employed by Europeans on the local population, and the insanity plaguing those committed to turning a profit. In his introduction, Kuper outlines his approach to the original book, which featured extensive use of the n-word and worked from a general worldview that European males are the forgers of civilization (even if they suffered a “soul [that] had gone mad” for their efforts), explaining that “by choosing a different point of view to illustrate, otherwise faceless and undefined characters were brought to the fore without altering Conrad’s text.” There is a moment when a scene of indiscriminate shelling reveals the Africans fleeing, and there are some places where the positioning of the Africans within the panel gives them more prominence, but without new text added to fully frame the local people, it’s hard to feel that they have reached equal footing. Still, Kuper’s work admirably deletes the most offensive of Conrad’s language while presenting graphically the struggle of the native population in the face of foreign exploitation. Kuper is a master cartoonist, and his pages and panels are a feast for the eyes.

Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-393-63564-5

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019

More by Peter Kuper

by Peter Kuper ; illustrated by Peter Kuper

by Peter Kuper

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Gulliver's Travels (Classic Starts) Hardcover – Abridged, March 28, 2006

Through the eyes of Lemuel Gulliver, Swift’s unforgettable satire takes readers into worlds formerly unimagined. Visit four strange and remarkable lands: Lilliput, where Gulliver seems a giant among a race of tiny people; Brobdingnag, the opposite, where the natives are giants and Gulliver puny; the ruined yet magical country of Laputa; and the home of the Houyhnhnms, gentle horses far superior to the ugly humanoid Yahoos who share their universe.

Reading age 7 - 9 years
Print length 160 pages
Language English
Grade level 2 - 4
Lexile measure NC1040L
Dimensions 5.5 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches
Publisher Union Square Kids
Publication date March 28, 2006
ISBN-10 1402726627
ISBN-13 978-1402726620
See all details

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Union Square Kids; Abridged edition (March 28, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 160 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1402726627
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1402726620
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 7 - 9 years
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ NC1040L
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 2 - 4
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches
#2,515 in Children's Classics
#5,299 in Children's Fantasy & Magic Books

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Gulliver’s travels book by jonathan swift: book review.

Do not buy Gulliver’s Travels Book if everyone is telling you that it is very famous. Why? It’s because people buy books just because famous writers are thought to be the best.

But what if I told you that this story is more than just voyage adventures? Will you buy it now? If you are a person like me who wants to know about human psychology and how society works, this novel is for you.

Everyone says that Gulliver’s Travels book is for children, but I can say without a doubt that it is for anyone who is imaginative enough to understand life lessons in children’s books.

At first, it might not seem like it, but I promise that after finding meaning in each part, you will understand what I’m saying.

I am going to show you how a book published in 1726 can still make sense and teach us about our society and how to improve it.

Table of Contents

About the Author: Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was a writer in satire, essays, political pamphleteer, poet and Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral.

He was known for writing autobiographies of his fictional characters. Swift was born on 30 th November 1667 in Ireland. He wrote many of his works when he was in Country Meath in the 1700s.

The author received his degree of Doctor of Divinity from Trinity College, Dublin in 1702. He used to travel often to England and published his first books, ‘A Tale of a Tub’ and ‘The Battle of The Books’ in 1704.

During his career as a political pamphleteer and priest, he continued writing novels and poems.

Swift has written over 60 essays, tracts, pamphlets, periodicals, poems, novels, and prayers. John Ruskin named him as one of the three people who influenced him the most.

The author also wrote his epitaph. On 19 th October 1745, Jonathan Swift died due to a severe stroke at the age of 77.

Gulliver’s Travels Book Review

Lemuel Gulliver was the third son of a small estate owner in Nottinghamshire. After completing 14 years of age, Gulliver was sent to Cambridge studies for three years. He spent the next four years assisting Dr James Bates, a well-known surgeon in London. Gulliver studied medicine and went on voyages to fulfil his dream of seeing the world. After coming back to London, he got married to a very pretty girl with a handsome dowry and planned to settle down in London. But his practice couldn’t earn him expected money, so he took up a job as a ship’s surgeon. After some prosperous time in the voyage, their ship got wrecked. Gulliver swam to the nearest shore he could find and fell into a deep sleep.

Lilliput – The Land of Manikin

When Gulliver woke up the next morning, he noticed that he was tightly roped down to the ground.

A little creature climbed his abdomen and started shouting something in a gibberish language. They fed him, gave him wine to drink, and took away his weapons.

After staying with them for some time, Gulliver began to understand their language. He came to know that Lilliputians call him as Mountain Man.

They observe him and study his habits. But they always keep him tied by the ankle to their church’s pillar.

After a short adventure in Lilliput, the little people allow Gulliver to build a boat and return to his home.

One aspect of human society is portrayed in this part of the novel. We judge things and beings by size and automatically assume that large things are harmful to us.

Gulliver being tied by chains seems familiar, doesn’t it? There’s the concept of keeping animals hostage for studying and display.

Brobdingnag – The Land of Giants

After spending two months in London, Gulliver started getting bored of his comfortable life. So, he boarded another ship and started for another voyage.

For some time at first, they were having a very good and profitable journey. But then, the sea friendly sea turned into a sudden tempest.

With great difficulty, the men turned the ship aimlessly for some long days and find land.

They wandered about and Gulliver went a little farther from his companions. When he glanced back, he saw everyone had already boarded the ship and had left.

He ran behind them but he saw a giant monster going after them as fast as possible. The giant creature seemed like a sixty-foot tall human.

He found Gulliver, picked him up and took him to his home. His daughter made Gulliver little dresses and after some days, they took him to the market for display.

After spending two exhausting years in Brobdingnag, Gulliver’s masters went for a journey on the sea and took Gulliver with them.

Suddenly, a giant eagle caught the handle of Gulliver’s house and took him off.

After some time, the eagle was attacked by other eagles and dropped Gulliver off in the sea where an English ship found him and took him back to London.

This part represents the animals in the circus. They are taken away from their family and forced to perform for long hours without rest.

They are used for money and treated harshly if they show any signs of exhaustion.

Laputa – The Flying Island

Hardly ten days after Gulliver’s return home, a ship’s captain offered Gulliver to be his surgeon on the ship. Gulliver accepted his offer only because of their friendship, and soon they set off.

On the third day of their sail, they get caught in a storm. After surviving ten days in the storm, a group of pirates attacked them.

They took Gulliver’s baggage, put him on a little boat and sailed away. A couple of days passed and Gulliver’s boat reached an island.

After some days on that island, Gulliver noticed a body floating two miles in the air. It was moving and had humans on it.

The humans sent down a chain and Gulliver sat into its seat and pulled up in the air. When he came up, he noticed that the body was a floating island and a large number of people were living on it.

But the inhabitants spoke a different language so no communication was possible. Gulliver noticed that the people on the island looked strange.

Their heads were tilted to the right or left, one of their irises was near the nose and the other was up.

After spending a few days with them, Gulliver began to catch a few words like the name of their island, Laputa, which roughly translated to ‘Flying Island’.

The main interests of these people were music and math. Laputa was a grand city with domes and spacious yards.

Balnibarbi – A Land of Ruins

Gulliver got bored on Laputa and soon asked the king to let him go and he set off for Balnibarbi. Balnibarbi was a land of complete ruins.

Some people of Balnibarbi went to Laputa and returned with new ideas of development, which never worked. The academy in Balnibarbi had people doing weird experiments.

Gulliver was troubled by the people in the academy and decided to set off for home.

Glubbdubdrib – A Land of Magicians

He took a short tour to Glubbdubdrib, a land of magicians. Governor allowed Gulliver to summon a spirit and Gulliver spoke to many great personalities.

Luggnagg – The Land of Immortals

After leaving Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver went to Luggnagg where he didn’t like any of the idiotic traditions.

In the kingdom of Luggnagg, he met immortals with a mark over their left eyebrow.

But the immortals, after a certain point, became only breathing corpses, unable to talk, hear, see or move. Soon, he left Luggnagg and arrived in London.

Houyhnhnms – The Land of Yahoos

Gulliver stayed home for five months but then set out as a captain of a ship. Many of his sailors died due to sickness, so he had to recruit new ones.

His old sailors became pirates and revolted. Gulliver had to stay in his cabin for a long time until his ship reached an unknown island.

He came out and saw weird beasts with claws and beards like goats. The beasts chased him and two horses scared it off for him.

As Gulliver was running off, one of the horses called him and he learnt that these were magicians who had turned themselves into horses.

But again, Gulliver faced the difficulty of an unknown language. The horses took him to their house where more horses were living which suddenly started shouting, “ Yahoo! Yahoo! ”.

Gulliver was taken to the weird beasts which strangely appeared human. The horses offered Gulliver flesh and hay which Gulliver refused because he could not eat the rotten hay and flesh.

Instead, he pointed towards a cow and the horses gave him milk to drink. After 3 months, Gulliver succeeded in learning their language.

He came to know that the weird beasts that looked human were called Yahoos and the horses were called Houyhnhnms.

The Houyhnhnms were surprised that a creature that seemed like Yahoos was of intelligence superior to them.

Difference Between Houyhnhnms and Europe

Gulliver tells his master that the horses in his hometown are used for racing, traveling and drawing carriages.

The Houyhnhnms are surprised to know the roles are totally exchanged in Gulliver’s country. Gulliver tells them all about Europe while answering their questions.

The Houyhnhnms conclude that the English yahoos are worse because of so many reasons. Gulliver liked his time with the horses so much that he was hesitant to return to his home.

But he had to leave. After returning home, he thought of his family as Yahoos and couldn’t bear to look at them for a year.

He bought two horses and talked to them daily for four hours. This part makes us understand that once we spend time with other animals, humans start seeming ill-mannered to us.

What I Admire in Gulliver’s Travels book

The Gulliver’s travels book was published in 1726 and I love how it still makes so much sense about human society and mentality.

The way we treat animals and outsiders are undeniably bad. It shows us that if someone treats us the way we treat others, we will understand the problems they face.

Another thing we come to know in Gulliver’s Travels book is that the earth is so vast that many undiscovered places are completely cut off from the outside world.

I love everything about this book and each message it gives. I had this book in my curriculum in ninth grade and I’m very glad about that.

What I Disliked in Gulliver’s Travels Book

There is only one thing about this story that I dislike, that is, after a certain point, it can get boring to read it.

In the middle of significant changes, there are so many details, so the story gets very lengthy and uninteresting to read until the next important part.

Note that there is nothing wrong with the details, but it works better if they were carefully distributed over each part to retain the interest of the reader.

To Wrap Up This Review of Gulliver’s Travels book

‘Gulliver’s Travels book’ by Jonathan Swift is one of the best-selling novels in the history of literature.

It is a perfect blend of satire and lessons. It tells us about the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver and about the different lands and creatures he discovered there.

The story gives us lessons to be kind to all creatures and gets to know their habits better and that there are a lot of places to be discovered.

But, we need to save these animals and places too because we can find beauty in everything and everyone if look close enough.

So, purchase or gift the Gulliver’s Travels Book and make your day a better day.

If you love reading such books, you can explore more in Children Books page under Fiction Books .

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COMMENTS

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift Review
Swift has a deft eye for an excellent image, and a uproarious, often bawdy sense of humor. In writing Gulliver's Travels, he has created a legend which endures up to our times and beyond. Cite this Article. Gulliver's Travels is a fantastical adventure story suitable for children and adults alike, as well as a searing attack on the nature of ...
Book Review: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Gulliver's Travels immediately reminded me of the Princess Bride. They are both travel novels that make fun of travel novels by having the author retell someone else's story but edit out the things they don't like from the "original" story. For Princess Bride, it was pages and pages of packing and unpacking from the fictional novel it ...
Book Review: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
This book makes you a lover of satire beautifully penned in an interesting travel story. With lots of imagery, imaginations, and reality at play, this novel will definitely inspire you to keep on ...
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
First published in 1726, this collection of Lemuel Gulliver's fascinating voyages all over the world, has been loved, read and re-read by every child and adult familiar with the English language. The story appealing the children for its fictional quotient made of wonderful creatures ranging in size from a few inches to several feet, flying ...
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
Share your opinion of this book. Swift's account of Gulliver's captivity in Lilliput and Brobdingnag is considerably shortened and rephrased here, but Riordan expertly preserves the flavor of the original: upon reaching the temple where he is to stay, the intrepid traveler shamefacedly relieves himself before the tiny multitudes (though the ...
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift [A Review]
Classic Literature. Reviews. Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is one of the most enduring stories in English, still being read almost 300 years since it was first published. Its durability is due to its storytelling qualities though it is arguably more of a satire than a novel and the relevance of that satire may have diminished over time.
Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels, four-part satirical work by Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift, published anonymously in 1726 as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.A keystone of English literature, it is one of the books that contributed to the emergence of the novel as a literary form in English. A parody of the then popular travel narrative, Gulliver's Travels combines adventure with ...
Book Review: 'Gulliver's Travels' by Jonathan Swift
Book Review. In Jonathan Swift's timeless masterpiece "Gulliver's Travels," initially published in 1726, satire, social commentary, and captivating travelogue converge to transport readers alongside Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon whose shipwrecks propel him into an array of fantastical islands.This classic work weaves satire and astute societal critique throughout its four ...
A Summary and Analysis of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels: summary. Gulliver's Travels is structurally divided into four parts, each of which recounts the adventures of the title character, a ship's surgeon named Lemuel Gulliver, amongst some imaginary fantastical land. In the first part, Gulliver is shipwrecked and knocked unconscious on the island of Lilliput, which is ...
'Gulliver's Travels' by Jonathan Swift (Review)
On the island of Lilliput, Gulliver finds himself towering above the tiny inhabitants while in the land of Brobdingnag the tables are turned, and the hapless traveller finds himself stranded in a realm of giants. The third journey sees him visiting the flying kingdom of Laputa, and the smaller islands it floats (and reigns) over, before the ...
Gulliver's Travels. By Jonathan Swift.
Gulliver's Travels is both a satire on human nature and a parody of popular travel narratives of the day. Swift's satirical fury — William Makepeace Thackeray called it "furious, raging, obscene" — is directed against almost every aspect of early-18th-century British life. The tale recounts the expedition of Lemuel Gulliver, a ...
Gulliver's Travels
Lemuel Gulliver is a ship surgeon whose voyages frequently end in shipwreck. He washes up on various islands where he meets, among others, tiny people called Lilliputians, giant Brobdingnagians, a race of horses morally superior to man known as Houyhnhnms, and the repulsive Yahoos who closely resemble humans. Jonathan Swift wrote the book as a ...
Gulliver's Travels Study Guide
Gulliver's Travels satirizes the form of the travel narrative, a popular literary genre that started with Richard Hakluyt's Voyages in 1589 and experienced immense popularity in eighteenth-century England through best-selling diaries and first-person accounts by explorers such as Captain James Cook. At the time, people were eager to hear about cultures and people in the faraway lands where ...
Book Review: Gulliver's Travels
Part of the reason I rated this book low is because Swift fills the reader's head with unnecessary details until important plot points are lost in the middle of description paragraphs. The events that take place in Gulliver's Travels are interesting, sometimes clever references to 19th century politics and general social commentary: Gulliver ...
Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels, written by Jonathan Swift who was a clergyman as well as an Irish writer, is a satire on human nature as well as a parody of the "traveller's tales" literary sub-genre. Also considered the best work by Swift and also an English literature classic, Cavehill in Belfast is thought to be the inspiration for this book.
Book Review: Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift: inverarity
Book Review: Gulliver's Travels. , by Jonathan Swift. One-line summary: A satire, a children's story, and an early work of science fiction. Published 1726, Approximately 104,680 words. Available for free at Project Gutenberg. Gulliver's Travels is Jonathan Swift's satiric masterpiece, the fantastic tale of the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver ...
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
Pre-publication book reviews and features keeping readers and industry influencers in the know since 1933. ... Some 300 years after his ancestor first encountered a series of bizarre cultures strewn across the seas, a new Gulliver begins his own travels. Rowson (The Wasteland, 2012, etc.) situates his adaptation squarely in the present ...
Gulliver's Travels: Voyage to Lilliput
The first adventure in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, retold by Martin Jenkins and illustrated by British Children's Laureate Chris Riddell. In the best-known tale from Jonathan Swift's classic satire, Lemuel Gulliver survives a shipwreck only to find himself on a strange island with even stranger inhabitants: miniature humans, no bigger than his hand.
Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Classics)
A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their ...
Gulliver's Travels (Classic Starts)
Through the eyes of Lemuel Gulliver, Swift's unforgettable satire takes readers into worlds formerly unimagined. Visit four strange and remarkable lands: Lilliput, where Gulliver seems a giant among a race of tiny people; Brobdingnag, the opposite, where the natives are giants and Gulliver puny; the ruined yet magical country of Laputa; and the home of the Houyhnhnms, gentle horses far ...
Gulliver's Travels Book by Jonathan Swift: Book Review
Gulliver's Travels Book Review. Lemuel Gulliver was the third son of a small estate owner in Nottinghamshire. After completing 14 years of age, Gulliver was sent to Cambridge studies for three years. He spent the next four years assisting Dr James Bates, a well-known surgeon in London. Gulliver studied medicine and went on voyages to fulfil ...

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Gulliver's Travels (Classic Starts) Hardcover – Abridged, March 28, 2006

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