Gulliver's Travels

I actually like this book so far! I think some of the content is hilarious. What makes this story even more brilliant is how Swift relates some incidents in the book to different cultures' in the world. As a reader you have to pay close attention to these comparisons and what exactly Swift is saying. Our class discussion helped out a lot with this, because I had no clue what exactly Swift was referring too. Someone could definitely  read this book and skip all of the important hidden content, because the satire is very powerful.
A few things really stood out to me in this book: high heels and eggs, and the many different customs and traditions of the Lilliputians. In the book, Swift stated that people were distinguished by the height of their heels. The group known as the Slamecksan's wore short heels and the Tramecksan's wore tall heels. It turns out that the short heels have more power than the tall heels. The king's heels are short and the prince's heels are uneven...now this is very interesting. I figured this was because the prince does not have as much power as the king, so his heels are in between..haha. Maybe when it is his chance to become king his heels we be even.
The concept of the egg was very interesting too! Just because someone cut their finger on a egg by cracking it from the big end  now the whole community has to change the way they crack a egg. Yes, this made me laugh because I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. However, in class we talked about how the controversy with the eggs related to the Protestants vs. Catholics. Swift is basically saying that the controversy between the Protestants and Catholics its not that serious. Especially when both religions are some what similar. I think Swift is saying there should be some type of agreement between both religions.
Lastly, although the many customs and traditions of the Lilliputians are very interesting. I want to talk about how good morals and honesty plays a major factor in their community. The Lilliputians state that it is a crime to falsely accuse someone of a crime. Also, those who perform good behavior receive money. I found this very interesting because dishonesty is taken very seriously, and in most cultures people who show good behavior are rarely acknowledged.
Overall, this book is pretty good. I enjoy reading it, now we will see about Book IV!
(I did not know there was a movie named Gulliver's Travels..how cool haha!)

http://thehut.pantherssl.com/design-assets/products/10350305/Gulliver1.JPG

A Mountain of Satire

Let me just start off by saying I was so excited for this week, especially after finishing Oroonoko last week because Gulliver’s Travels was something that I had already read. The satirical references aren’t always the easiest for me to catch but this book is so ludicrous and yet entertaining that I actually like it. I remember when I first read it I was like oh wow…yep he’s peeing and pooping and their wheeling it away in barrels. Interesting. But something I had not thought of, which came up in our discussion today was the idea of why Gulliver is even living under the rules of the Lilliputians? “Besides, I now considered myself as bound by the Laws of Hospitality to a People who had treated me with so much Expense and Magnificence” (26). As was said in class today, he could easily kill all these people by simply stepping on them. So is he an idiot for obeying the laws of these little people? Or is this Jonathan Swift’s way of showing the reader that although you are bigger and more powerful, when shown kindness and authority of a nation foreign to your own there needs to be a level of respect? Perhaps it was about a respect that was not shown to Ireland from England in the 17^th century? For those of you that don’t know, and from what I can remember from European history, the English conquest of Ireland was extremely brutal and bloody during that time period. I wouldn’t be surprised if Swift used the anger for his homeland to fuel this first story.

Everything Comes Down To Poop

Now, I was going to finally write something about Oroonoko (which, for some reason, sounds like a girl's name to me....but that's not what I was going to talk about...I promise), but our discussion about the various excrement in Gulliver's Travels just made me laugh so much that I had to save my depressing Oroonoko blog for later in favor of this one about, you guessed it, POOP!

Hahaha! College sure is great, isn't it?

Leave it to Jonathan Swift to answer life's most meaningful questions: just what can we do with an area that is overpopulated and starving and how does one dispose of poop when stranded on an island anyways? Gotta love that crazy Irishman, right?

Now, other than being incredibly funny, the description of the disposal of the poop actually makes a statement. Well, actually, since every reader sees different messages in the same work of literature, the poop actually makes multiple statements! I'm just gonna write mine down here, though.

It takes 300 Lilliputian tailors to dress the gargantuan Gulliver. It takes 300 Lilliputian chefs to feed him. And it takes 300 Lilliputian...excrement evacuators to dispose of the waste that Gulliver produces.

It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. And I think that is exactly what Jonathan Swift is saying through his extensive description about the disposal of poop. During Swift's time, as well as our own time, there were people doing the dirtiest and seemingly most meaningless jobs. These people receive little to almost no recognition as to their contribution to society. They might sometimes feel as if their contributions to society are meaningless and wonder why they bother to wake up each morning to do it day in and day out.

However, consider if you were a Lilliputian with the giant Gulliver on your island home. This behemoth is excreting tons upon tons upon tons of waste almost on a daily basis (that is, if he's regular of course). If those 300 people in charge of the poop disposal suddenly woke up and decided not to bother taking care of the poop, the results would be catastrophic. Poop would be everywhere. Your once idyllic homeland is now overflowing with stinking shit. Your water is contaminated from the excrement. People die every day from the effects of the shit. There is no escape. You are only left to wonder when you will be next.

All because those 300 excrement evacuators decided that their job was not worth doing.

So, I think that Swift is saying that in order to have a functioning society, every cog, gear, nut, bolt, etc. no matter how small needs to do their part. Some parts may seem unnecessary or insignificant, but without that one part, your world could suddenly be overrun with shit. Because...as many Scrubs fans may already know:

 

Also, I would like to point out that using shit as imagery, as many of you may know, is not just something Jonathan Swift did once and was never spoken of again. It has been used in modern day media as well. Yeah, it is under a different context and expressing a different meaning but it is still there. My personal favorite example is from South Park. If you're a fan of the show, then you know what series of episodes I am talking about: the ones concerning Stan's cynicism.

For some reason, I couldn't find the link from the video uploader, but the link below should take you to one of my favorite parts of the series of episodes (and maybe even the entire show).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdD3hSW1UpM 

 

Anyways, just wanted to shoot the shit with you guys for a bit (haha...get it? Shoot the shit?...no? Damn.)

Savage Civilization

The class discussion yesterday, was uncomfortable for me. It was not because of the topic, although the discussion of slavery and inequality is inherently uncomfortable because it is so fundamentally wrong, but because the criteria felt fuzzy. My problem was and continues to be in the subjective nature of the terms “civilized” and “savage”, and perhaps that was the point.(?)  Even the interweb is conflicted:

A lack of scary masks determine civilization?

Or is it simply the ability to manipulate?

We felt like before we could begin to categorize the characters of “Oroonoko” by level of civility, our group had to establish criteria for what exactly constituted each and what we arrived at was a level of organization and technological prowess –the more developed a country was, the more civilized its society. And while our definition worked, in a way, it prevented us from making the sliding scale of douchebaggery that we really wanted to. If we had categorized in terms of civility toward fellow humans, then I feel the native “Indians” and Britons would have swapped sides on the scale with the “Indians” taking the place for most civil and the Britons at the opposite end of the spectrum. But to minimize this, the author subtly suggests that the only reason the natives are so kind is because of their collective naiveté – they just don’t know any better or they would be just like “us”. This assertion is unsettling as it insinuates that the natural state of a civilized human is dishonest and cruel, and I’m just not buying it. Perhaps this was a ploy to soften the indignities presented to the reader by what would have been their own nationality, but it feels an awful lot like rationalization to me.

Yeah, there’s just no rationalizing this.

            I don’t think even after class that I’m any closer to reconciling my feelings on this and it bugs me – and I think that it should. Rereading the last few pages, and keeping in mind Jordan’s comments about how O’ is really the only character that evolves during the piece, I wonder if he isn’t meant to be the example of civilized man. Behn gives him dignity in death that is usually reserved for Stoic Philosophers who were portrayed as the perfection of humanity. Should the ability to recognize injustice and wrongs and to change because of it be the mark of civility?

 Post 4 of 5

Civilized or Savage???

Today's class really had me thinking about the ideals that define civilized and savage. Both have normal connotations, civilized seems to always have a "good" feeling when savage always has a "negative" one.  Those who are civilized are normally at the top of the pyramid while those who are savage are more like animals just surviving.
The actual definition from the Oxford English Dictionary are as follows:

Civilized: At an advanced stage of social and cultural development, usually marked by the existence of organized communities and an adherence to established conventions of behavior; highly developed; refined and sophisticated in manner or taste; educated, cultured.
Savage: That is in a state of nature, wild

Now, in order to get a feel of who is really savage and civilized in Oroonoko it takes a little thought with those definitions. Of course when I thought of savage, I thought of the African people in the story. They seemed like the most wild and lacked the "ideals" of a civilized nation. But then again, I thought of the Indians. Actually they are those most savage only because they are so obvious to the ideals, morals, corruption, and evil that always seems to come with those civilized. The Indians are indeed ones with nature. They don't sell their people for slaves in hope of gaining benefits in the end. The people don't even have a word for a lie. 
As for the Africans, I would then place them to be in second to most savage. Their lifestyle is one that is scary and far from something that would be considered civilized. This leaves the English to be the most civilized. Out of the three, yes, they are most civilized, but I feel some of their actions towards the natives and especially the Africans make them savage bullies. They use their whits and position on the hierarchy to take advantage of all those below them. The Africans only do what they do because they don't know any better nor could they comprehend another lifestyle. The English however do know, yet they still play dirty. On a connotation level, I would put the English and Africans most savage only because the two play so dirty in the slave trade. Even though the natives are so oblivious to outside culture, that lack of knowledge makes them more civilized. 

What's wrong with these people?

Oroonoko really got to me.  I was actually mad after the ending, which in my opinion means that at least the author succeeded in her goal of making people care about this issue.  But reading a story so heavily saturated with slavery made me think of a quote by one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett.  He speaks through the character of Granny Weatherwax, saying, "A sin, young man, is when you treat people as things.  Including yourself.  That's what sin is" (Carpe Jugulum).  And that's exactly what happens over and over again in this story.

First off, I don't think I have to tell anyone that slavery is the most literal example of treating people as things.  Slavery takes a human being and makes him a salable commodity, preempting his free will and self-determination.  But it's far from the only example of this definition of sin.  Oroonoko's grandfather treats Imoinda as a thing, there for his pleasure alone, and when he decides to punish her, he sells her to slavers with barely a second thought.  His actions also show how little he regards his own grandson when he steals away his betrothed, the woman he loves alone and who loves him in return.

Again and again in this book, white men are proven to be faithless liars.  These men treat everyone around them as things, justifying their manipulation and deceit by telling themselves they're just slaves, or just natives, or just subjects, not worthy of respect or consideration.  In fact, these men are even lying to themselves, not respecting themselves enough to maintain their honor.  The worst thing, in my opinion, is that they leave honest people looking like liars if they trust their words.  For someone in a position of power, such as a deputy governor, such behavior is despicable  and an atrocious example to set for his subjects.

I also get the sense that the colonists view the natives from the same dehumanizing perspective.  The author says that they don't dare take the natives as slaves because they are so numerous.  This implies to me that if they could get away with it, they would just enslave the natives; after all, they're just godless heathens, right?  I think this is the exact reason the author makes such a big deal of the innocence and morality of the natives compared to the whites.  In fact, the disparity between the religious tenets of these liars and their actions makes me think they see God as just another thing, something to use to calm the masses but which means nothing to them.

So what do you all think?  Did Terry Pratchett get it right, or is there more to the story?

3 out of 5

Gruesome Ending to a Tragic Tale

    It was hard for me to read the ending of Oroonoko. Being from the twenty-first century, it is hard for me to imagine people enslaving other human beings and treating them so poorly. It moved me emotionally and made me cringe while I was reading that, but because of that stirring of emotions, I could not seem to stop reading. I wonder if this was Behn's point all along. She wanted people to realize that slavery was going on in the world, and it was affecting families and even royalty of other cultures in a very real way.
     Knowing some about slavery and what all it entailed, I was not as shocked at the cruelty as I believe someone during Behn's time would be. Sure, there were prisoners of war and public executions, but slavery was not the norm. The way that Oroonoko was killed was worse than how animals were killed for food. To wrap ones mind around it is unthinkable, and I cannot imagine the other ways in which slaves were killed.
    To Behn's original audience and to readers today, the reality of slavery is revealed in a gruesome and emotionally stirring way. Behn makes one think about slavery in a way that slave owners would never wish people to know. Her bluntness and the way she elevates Oroonoko at the beginning, stirs empathy within the reader as Oroonoko comes to a tragic end.



Blog challenge: 4 of 5!