J. Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Gulliver’s Travels as utopia
If the strange new country is some sort of utopia--a perfectly realized vision of the ideals often proclaimed but generally violated in our world--then the satirist can manipulate the discrepancy (rożnorodność) between the ideal New World of the fiction and the corrupt world we live in to illustrate repeatedly just how empty the pretensions to goodness really are in our world.
Like many narratives about voyages to nonexistent lands, Gulliver’s Travels explores the idea of utopia—an imaginary model of the ideal community. The idea of a utopia is an ancient one, going back at least as far as the description in Plato’s Republic of a city-state governed by the wise and expressed most famously in English by Thomas More’s Utopia. Swift nods to both works in his own narrative, though his attitude toward utopia is much more skeptical, and one of the main aspects he points out about famous historical utopias is the tendency to privilege the collective group over the individual.
e.g. - Horses world isn’t ideal for us=> similar to Utopia(the entire text)
- Houyhnhms seem to be an ideal society, but the more we learn about it, it really isn’t
- Swift’s presentation of society may be ideal for the leaders of the country (but not for
him!)
- Tradition of travel writing, the same pattern ( shipwreck, rebellion of the crew, main
character on unknown land- discovers it, etc.)
Presentation of Gulliver
- the narrator and protagonist (main character, hero) of the story
- he is married to Mary Burton with two children (who consequently grow up without him), and spends some sixteen years and seventeen months in his adventures, and ultimately returns home a changed man.
- intelligent and well educated, sea captain ( trained surgeon, good at mathematics and navigation )
- travels throughout the world on several voyages, learning about different cultures and customs.
- his perceptions are naïve and gullible- łatwowierny (as his name suggests)
- his four adventures change Gulliver forever, bringing him new perspectives on the laws of humanity and stark commentary on the ways of European life.
Houyhnhms
- their society is rational they have no feelings
- Horses world isn’t ideal for us, however it seems to be utopian
- rational horses who maintain a simple, peaceful society governed by reason and truthfulness—they do not even have a word for “lie” in their language.
- are like ordinary horses, except that they are highly intelligent and deeply wise.
- they live in a sort of socialist republic, with the needs of the community put before individual desires.
- they are the masters of the Yahoos
- the Houyhnhnms have the greatest impact on Gulliver throughout all his four voyages.
- they have no names in the narrative nor any need for names, since they are virtually interchangeable, with little individual identity. T
- their lives seem harmonious and happy, although quite lacking in vigor, challenge, and excitement.
Yahoos
- unkempt humanlike beasts who live in servitude to the Houyhnhnms.
- in their hierarchy there is always only one who seems to be a leader (not everyone is equal- they’re not particularly fond in the leader)
- seem to belong to various ethnic groups, since there are blond Yahoos as well as dark-haired and redheaded ones (the men are characterized by their hairy bodies, and the women by their low-hanging breasts)
- they are naked, filthy, and extremely primitive in their eating habits.
- not capable of government, and thus they are kept as servants to the Houyhnhnms, pulling their carriages and performing manual tasks.
Position of the narrator
Gulliver represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just set down but how far can we rely on a narrator whose identity is elusive (nieuchwytny) and whose inventiveness self – evident
Lemuel Gulliver himself narrates the story of Gulliver's Travels, but this first-person narrator is not completely reliable. Though Gulliver is very exact with the details of his travels, and we know him to be honest, sometimes he doesn't see the forest for the trees.
Swift deliberately makes Gulliver naive and sometimes even arrogant for two reasons. First, it makes the reader more skeptical about the ideas presented in the book. Second, it allows the reader to have a good laugh at Gulliver's expense when he doesn't realize the absurdity of his actions.
Narrative devices
It’s a kind of satire, game with a reader.
Misanthropy
Gulliver never speaks fondly or nostalgically about England, and every time he returns home, he is quick to leave again.
Gulliver never complains explicitly about feeling lonely, but the embittered (rozgoryczony) and antisocial misanthrope we see at the end of the novel is clearly a profoundly isolated individual.
Thus, if Swift’s satire mocks (pozoruje) the excesses of communal life, it may also mock the excesses of individualism in its portrait of a miserable and lonely Gulliver talking to his horses at home in England.
Ylayda