Gulliver's Travels

[tess]

when I was a child I always thought that Gulliver's travels is a child book. the worlds drawn in the book attracted me much. the protoganist was travelling in different countries/ islands and he was sometimes a giant , sometimes a tiny inhabitant. it was really enjoyable while reading. the island of Houyhnhnms was the most attractive one. I imagined a world that there is an island like that.

but I read the book again three years ago and realised that the islands and the people of these islands are symbols and reflects the time. it is a satire of humanity. it is really a wonderful work of Swift.

[thesvenster]

Supposedly the flying island has a really deep meaning

[intellectualammo]

when I was a child I always thought that Gulliver's travels is a child book. the worlds drawn in the book attracted me much. the protoganist was travelling in different countries/ islands and he was sometimes a giant , sometimes a tiny inhabitant. it was really enjoyable while reading. the island of Houyhnhnms was the most attractive one.

I agree and so would he. This is my favorite part of the novel, Part 4. From the Houyhnhnms till the ending. Never read this story as a child, just as an adult about two years or so ago in fact. I like how SparkNotes puts it about what interests me particularly about this part of the story:


For the first time, Gulliver finds himself wanting to stay in exile from humanity, but he is not given the choice. He is appalled by the idea of going to live among the Yahoos, and he has so fully adopted the belief system of the Houyhnhnms that he cannot help but see his wife and children as primitive, ugly, beastlike creatures. But at the same time, he realizes that he has been living with the Houyhnhnms on borrowed time, pretending only half-successfully to be as rational as they are. The simplicity of the Houyhnhnms’ world attracts him, but it is not a world in which he is allowed to live. In the end, he is forced to return to the world from which he came—a single world that encompasses all of the flaws and complexities he has encountered in his travels. But even there Gulliver cannot rest easy. Having seen the things he has, the world of Yahoos is contemptible and disgusting to him.

[Allizar]

when I was a child I always thought that Gulliver's travels is a child book. the worlds drawn in the book attracted me much. the protoganist was travelling in different countries/ islands and he was sometimes a giant , sometimes a tiny inhabitant. it was really enjoyable while reading. the island of Houyhnhnms was the most attractive one. I imagined a world that there is an island like that.

but I read the book again three years ago and realised that the islands and the people of these islands are symbols and reflects the time. it is a satire of humanity. it is really a wonderful work of Swift.

I thought that only in Russia where I live this book is considered to be child. To my mind, Guliver's Travels is worth more serious treatment. The final pages of the book fulled of bitterness and despair is a perfect picture of human estrangement which had been created long before Kafka.