Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's travel (2)

Gulliver’s travel

Author: Jonathan Swift

Characters: 1)Gulliver: Gulliver is the protagonist of the book; he is a middle-aged man, he is tall and he has blonde hair. He lives in England with his wife and his son. He is a surgeon and also he is an adventurous sailor and traveller. In this book, the author describes Gulliver’s travels, which are divided in four parts: the first section is about the voyage to Lilliput where the inhabitants are minuscule. Gulliver then goes to Brobdignag where the population is giant. During the third trip, the protagonist moves to Laputa, which is a flying island, and finally he goes to the land of the Houyhnhnms, where the inhabitants are horses gifted with intelligence.

2)Lilliputians: the Lilliputians are the inhabitants of Lilliput; they are very small, cozy and adept at build everything. Moreover they are at war with Blefuscu, a city near Lilliput. The war begins for a funny reason about how break an egg.

3) Inhabitants of Blefuscu: they are enemy of Lilliputians and they help Gulliver to build a boat in order to go home.

4) Inhabitants of Brobdingnag: they, in contrast to Lilliputians, are high 20 metres.  Their society is well organized and managed but they don’t support the minuscule persons like Gulliver.In fact, Gulliver doesn’t fell good in Brobdingnag also because his master treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money

5) Glumdalclitch:it is the nickname that Gulliver gives to the daughter of his master. She get attache with Gulliver that she follows him when he is bought by the queen.

6) Inhabitants of Laputa: they are the inhabitants of the flying island Laputa. During the day, all the population is absorbed in philosophical and mathematical thoughts, a lot of them engage in dubious and unrealistic researches in their academy.

7) Houyhnhms: They are horses equipped with intellect and they live in their land with their servants that are named Yahoo. They are similar to humans but they are yellow and very hairy. Moreover the Houyhnhnms live in a well organized society that is based on rational basics.

Comment: I liked very much this book because, in spite of it is a children’s book since it is about four surreal trips that the protagonist has done, anyway it includes some metaphorical and implicit messages that the author wants to communicate. Jonathan Swift describes in detail the customs, the language, the society and the government of this populations that Gulliver meet and he highlights positive and negative sides of them. Doing this, the author wants to underline the numerous differences that there are between these strange people and the population of Europe, above all in order to point out the remarkable corruption that invades the society of that time. For example, when the writer speaks that the Houyhnhnms don’t know the falsity, the fraud and the theft, it goes without saying the sentence to his community that is used to dupe and steal. Moreover all these populations, except the Lilliputians, are not familiar with aggressiveness and war in contrast to European people. Therefore J. Swift starting from the imagination, brings out the terribile and the monstrous. I notice in this book that both the writer and the protagonist research, contrary to Europe, an utopian word where there is peace and serenity and where everyone is loyal.
In conclusion, this book is very significant because the author by the metaphor and satire communicates his opinions about the European society and population but these opinions are not recognizable by a child