Gulliver's Travels

by Jonathan Swift

11 ratings, 5 reviews

To this day, the classic Gulliver's Travels places Jonathan Swift as the master of both parody and satire. Fifteen years in the making, his book was published anonymously due to fear of prosecution. And rightfully so, as it basically made fun of everyone: the State, the Church, Big Science and the Aristocracy. It was an immediate smash hit. If Swift were alive today he'd probably be writing for Southpark.

This tale in four parts depicts shipwrecked castaway Lemuel Gulliver, who encounters the diminutive Lilliputians, the giants of Brobdingnag, the impractical scientists of Laputa, the philosophical horselike Houyhnhnms, and the base humaneseque Yahoos. Besides generating a few
unwieldy SAT words (Lilliputian, Brogdingnagian), Gulliver's Travels delves fantastically into the nature of man: exploring good vs. evil, optimism vs. misanthropy, and whether human corruption is innate or learned over time.

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John Koziol

February 13, 2013

From the time I was a kid, I always liked the story "Gulliver's Travels." When I was a child, there was a cartoon about this story that I would watch as often as I could. So, when I took a college literature course and had to pick a book from the given choices, it was a no-brainer that with "Gulliver's Travels" as one of the book choices that I would read it. Through reading it, I found it to be much deeper than the child's version of the story. The true version of the story is that of a political satire with many of the characters representing politicians from Great Britain that were in office during the time author, Jonathan Swift wrote the book. Through the way Swift told his story the reader - in this case me - could see the lampooning wonderfully intertwined within the story. The fantastical story is creatively spun by Swift and on its own will keep the reader engrossed from the first page to the last. "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift is more than deserving of the five star rating that I gave it.