Review: Gulliver's Travels

2023-12-10

When reading, I tend to catch less of the historic context, metaphors, and other real-world relevance, and instead ingest only the superficial top-level meaning of the book. I believe my experience with Gullivers Travels is no different; while there is assuredly a mind-boggling amount of references and comparison to 18th century Europe, I found very few of them myself. The broader commentary on human nature and society were definitely there, but cameos or allegories pertaining to particular individuals or events escaped me entirely. I think I would have benefited greatly from an annotated version. That said, there was still a glut of absurd and sassy content to peruse.

From a satirical or absurdist perspective, Gulliver's Travels had quite the collection of entertaining and often relevant passages. I've dumped a bunch of paragraphs that tickled my fancy at the bottom; some other standout sections include:

The old style of English, while verbose and princely, was not, contrary to expectation, which is quite to be expected but not realized; such as it is, or will be; for ever a language may wither or flourish, yet branches connect to a sturdy base, with roots extending, nay, reaching, to the past; impossible to peruse; there was a glut, an excess, a pilferage, a summation, a feast, a banquet, an orgy, a veritable monumental mountain of colons, semicolons, and those princes of commas; some sentences were indeed prodigious in length and scope; in examples and allusions.

Overall, the satire was great, if sometimes pertaining to particular persons or events I am not familiar with. The old English was also easy enough to follow. This leaves the final component of the novel, which is the actual story itself.

It's ehhh. This goes directly contrary to my review of World War Z, where I said that a unique premise is not necessary if it is nothing more than a vehicle for the true meat of the story. Small people, big people, flying people, horse people. These aren't creative ideas in the modern day, and I assume they weren't at the time either. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since they're in most cases stand-in punching bags for their real-world counterparts. But besides the criticism of the western world/humans at large, the book is really quite bland. World-building; eh, just scale it up or down. The plot follows the same cycle four times in a row: Gulliver is marooned, taken in by the royals or well-respected member of a species of slightly derivative humans, they question him on his world, make their comments, then he leaves, and the whole process repeats. There's nothing especially interesting about these people and their worlds; they're just a vehicle for commentary on society and humanity, which does become a little tedious and repetitive after a while. Likewise, actually reading Gulliver's Travels is a lukewarm experience at best, with lots of long drawn-out passages. When it's not zippy satire, its quite the bore. Perhaps that's a deliberate choice and is actually a criticism of travel novels, but if so, like so many other references, I missed it.

A final point of criticism: Gulliver gradually becomes disillusioned with humans and his home country as the book progresses, and this transformation is completed in Part IV, which contains what I can only imagine was the inspiration for John Galt's speech from Atlas Shrugged, a complete laying-out of the authors thoughts without any effort to meld it into the story. Not inherently a bad approach, but not one I'm especially fond of.

So, Gulliver's Travels. Great satire, incredibly middling book otherwise.

Quotes

He likewise directed, ‘that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the public.’
‘When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N, shall signify a plot; B, a regiment of horse; L, a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party. So, for example, if I should say, in a letter to a friend, ‘Our brother Tom has just got the piles,’ a skilful decipherer would discover, that the same letters which compose that sentence, may be analysed into the following words, ‘Resist -, a plot is brought home—The tour.’ And this is the anagrammatic method.’
He was an honest man, and a good sailor, but a little too positive in his own opinions, which was the cause of his destruction, as it has been with several others; or if he had followed my advice, he might have been safe at home with his family at this time, as well as myself. ... I had several men who died in my ship of calentures
‘In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state, the method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang or save a criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law.’
‘One great excellency in this tribe, is their skill at prognostics, wherein they seldom fail; their predictions in real diseases, when they rise to any degree of malignity, generally portending death, which is always in their power, when recovery is not: and therefore, upon any unexpected signs of amendment, after they have pronounced their sentence, rather than be accused as false prophets, they know how to approve their sagacity to the world, by a seasonable dose.
That a weak diseased body, a meagre countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride. ‘Without the consent of this illustrious body, no law can be enacted, repealed, or altered: and these nobles have like-wise the decision of all our possessions, without appeal.’