Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift

I finished Gullivers Travels today. This was a book assigned to me in junior high but that I must confess I did not read. I should send my English teacher a book report. Actually this story was quite interesting.

The book certainly has a satiric bent as in visiting many different cultures we see the comparisons to the society of the early eighteenth century Swift inhabits through comparison.

I assume that teaches somewhere still assign this so I am not going to get into the book report issues and speak of what Swift was commenting on his satire.

I will say that the book itself was well written, intelligent and not without large traces of whimsy. I think most of us have heard of the Lilliputians where Gulliver is a giant and then the inhabitants of an island called Brobdingnag where he is small and to prevent injury he must be carried in a box. He also visits places where such as a floating island and a place where science is revered but there is no discipline to the science so only outlandish ideas are put forward.

The most interesting section for me was the visit to the Houynhnhms a breed of horses who are advanced beyond humans, called Yahoos who are primitive. This chapter with the travelers becoming entranced with the horses to the point that he finds his own humanness offensive.

A very good book.