All Hail Lilliput

I wanna talk about the Lilliputians because they really reminded me of the discussions we had while reading Utopia. I found myself thinking about society, which clearly was Swift’s intentions, and how the Lilliputians did things differently. The contrasts seemed insignificant, for example the tightrope extravaganza’s to become an elected official. But, what I found so interesting, was how these officials who are elected in a completely different manner are equally as under-qualified as many would arguing European and even U.S. officials are. I mean, they are going to cut this mountain man’s eyes out because there is a chance that he is sneaky around with the enemy? What does that accomplish? I feel like the Lilliputians are equally as poor decision makers as the Europeans and if Gulliver would have made his way back to Lilliput, he would have been just as disgusted with the Lilluptians as he became with his parents and human society. Almost like these people, even in their ridiculous form, are not any better than “mountain” sized people.

Sorry, this post is really short and a little late and a little scatterbrained!! I am having a personally and academically rough week! I hope my lateness didn’t mess up with anyone’s commenting!

Nothing like the Movies

I don't even think the narrator was annoying, I think it is the excessive descriptions. I hate busy stuff: stories and coloring book pages with tons of unneeded detail. It clouds my brain and makes me bored very easily. I really don't care about an extensive description of the land, what the people looked like or Gulliver.

Moving on.

Was I the only one who thought of More's Utopia when reading about the Lillipian people's customs? There was some pretty hardcore shit in there! Like page 62 saying fraud was a greater crime than theft and the offender would. E punished with death. I can't find the part that I'm thinking about but I remember the people work for several hours and sleep for a short amount of time, this sounded kind of Utopian to me as well. The most hardcore thing I found was on 65, which discussed how the children aren't raised by their families and are allowed visits once a year and only a kiss at the beginning and end of the visit, but no toys or fondling could occur. No wonder people like the Treasurer and Bogalom were so damn bitter! Fucking pricks! lol


And what's up what's up with the high heels vs low heels? All I could think about during the description of this lame feud was Prince and Miguel running around in their high heeled boots.

Gulliver, The Final Post

The final blog post! So briefly, I’d like to celebrate that we are all done with our blog posts.

Moving on to Gulliver’s Travels. I am also thrilled that the last text that we are reading is written in what appears to be plain English.  Thank you Professor, with finals coming it is a blessing.

The text did not contain any words that I didn’t know (although, I do love the knowledge of pronouncing knight) and it did not have any sentences that traveled on for three light years.  It was a pleasant read and for that I thank you again Dr. MB. Also, by having the story be an easier read, I can focus on the meaning of it, or just its crude nature. Peeing on fires? Childish though?

As for content, where do I start?  Along with the matter of fact writing Swift details everything precisely. I can literally tell you everything you need to know about the guy right down to not only how many siblings, but there order, and his ship mates, and so much that I don’t know why was needed.  Is there a reason, other than writing style, that Swift would add such great detail? In my Creative Writing class we discuss writing in detail, but I would think that more people than me would have to agree that he exhausted his descriptive nature.  Then by telling us that he is going to leave information out, it made me roll my eyes. Like you couldn’t of done that five million useless facts ago?

In final comparison to all the other texts that we have read, I liked this one.  It was a little too wordy at times, but it was an enjoyable read.  Throughout the semester I have appreciated the gained ability to learn how to read Old and Middle English.  They were challenging, but rewarding.  This text did not have the same appeal, but with all the British literature that we have gained I feel like I could better appreciate this text.  After reading Logan’s blog post, I too find it interesting that this could be a racial book refereeing to Lilliput as “small-minded.” After just reading Oroonoko, I can better form ideas of self and society and how it relates to the time period when this book is written and the bigger, underlining meanings.  Then without reading the Canterbury Tales, The Wyfe of Bath one could not fully appreciate how in this story his wife’s last name is Burton, and how he gets money for marrying her.  Overall, I feel like I have learned a lot from these texts and I can now relate them all together.  

Hollywood couldn't you just leave this one alone?

            Gulliver’s Travels is so much more than the shitty Jack Black movie makes it out to be. Sure, Jack Black is an excellent actor and we will never forget “School of Rock,” but this just wasn’t his best and it’s definitely disappointing, because what I noticed while reading the first book of Gulliver’s Travels was that so much of the satire still lends itself fairly well to current society. The egg situation, for example, is still a thing, as people continue to fight over the dumbest of semantics. With this satire still intact, perhaps altered a little TINY bit to feel more relevant, Gulliver’s Travels could have actually been a decent movie full of rich set pieces and a wholesome family message. Right.

            Without getting too political because that’s not my thing, I think a lot of Jonathan Swift’s message still rings true today. Though he was focused more on fighting the Whigs because they stiffed him on some financial aid, he still focused on a political group, and those groups are still very prominent, especially in America. Reading the novel for the first time, I didn’t know what to expect, and thought that Gulliver’s Travels would be more about a colonist going into a new land and basically terrorizing it, much like what we did when we founded this great nation. However, though Gulliver did do a few not-so-good things (I.E. He kind of screwed up a country’s entire fleet and went to the bathroom on a royal building, albeit with good intentions), on the whole he was an alright guest. Rather, the Lilliputians were the ones who were less organized and really just didn’t have their shit together. They elect people into power because they’re too dumb to be corrupt. That barely makes any sense. Less educated people are the ones who tend who commit more crimes. Of course, the nature of this being satirical tells us that Swift is making a point about politicians, and I certainly don’t have to tell anyone what that point is because it’s glaringly obvious. I also think that’s one of the better things about Jonathan Swift. His writing has points where it is over the top satirical and extremely obvious, yet there are a lot of subtleties to it. It’s difficult for me to find specific examples without being well versed in the history of Irish politics, but within the text there are certainly many subtle inferences about people that make it worth rereading, which was even more so the case when the book was published.

Is My Head in the Gutter? Or...

I was really excited to read this book. There was no forewarning that this was in Middle English or written by someone blind, or contained weird, dark magic that would accidentally reveal the devil. But when I sat down to read it, I realized that I'd seen the name Jonathan Swift before. Junior year of high school to be exact. Sandwiched somewhere in between Kafka's Metamorphosis and Camus' The Stranger, we took a "break" with Swift's "A Modest Proposal". If you haven't read it, do it. Takes a few minutes and it's the most bizarre thing ever. I won't spoil it for you. But I remember that it was indeed odd and that it led us into a big project where we had to come up with our own modest proposals in the satirical sense. Soooo...I knew that this read would be interesting.

But what really stood out to me, besides trying to grasp the symbolism of dozens of little people trying to contain one big thing or idea, was the vulgarity and specificity. We'll start with the specifics and then get down...and dirty.

The exactness of numbers and values really threw me. Swift provides us with the exact number of years that Gulliver works and studies and travels. He gives us his salary. We know how many men sailed on a ship and that twelve died and six survived including himself. Latitude, longitude? We've got it. My liberal arts brain knows nothing nautical, but I guess that information was helpful or interesting for at least a handful of readers. But why does Swift find the need to be so precise? "I felt this in my left hand" "I picked this up with my left hand". It actually drove me insane! It seems more like how not to write a book. I can appreciate specificity when it comes to something key, like the language. I love, well, most of the time, when an author creates or includes a different language in the book. It makes the reader feel the same way that the protagonist does. What does this mean? Why do they speak that way? Why are they different from us? So I do appreciate the verbatim phrases like Hekinah Dugal. But exactly where his ship sank in the ocean? Hmm...not so much.

The other thing that stands out is the vulgarity. Ohhh man. I'm not talking about the unnecessary urination. (I know at least two people will blog about that) I mean, the little innuendos and sneaky little bits that Swift slips into the story.

The island is Lilliput. Lilliput sounds harmless and it is for the most part, but when I looked up "lilliputian" it means small and trivial. At first I was thinking that this was for the small sized people, but now after reading I think it means they are small-minded. Whether they are small-minded and sheltered in ideas and knowledge or they're just idiots in Swift's mind, I'm not sure. But I think it's meant to be more mean than we would originally suggest.

His wife is a burden. This might be a stretch, but with the whole happy wyfe, happy lyfe motto in the back of my head from earlier this year, I paid close attention to her last name. Burton. To me, this sounds like "burden". Doe he find marriage to be a burden he must have in order to have money? He does make 400 pounds by marrying her? Perhaps he finds a wife to be a burden attached to having wealth.

And of course, who can forget Mr. James Bates, excuse me, Master Bates. If you caught it, you caught it. Unfortunately, my mind caught it before they even introduced him as Master which shows me how far down in the gutter my mind really is. I don't know what Swift is trying to get at by calling him this, but it's definitely there. There's no denying it.

Swift is a strange bird ahead of his time in satire and wit, and I don't know if I hate him for it or am deeply amused...

Did he really urinate on the palace to put out the fire?

Did he really urinate on the palace to put out the fire? …Prior to reading this book we had been told that Swift uses quite fowl language. Within the first part alone I came across the words “urinate,” “erect,” and “intercourse.” While these inappropriate terms distracted me, I also became distracted by the long paragraphs. Much of the reading was describing the scenery, and though this did help to create some powerful images in my head, it also seemed a bit irrelevant at times. Was there more significance to the excessive descriptions and fowl language then what appears on the surface? Of all things, why make the main character pee on a fire to put it out?

            So, his boat capsized, everyone drowned, he lived and swam to shore, fell asleep, woke up and saw tons of tiny people surrounding him with arrows in their hands. It’s quite interesting to me how quickly this character went from being an intruder to being waited on and fed by all the people of this island. I suppose it has to do with the fact that he sucked up to their emperor. Though he was significantly bigger in size, instead of fighting back he was kind to the people and the emperor and was quickly respected, later even worshiped. While reading this I couldn’t help but think of other books we’ve read with trickery. I immediately thought of Satan in Paradise Lost. Maybe this seems like a bit of a stretch, but both this main character and Satan fell (or swam) into a world that soon became their own. They quickly gained power and were well respected. It seems that “power” is a very prominent idea in many books we have read. How come some characters that don’t deserve power manage to get it so easily? This character swam onto a land that wasn’t his own and was soon referred to as “Nardac,” the highest title of honor for these people. Does he really deserve this honor?

Annoyingly Political???? What a surprise!

          So when I first started Part I, of Gulliver’s Travels I found he was…whiny? But not really? I’m really not sure what to feel about Gulliver as a character.  Pompous also comes to mind at times.  Although this was the least challenging text we’ve read all semester, I found his long paragraphs to be distracting and somewhat annoying at times.  I mean…some of that stuff I really don’t even care about! Like how he got his education and how his poor father ran out of money so Gulliver had to take an apprenticeship and work for it like the rest of us (what a tragedy!) See what I did there? Just trying to prove my point through mimicry of  Gulliver’s rant-y style.  I also have a beef with the way he addresses his readers, or rather, dictates what they should think.  An example would be in the description (or lack thereof) of his travels on two ships to the East and West-Indies.  He goes through the trouble to tell us that this happened, but then tells us that, “It would not be proper, for some reasons, to trouble the reader with the particulars of our adventures in those seas…” (17).  Seriously???  Then why spend all this time telling us about it? Why not just say, “Hey, I was a surgeon on two ships and a storm caused one to sink and that’s where this story begins.”? Teasing us with information we’ll never know is pretty lazy.

          So the above was my initial reaction to the story.  But after some careful thought, I realized that this tactic is actually pretty brilliant.  I see this as an extremely political novel. I’m not all that familiar with British history, but I do know enough to recognize that England was going through some political shit at this time (Excuse the language, but that’s just how basic my knowledge is on this subject.)   Within the broad scheme of Gulliver's Travels (at least Part I) Gulliver seems to be an average man in eighteenth-century England. He is concerned with family and with his job, yet he is confronted by the pigmies that politics and political theorizing make of people. Gulliver is utterly incapable of the stupidity of the Lilliputian politicians, and, therefore, he and the Lilliputians are ever-present contrasts for us. We are always aware of the difference between the imperfect (but normal) moral life of Gulliver, and the petty and stupid political life of emperors, prime ministers, and informers.  So all of the lengthy, almost pretentious paragraphs are a reflection of the pettiness.  Just like Aphra Behn, Swift is trying to make a political statement.  But he has to present a story in which his readers are caught up in a rather appealing adventure while simultaneously gaining the knowledge to look at politics from a new perspective.  Well played, Jonathan Swift…Well played.