Quicklet On Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels

ABOUT THE BOOK

There's a great deal of humor in Gulliver's Travels, which is why, as the recent movie adaptation proves, it still appeals to modern audiences. But something not everyone realizes about Jonathan Swift’s greatest work is that it is a brilliant social commentary on the people of Swift’s age.

Gulliver, a rather gullible, normal, average middle-class man, is a representation of the average English Everyman who might have picked up the book. The book opens with a letter to the editor attempting to persuade readers that the tales of Gulliver are all true – drawing on the readers’ own gullibility a bit before throwing them into the stories.

MEET THE AUTHOR

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EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK

Gulliver's Travels is proof that joining a writing group can produce some great results. While he had been living in England, Swift had met some fellow writers and had formed a club called the Martinus Scriblerus Club. Around 1721 the group decided to challenge themselves to write a satire on the problems with the modern educational system. Swift's response became the basis for what he eventually wrote as part three of Gulliver's Travels. He took about five years to complete the entire work, completing it the same year it was published, 1726.

When it was published, the book was very controversial. It was a scathing satire that was hard for many people to take and which got many people stirred up in defense of the picture Swift painted of British Society. Of course, the controversy was good for sales, making it a commercial success from its first publication. Still, publishers were cautious about the content; they didn't publish the manuscript in its entirety

for ten years, cutting out some of the most scandalous passages such as the ones describing or alluding to bodily functions.

Since its publication, the book has sometimes been considered a work for young adults due to its fantastical nature. Although the adventures are certainly entertaining and imaginative, to classify the book as children's literature is inaccurate. Swift was a masterful satirist who used the different imaginary countries as backgrounds against which he could play out the foibles of English and European society. Gulliver's Travels is a fascinating portrait of how one clergyman saw the failings of his society and his attempts to make the reader see the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of their own lives. Still, it is one whale of a good read as well.

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