Review byfor Gulliver`s Travels: (A New Library E-Book)Rating: age. What we thought was crucial as children may now seem completely insignificant, replaced by entirely new priorities, priorities children wouldn`t even understand. At the same time, things we used to ask for granted, like having dinner on the table, being taken charge of when we`re ill, or getting toys fixed when they are broken, have become items on adult worry lists.
our perspective on literature can change, too. Reading a report for a 2d time can pay you a totally different aspect of it. "Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain, which I enjoyed as a variety of an adventure story when I was a kid, now reads as a harsh critique of order in universal and the introduction of thralldom in particular.The like matter is straight of "Gulliver`s Travels" by Jonathan Swift. The foremost affair I realized upon opening the cross of this koran as a college student was that I probably had never actually show it before.I knew the basic game of Lemuel Gulliver`s first two voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, home of the diminutive and giant people, respectively, but he had two other voyages of which I was not yet aware: to a kingdom of philosophers who are so lost in thinking they can`t see the simplest practical details, Laputa, and to a kingdom ruled by fresh and gentle horses or Houyhnhnms and peopled by wild, beastly human-like creatures called Yahoos.While this word has become noted and even beloved by children, Jonathan Swift was sure not trying to save a children`s book.Swift was well known for his sharp, biting wit, and his bitter criticism of eighteenth century England and all her ills. This is the man who, to head out how ridiculous English prejudices had become, wrote "A Modest Proposal" which suggested that the Irish raise their children as cattle, to be eaten as meat, and thereby clear the problems of impoverishment and starvation faced in that country. As ugly as that proposition is, it was only an extension of the kinds of solutions being proposed at the time.So, although "Gulliver`s Travels" is entertaining, entertainment was not Swift`s primary purpose. Swift used this narrative of a guillable traveler exploring strange lands to head out some of the mindless and nonsensical elements of his own society.For example, in describing the administration of Lilliput, Swift explains that officials are selected based on how comfortably they can meet two games, Rope-Dancing and Spring and Creeping. These two games required great accomplishment in balance, entertained the watching public, and placed the politicians in rather ridiculous positions, perhaps not so differently from elections of leadership in the eighteenth century and eve in new times.Give this word a look again, or for the first time. Even in cases in which the precise object of Swift`s satire has been forgotten, his sweeping social commentary still rings true. Sometimes it actually does appear that we are all a bunch of Yahoos.
