Gulliver's Travels was an extremely well crafted book. Swift broke his novel into four distinct and exciting journeys, each exploring a different subset of humanity through clear and image laden narrative. I enjoyed Swift's internal commentary on contemporary travel novels and appreciated his staying away from describing the sea journeys in too much detail. In fact, his style was one which embraced brevity and still managed to paint a vivid image in the reader's imagination.
Several passages really spoke to me. The Liliputians had an excellent means for governing their people for "whoever can there bring sufficient proof, that he has strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy-three moons, has a claim to certain privileges, according to his quality or condition of life, with a proportionable sum of money out of a fund appropriated for that use." An excellent idea. If you get to a particular age and have not made any offenses against the laws of the land, you ought to be rewarded both in recognition and finance. Swift goes on to indicate that the Liliputians thought it unfortunate to say the least that in English society (as carries over to American society as well) "laws were enforced only by penalties, without any mention of reward." I know one should be intrinsically motivated to do good and to follow established rules and norms, but wouldn't a bit of compensation be motivation to continue to do one's best each and every day? I'm just pondering the thought.
I also found of the explorations of the sciences on the floating island to be very interesting. The attention of these natives to the "how" of things blinded them to the problems at hand. Swift was certainly making a comment on the shortsightedness of humankind when it comes to getting bogged down in the details.
What I appreciated most was his affection for the horses during his final adventure. Gulliver became so in touch with nature and with his natural surroundings that he could hardly bear to return to society as he once knew it. His reverence for this species of horse was touching and it was indeed the one travel that I wished he would not have to conclude. I wanted to know how he might spend his final days with this gentle and kind species. I did however have some issue with his using the Yahoo's for many things that I could hardly stomach. Using the skins of a species to close to one's own for sails and using the tallow to weatherproof a sailing vessel, that just seemed a bit too much to me. But, I suppose Gulliver began to think of himself as an Houyhnhnm at least akin to the Houyhnhnm in his thoughts and actions and therefore took no issue with the treatment of the Yahoos. Perhaps because Gulliver was so drawn into an existence ruled solely by reason he was incapable of treating the Yahoos in any other manner as reason dictates that one should be treated as one acts.
Overall Gulliver's Travels was a great tale, full of social commentary and interesting juxtapositions of ideas. I am eager to read more of Swift, however I am trying yet again to choose something from a century closer to my own.
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