Jonathan Swift and his Gulliver's Travels

duessa

The following is taken from a book written by Annette T. Rubinstein, who has made an excellent summary of the book.

The hero of this book is one Lemuel Gulliver, a plainspoken simple straightforward man with some education both as a navigator and a doctor. Unable to build a medical practice which will adequately support his wife and young children, he reluctantly accepts an offer to go back to sea as a ship’s surgeon and sets sail from Bristol on the first of his now famous voyages, May 4, 1699.

After a successful six months trading cruise in the East Indies they are driven out of their way by a storm and shipwrecked in a strange region northwest of Van Dieman’s land.

Gulliver, separated from his companions, is cast up on the shore of what he later discovers to be Lilliput. While asleep he is captured and bound by some thousands of the six-inch tall inhabitants.

His adventures among the Lilliputians have been read in emasculated nursery editions by most children, who enjoy without fully understanding the satire involved in such descriptions as that the Emperor, “taller by almost the Breadth of my Nail, than any of his Court, which alone is enough to strike an Awe into the Beholders.”

There are, of course, many far more elaborate passages which, for Swift’s contemporaries, unmistakably indicated current figures of state. And we need no such special knowledge to appreciate their more fundamental satirical attack upon political and court intrigues in general. A well-known illustration opens the third chapter.

Other unmistakable references to the religious wars show how well justified Queen Anne was in her suspicion that Swifts earlier ridicule had been meant impartially to embrace all sects. (In The Tale of A Tub, which was issued anonymously in 1705, Swift claimed that this parodied only the Roman Catholic and Dissenting Churches and that it was really a defense of the Episcopalian Church. But Queen Anne evidently felt it was essentially an attack on the established church as well. Most modern readers would certainly agree with her.)

After many amusing and some hazardous experiences Gulliver succeeds in returning to England where he makes a small fortune by exhibiting and selling a number of the Lilliputian sheep, cows and other livestock which he had taken with him on his departure.

Two months later, on June 20, 1702, he again goes to sea. The ship is almost immediately driven out of its course by a storm and when the wind subsides several members of the crew row to a strange shore to get drinking water. While Gulliver wanders a little way inland the others are terrified by the approach of one of the gigantic inhabitants and escape, leaving Gulliver alone. He is soon picked up between thumb and forefinger by one of the six-foot tall natives, and naturally gives himself up for lost. “For, as human Creatures are observed to be more Savage and cruel in proportion to their Bulk; what could I expect but to be a Morsel in the Mouth of the first among these enormous Barbarians who should happen to seize me?”

However the Brobdingnagans (as he later learns to call them) prove to be superior to mankind in wisdom and humanity as well as stature. The satire of western civilization is here developed more directly by statement of differences rather than by observation of similarities.

For example, when, after many adventures, Gulliver is purchased by the Queen and becomes something of a court pet the King “desired I would give him as exact an account of the Government of England as I possibly could; because, as fond as Princes commonly are of their own Customs (for so he conjectured of other Monarchs by my former Discourses) he should be glad to hear of anything that might deserve imitation.” But the result was disconcerting.

In an effort more favorably to impress the king, Gulliver offers to teach him the arts of war, since the Brobdingnagans have never discovered or inverted such things as gunpower.

The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal I had made.  "He was amazed, how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I" (these were his expressions) "could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines; whereof," he said, "some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver.  As for himself, he protested, that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a secret; which he commanded me, as I valued any life, never to mention any more."

A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem; of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with admirable talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people!

Finally by a strange series of accidents Gulliver is carried out to sea, rescued by an English ship, and returns home.
The third voyage, undertaken a few months later, is the least interesting whether as story or as satire.

Captured by pirates and set adrift in a small boat, Gulliver manages to reach an uninhabited island from which he is rescued by the people of a sort of floating island called Laputa. They are a caste of absent-minded astronomers who rule a small continent, over which they can make their floating island move at will, and who care for nothing but mathematics and music. Despite this promising beginning Gulliver meets with no really exciting adventures here and none of the individuals come alive for us as did many of the persons he met in Lilliput and Brobdingnagan.

The object of Swift’s satire here is apparently the arid rationalism and formal metaphysical discussions of many discussions of many eighteenth century literati, but he himself is evidently not clear as to the practical possibilities of scientific investigation, and there seems to be little coherence or discrimination in his attacks on a number of disparate experiments and innovations.

The only detail of this third voyage which strikes the imagination is Gulliver’s description of the few individuals in each generation who are, in this region, born immortal.

When he first hears of these Struldbruggs, as they are called, he ecstatically envisions the wisdom, benevolence and happiness which such fortunate beings must achieve, but is rapidly disillusioned. His informant tells him:

They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but uncapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions … The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.

After an absence of five and a half years, Gulliver finally returns to England. “I continued at home with my Wife and Children about five Months in a very happy Condition, if I could have learned the lesson of knowing when I was well. I left my poor Wife big with Child; and accepted an advantageous offer made me to be Captain of the Adventure, a stout Merchantman of 350 Tuns.”

Forced to replace a number of his crew by strangers at the Barbadoes, Captain Gulliver learns too late that most of the crew recruits had been buccaneers. They seize the ship to use a pirate vessel, and maroon the captain on a strange shore which, as he later finds out, is the land of the Houyhnhnms. These are rational horses, and the name is intended to be an approximation of a horse’s neighing.

The story here loses the close the attention to realistic detail which characterizes the account of the first two travels, but it is still absorbing and the satire becomes far sharper and more biting.

Among the wild animals in this country are the Yahoos, a vile species which Gulliver, to his infinite horror, finally recognizes as genus Homo. The direct physical elements of his description of these hairy, naked and wild Yahoos becomes amazing when we realize that it was written more than a century before there was any tentative suggestion of evolution or any notion of a link between Man and the Ape.

Gulliver is soon taken into the household of a dapple-gray steed, a Houyhnhnm of quality, and shows the same aptitude in learning the language there as he has displayed in the course of his previous travels. “The Curiosity and Impatience of my Master were so great, that he spent many Hours of his Leisure to instruct me. He was convinced (as he afterwards told me) that I must be a Yahoo, but my teachableness, civility and cleanliness astonished him; which were Qualities altogether so opposite to those Animals.”

Requested to tell the history of his country Gulliver does so, dwelling upon the many wars, both domestic and foreign.

"What you have told me," said my master, "upon the subject of war, does indeed discover most admirably the effects of that reason you pretend to:  however, it is happy that the shame is greater than the danger; and that nature has left you utterly incapable of doing much mischief. For, your mouths lying flat with your faces, you can hardly bite each other to any purpose, unless by consent. Then as to the claws upon your feet before and behind, they are so short and tender, that one of our YAHOOS would drive a dozen of yours before him. And therefore, in recounting the numbers of those who have been killed in battle, I cannot but think you have said the thing which is not."

I could not forbear shaking my head, and smiling a little at his ignorance. And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights, ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses' feet, flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcasses, left for food to dogs and wolves and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying.  And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators.

I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me silence. He said whoever understood the nature of YAHOOS, might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice. But as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind to which he was wholly a stranger before. He thought his ears, being used to such abominable words, might, by degrees, admit them with less detestation: that although he hated the YAHOOS of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities, than he did a GNNAYH (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident, that, instead of reason we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an ill-shapen body, not only larger but more distorted.

Gulliver then turned to describe his people’s civil rather than their military accomplishments.

Whereupon I was at much pains to describe to him the use of money, the materials it was made of, and the value of the metals; "that when a YAHOO had got a great store of this precious substance, he was able to purchase whatever he had a mind to; the finest clothing, the noblest houses, great tracts of land, the most costly meats and drinks, and have his choice of the most beautiful females. Therefore since money alone was able to perform all these feats, our YAHOOS thought they could never have enough of it to spend, or to save, as they found themselves inclined, from their natural bent either to profusion or avarice; that the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man's labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the former; that the bulk of our people were forced to live miserably, by labouring every day for small wages, to make a few live plentifully." I enlarged myself much on these, and many other particulars to the same purpose; but his honour was still to seek; for he went upon a supposition, that all animals had a title to their share in the productions of the earth, and especially those who presided over the rest.  Therefore he desired I would let him know, "what these costly meats were, and how any of us happened to want them?" Whereupon I enumerated as many sorts as came into my head, with the various methods of dressing them, which could not be done without sending vessels by sea to every part of the world, as well for liquors to drink as for sauces and innumerable other conveniences. I assured him "that this whole globe of earth must be at least three times gone round before one of our better female YAHOOS could get her breakfast, or a cup to put it in." He said "that must needs be a miserable country which cannot furnish food for its own inhabitants.

Finally Gulliver completely realized the superiority of the Houyhnhnms and happily settled down to live among them and learn from them.

When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or the human race in general, I considered them, as they really were, YAHOOS in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift of speech; but making no other use of reason, than to improve and multiply those vices whereof their brethren in this country had only the share that nature allotted them. When I happened to behold the reflection of my own form in a lake or fountain, I turned away my face in horror and detestation of myself, and could better endure the sight of a common YAHOO than of my own person.

Unfortunately the Houyhnhnm Supreme Council was unwilling to allow even a superior Yahoo to remain among them permanently, and decreed his banishment. He was overcome with grief but submitted; contrived to make a boat, and sailed to an uninhabited island. A ship’s crew of European yahoos discovered him there, and despite his urgent remonstrance insisted on taking him back to civilization.

[ 本帖最后由 duessa 于 2006-11-14 10:55 PM 编辑 ]

怀抱花朵的孩子

You seem to like novel much more than poetry.

duessa

Yes. Poetry sometimes seems to me too difficult to grasp. And it is often too personal. I prefer enjoying novels at a (psychological) distance.

duessa

The following comment is made by Paul Turner, with some minor alterations.

Gulliver’s Travels is distinguished for its excitement, humor and satire, and the most valuable element, however, is the general comment that it makes on human life. This comment is expressed by viewing humanity from four different standpoints.
        The first is that of a physically superior being, who sees mankind as ridiculously small.
        The second is that of a physically inferior being, who sees mankind as grotesquely large.
        The third is the standpoint of common sense, from which the vast majority of mankind appear crazy and wicked.
        The fourth is that of a rational animal, which sees the whole human race as irrational and bestial.

As Gulliver progresses through this series of world-views, his own character and attitudes change. And here Swift raises the question: how should an intelligent and sensitive individual react to increasing knowledge of human nature?

In Part I the human race is viewed in miniature, and at first seems rather charming; but the tiny creatures soon turn out to be treacherous and cruel. They are ready to sacrifice all humane feeling, whether towards Gulliver or the Blefucudians, to their own petty ambitions. The moral of Lilliput is later made explicit by the King of Brobdingnag, apropos of ordinary human beings:

He observed, how contemptible a Thing was human Grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive Insects as I: and yet, said he, I dare engage, those Creatures have their Titles and Distinctions of Honour; they contrive little Nests and Burrows, that they call Houses and Cities; they make a Figure in Dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray.

In Part II the human race appears coarse and callous. Gulliver is revolted by the Brobdingnagians’ huge bodies, by their smell, their table-manners, and their physical habits. He is caused great pain by the thoughtlessness of the first man who picks him up, and worked almost to death by the farmer, whose chief interest is money. Even the King and Queen show a certain lack of imagination in the jokes that they make about Gulliver’s experiences with the monkey, and with giant flies. This general insensitivity extends to the Brobdingnagians’ treatment of one another. The horrifying description of the beggars in Lorbrulgrud shows this people’s inadequate social conscience, and the account of the execution stresses the barbarity of their penal system.

A few individuals, however, display lovable or admirable qualities. Guumdalclitch is unfailingly kind and considerate; and the King of Brobdingnag is humane enough to be shocked by European warfare. he acts, as we have seen, as an extension of the Part I viewpoint: he judges, as a superior being, the moral shortcomings of the “little odious vermin” described to him by Gulliver.

In Part III Gulliver views human behaviour through the eyes of common sense, and sees the gift of reason everywhere misused, either for playing futile intellectual games, or for unscrupulously exploiting other people. In Glubbdubdribb he reads in human history the depressing lesson that crime does pay, and that human nature is becoming worse and worse. In Luggnagg he finds the lesson confirmed, first by the example of a cruel tyranny, and secondly by the struldbrugs, who illustrate not only the general miseries of human beings to take advantage of one another. The harsh legislation against these wretched Immortals is justified because “Otherwise, as Avarice is the necessary Consequent of old Age, those Immortals would in time become Proprietors of the whole Nation, and Engross the Civil Power; which, for want of Abilities to manage, must end in the Ruin of the Publick.”

In Part IV human beings, viewed by those rational animals, the Houyhnhnms, appear as Yahoos, dirty, greedy, vicious, lecherous, and stupid. The Europeans described by Gulliver to his master are exactly like the Yahoos, except that they are more intelligent; but this only makes them worse, since, as his master puts it, “when a Creature pretending to Reason, could be capable of such Enormities, he dreaded lest the Corruption of that Faculty might be worse than Brutality itself”. As in Part III Christians behave more spitefully than pagans, so in Part IV “civilized” men behave more disgustingly than animals.

The four pictures form a series, in which the view grows gradually darker; that is, they represent stages in Gulliver’s disillusionment. This brings us back to Swift’s question: granted that, as one gets older, one learns more and more to the discredit of human nature, how should one react? The obvious reaction is to become a misanthrope, increasingly obsessed by what is wrong with people. That is what Gulliver does. He starts out as a cheerful, innocent character, who expects the best from everybody, and is genuinely surprised by the treachery that he meets in Lilliput: he ends by regarding human society as a mere assortment of “Gibers, Censurers, Backbiters, Pick-pockets, Highwaymen, House-breakers, Attorneys, Bawds, Buffoons, Gamesters, Politicians, Wits, Spleneticks, tedious Talkers, Controvertists, Ravishers, Murderers, Robbers, Virtuoso’s”. The random arrangement of the list is clearly intended to suggest that Gulliver has lost all sense of proportion.

[ 本帖最后由 duessa 于 2006-11-15 08:35 PM 编辑 ]

怀抱花朵的孩子

I am just in reverse with you, I have not really read novel for a long time, most of the time novel seems to me too close to endure. I have not very clear conception about a good novel, but some fiction may make me crazy. I can't help myself when read some plots which can really move me or make me face myself. I don't know why.

[ 本帖最后由 怀抱花朵的孩子 于 2006-11-16 09:52 AM 编辑 ]

duessa

I don't know the reason, either. Maybe it's due to each person's individual temperament

duessa

Life Experiences of Jonathan Swift

        Nov. 30, 1667, born a posthumous child in Dublin, Ireland of an English family

        Dependent upon his uncle

        Educated in Trinity College, Dublin

        1689-1699 secretary to Sir William Temple
beneficial but also humiliating experience
Met Stella (who died in 1728)
Wrote his first important works

        1699-1713 London and Ireland, more works

        1713 appointed Dean of St. Patrick Church in Dublin

        1742 declared insane

        1745 died

Important Works
        The Battle of the Books (1697)
        A Tale of a Tub (1704)
        The Conduct of the Allies (1711)
        Drapier's Letters (1724-25) (an offer of ₤300 for the name of the author, but “Ne’er a Traitor could be found/ To sell him for six hundred pound”)
        Gulliver's Travels (1726)
        A Modest Proposal (1729)

duessa

Jonathan Swift is a very special figure in the early 18th century, an age when we see the Great Britain was born (in 1707) and was becoming the world leading power in industry, commerce, science, and etc. However, these positive achievements which were made possible by the development of scientific agriculture, skilled manufacture and widespread commerce Swift could not appetite. He cannot be said adequately to represent the progressive force of the early 18th century. Both his essentially aristocratic education and the more or less accidental circumstance of a colonial life made it impossible for him to grasp the limited but real significance of material progress in his age, while his human sympathy for suffering and indignation at injustice kept him keenly aware of the misery, ugliness and destruction involved in the ruthless greed with which it was achieved. Swift is a great fighter and superb satirist. His hatred of tyranny was deep and strong, and his sympathy with the oppressed a burning painful thing, but although these helped him break through the smug complacency of his class, he could carry on the struggle against its callous corruption only in a desperate and hopeless fashion.

But if he never won, he never surrendered and little as he finally anticipated victory, still less did he ever accept defeat. He did not see how the common man could ever regain his birthright, but he never doubted that he should. Nor did he ever blame the victim for the assault as so many liberal intellectuals have absolved their consciences by doing.

Together with his expressions of furious hatred for those who had stripped and bound man, perhaps the most violent in the great tradition of English literature, we find rare touches of gentleness in his regard for “Esau come fainting from the field … [to sell] his birthright for a mess of pottage.” And so Swift remains one of the very few who have made satire an effective weapon with which to attack the enemy, rather than merely a shield with which to protect their own sensibilities from him.

duessa

Swift wrote his own epitaph, in Latin, which reads:

Here Lies the Body
of
Jonathan Swift, D.D.,
Once Dean of This Cathedral,
Where Burning Indignation
Can No Longer Tear His Heart.
Go, Passerby,
And do, if you can, as he did
A Man’s Part in Defense of Human Freedom

Henry Fielding’s epitaph for Dean Swift:
        A genius who deserves to be ranked among the first whom the world ever saw. He possessed the talents of a Lucian, a Rabelais and a Cervantes, and in his works exceeded them all. He employed his wit to the noblest purposes … in the defence of his country against several pernicious schemes of wicked politicians.

duessa

Three years before his death, Swift was declared insane. The reasons may vary, but Swift himself once said in Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture that “The Scripture tells us oppression maketh a wise man mad.”

The following is what Hazlitt says:
“There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.”