Although I am trying to buy fewer books, it was too much for me to pass up a nice Vintage Classic edition of Gulliver's Travels. Not only was it a work of pre-20th literature, it was also a brand new book for a pound. Like a lot of people, I only really knew the story of our hero's trip to Lilliput and a bit about Brobdingnag, though I did know he ventures to many other strange and wonderful places. Including, er, Japan.
Turns out, it is actually a very interesting satire on the human condition and the world in which we live, as relevant today, 300 years on, as it was when it was written. While the two most famous parts deal more with the grotesqueries of the human body in all its imperfection and in relating size to status and making comparisons, it was actually the last of the four books, his voyage to the Houyhnhnhms, that I found most interesting and was the most cutting.
In this last part, Gulliver lives with the Houyhnhnms, effectively horses that are rational, intelligent creatures who operate on a purely sensible level, with none of the foibles of men, as portrayed by the savage and idiotic Yahoos. Skewering everything from the law to government to irrationality to – slightly bizarrely – redheads (I'd love to know if that was a barb aimed at someone in particular), the story makes a mockery of everything in our society. It also deals with militaristic and imperial ambitions and the (mis)treatment of native populations. Gulliver argues in favour of Britain creating colonies at the end, though it is hard to tell if Swift is serious in this (I'm inclined to think so) or if he is merely lampooning something else. It took me a while to get into it, but it certainly saved the best till last and left me with much to ponder.
Book number: 15
Title: Gulliver's Travels
Author: Jonathan Swift
Category: Pre-20th century literature
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