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.
Showing posts with label Gulliver's Travels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gulliver's Travels. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
The Following Analysis May Or May Not Be Factual: The REAL Gulliver Story
So,
Before the story proper begins, Swift treats us to two letters about the book. The first consists of Gulliver himself complaining about the editing of his accounts, claiming that they take his factual account of events and warp them to deliver an inaccurate message and espouse a political opinion he himself does not share.It also stipulates that he has proposed some of his own corrections to fix the problem and get everything back on track. The second letter comes from who I presume to be the offending editor who heartily admits that he did indeed excise large portions of the text in order to make the narrative be not boring. That's all well and good, but WHY?
Why do we care about these two letters complaining about publication tampering? Why do we care that Gulliver doesn't like the book? Why do we care that large swaths of nautical jargon were obliterated? We care because after these two letters, the book goes straight into the narrative. We care because Swift never resolves the issue of there being at least two radically different versions of the same text. We go in to the text knowing that there are two versions, but we don't really know which version we got. Did we get the original only missing some technical details? Did we get a political smear job published in bad faith? Did we get a tertiary edit attempting to rectify ill-made pontifications? We just don't know.
And because the novel leaves this problem ambiguous it becomes hard to get legitimately offended. How can you take something seriously when it's in a weird schizophrenic limbo of narrative reliability? You don't have to, and that's the point. This book is supposed to be satirical and funny. You don't need to take it seriously, and Swift relieves us of the burden of treating it like we would Locke or Hobbes. There is a political message, but it's not gonna be two hundred pages of necrotic equine violence. It's gonna be fun, and if there's anything in the book that displeases or is hard to believe, well, clearly it was just the wrong version of the book, so chillax, have a beer, maybe crush a guy the size of your finger.
Before the story proper begins, Swift treats us to two letters about the book. The first consists of Gulliver himself complaining about the editing of his accounts, claiming that they take his factual account of events and warp them to deliver an inaccurate message and espouse a political opinion he himself does not share.It also stipulates that he has proposed some of his own corrections to fix the problem and get everything back on track. The second letter comes from who I presume to be the offending editor who heartily admits that he did indeed excise large portions of the text in order to make the narrative be not boring. That's all well and good, but WHY?
Why do we care about these two letters complaining about publication tampering? Why do we care that Gulliver doesn't like the book? Why do we care that large swaths of nautical jargon were obliterated? We care because after these two letters, the book goes straight into the narrative. We care because Swift never resolves the issue of there being at least two radically different versions of the same text. We go in to the text knowing that there are two versions, but we don't really know which version we got. Did we get the original only missing some technical details? Did we get a political smear job published in bad faith? Did we get a tertiary edit attempting to rectify ill-made pontifications? We just don't know.
And because the novel leaves this problem ambiguous it becomes hard to get legitimately offended. How can you take something seriously when it's in a weird schizophrenic limbo of narrative reliability? You don't have to, and that's the point. This book is supposed to be satirical and funny. You don't need to take it seriously, and Swift relieves us of the burden of treating it like we would Locke or Hobbes. There is a political message, but it's not gonna be two hundred pages of necrotic equine violence. It's gonna be fun, and if there's anything in the book that displeases or is hard to believe, well, clearly it was just the wrong version of the book, so chillax, have a beer, maybe crush a guy the size of your finger.
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