apr 1, 1726 - 'Gulliver's Travels', Jonathan Swift
Description:
Utopia
deals with the human condition. Samuel Gulliver is a naive ship surgeon who relates his extraordinary adventures. Each new country visited reflects on S's own society. In Liliput he finds himself among tiny people whose corruption and absurd customs he looks down upon. Brobdingnag brings a reversal as Gulliver is now surrounded by benevolent giants, who live simply and peacefully, but it is Gulliver who is now morally blind and absurd, wanting to exterminate them. G is next shipwrecked on Laputa and other countries inhabited by mad scientists an philosophers. He finally reaches the land of the Houyhnhnms, horse-like creatures who are rational, honest and polite. Their servants, the Yahoos, look like human beings but are dirty, vile and loathsome. G believes he has found the ideal human nature with the H and returns home disgusted with the human race.
Yet G is not S and it may be misleading to call him misanthropic, particularly since the H, perfect though they seem to be, lack ambition and curiosity. For S, man is capable of reason but too often displays folly and vice
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British Literature
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