Reading through Gulliver's Travels, one might initially feel that there is a point of sorts to the story; that all the satire of all the various peoples might be leading towards one truly enlightened sociopolitical ideal. However, this does not turn out to be the case.
In the end, the most enlightened men Gulliver meets in his journeys aren't even strictly men; they're horses. And furthermore, as Gulliver begins to get closer to their way of thinking, he begins to act like an animal. When he finally returns home, he has basically become sub-human.
The "ideal" or "message" that Swift leads to in Gulliver's Travels is apparently that there is no singular perfect social construct; that all concepts of human organization are, in some way, utterly ridiculous. Swift does not propose any solution or alternative to this; instead, all Gulliver's Travels does is give many perspectives on that single sad truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment