Swift's Utopia?

     I have to say I am admittedly a little miffed with Mother Nature for her role in preventing further discussion on Gulliver's Travels as I have been looking forward to this text all semester! So, I have resolved to continue the discussion in some proportion.

     As I prepare to face this final, I am pondering all the connections and thematic similarities that can be made across the texts we have covered this semester.  And I have been thinking about Swift's potential motives when writing this narrative. We've spent a fair amount of time discussing utopian and dystopian thought and this has made me think more about how Swift may have been engaging in a sort of utopian pun. While we've talked about how he is satirizing England society, it seems he uses the different societies Gulliver encounters, such as that of the Lilliputians and the Houyhnhnms, as conversation starters for his contemporaries to question the way things are done in their own society. Personally, I find these “civilizations” bizarre and unattractive, which brings me to the question: is he intending to open the floor for new ideas to inspire change or does this story serve to repel us from the idea of a utopia (a perfect society) and perhaps even those cultures who are different?

Why are only the Lilliputians popular??

     Reading Gulliver's Travels I went into it expecting that the book was going to be entirely about mean little people with a giant Gulliver washed up on their island. This may or may not have been from the movie I had seen a few years back starring Jack Black...

 

Reference: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfXsxVsX8Eu0qTlANXT53XuO-IlQ09k4yKNqtEvkH5zxgKeuIk2pOb0VQaWfuOkPydjxA0FYe-yJy934Up3VrY_OoX8eFQrpXROoXYkpkwT5LKPiGJTDxA_CwZnqT87hdoTi7fCs-w7EWt/s400/gullivers-travels.jpg 

 

In this movie, I think Jack Black does a good job at portraying Gulliver's naiveté, but the entire movie is focused on the Lilliputians. Everything I have heard or learned about has been about a washed-up giant on a island filled with little people. But class and actually reading the book made me realize that there is much more to this book that Jonathon Swift wanted to say.

    

     The book is about the MANY travels of Gulliver, not just one. This makes me think about why the Houyhnhnms are not as popular. One reason could be the fact that they are horses and not actual people. The Houyhnhnm part of the novel makes fun of all of human nature whereas the Lilliputian only focuses on select flaws that humans tend to display.

 

     This circles back to the fact that one of the greatest flaws is human pride according to the fourth part of the book, and human pride is what keeps that part of the novel from being popular. People do not like to be told that they are in the wrong and that a different way of doing things may be better than theirs. Humans do not like to be under submission to other animals; that is not how the animal kingdom works. However, humans find it more "normal" to submit to the tiny Lilliputians just because they are technically the same animal as humans.

 

     Overall, I think that both parts are just as humorous, and that Swift does a great job of portraying the Houyhnhnms to see how ridiculous some of human culture is and how pride gets in the way of success and greatness.

 

 

Reference: http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs4/i/2004/254/1/e/Houyhnhnm_and_Yahoo_by_EmperorNortonII.jpg

 

 

*On a side note: I also believe that Swift is trying to portray the cruelty and inhumanity of enslaving human beings, but that is an entirely different blog.

 

**On a second side note: Spelling Houyhnhnms is extremely difficult.