GULLIVER’S TRAVELS (chapter 1), Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica GULLIVER’S TRAVELS (chapter 1) e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! GULLIVER’S TRAVELS (chapter 1) The novel begins with Lemuel Gulliver recounting the story of his life, beginning with his family history. he was born in Nottinghamshire, third of five sons. he studied at Cambridge but his family was too poor to keep him there, so he was sent to London to be a surgeon’s apprentice. There, under a man named James Bates, he learned mathematics and navigation with the hope of travelling. Then, he became a surgeon aboard a ship called “the swallow” for three years. Afterward, he settled in London working as a doctor and married a woman named Mary Burton. Is business began to fail when his patron died, so he decided to go to sea again and travelled for six years. Although, he had planned to return home at the end of this time, but he decided to accept one last job on a ship called “the antelope”. in the east Indies then encountered a violent storm in which 12 crewmen died. six of the restant crewmen, including Gulliver, boarded a small rowboat to escape. This one overturns and Gulliver swam safely to shore. He lied down on the grass to rest and soon he fell asleep. When he woke up, he found that his arms, legs and long hair had been tied to the ground with pieces of thread. he could only look up and the sun prevented him from seeing anything. he felt something move across his leg and over his chest. he looked down and saw a six-inch-tall human carrying a bow and arrow. at least 40 more little people climbed onto his body. He tried to make himself free and they attacked his body and face, so he decided that the safest thing to do was to lie until nightfall. the noise increased as the little people built a stage next to him and one of them climbed onto it and made a speech in a language that Gulliver did not understand. Gallivare indicated that he was hungry and they brought him baskets of meat. then he showed that he was thirsty, so they brought him two large barrels of wine. He finally got free But made them a promise of goodwill because of their hospitality. An official climbed onto gulliver's body and told him that he had to be carried to the capital city. Gulliver wanted to talk but they told him that was not permitted. SUMMARY The book is written in the first person from the point of view of Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon and sea captain who visits remote regions of the world, and it describes four adventures. In the first one, Gulliver is the only survivor of a shipwreck, and he swims to Lilliput, where he is tied up by people who are less than 6 inches (15 cm) tall. He is then taken to the capital city and eventually released. The Lilliputians’ small size mirrors their small-mindedness. They indulge in ridiculous customs and petty debates. Political affiliations, for example, are divided between men who wear high-heeled shoes (symbolic of the English Tories) and those who wear low ones (representing the English Whigs), and court positions are filled by those who are best at rope dancing. Gulliver is asked to help defend Lilliput against the empire of Blefuscu, with which Lilliput is at war over which end of an egg should be broken, this being a matter of religious doctrine. Gulliver captures Blefuscu’s naval fleet, thus preventing an invasion, but declines to assist the emperor of Lilliput in conquering Blefuscu. Later Gulliver extinguishes a fire in the royal palace by urinating on it. Eventually he falls out of favour and is sentenced to be blinded and starved. He flees to Blefuscu, where he finds a normal-size boat and is thus able to return to England. Gulliver’s second voyage takes him to Brobdingnag, inhabited by a race of giants. A farm worker finds Gulliver and delivers him to the farm owner. The farmer begins exhibiting Gulliver for money, and the farmer’s young daughter, Glumdalclitch, takes care of him. One day the queen orders the farmer to bring Gulliver to her, and she purchases Gulliver. He becomes a favourite at court, though the king reacts with contempt when Gulliver recounts the splendid achievements of his own civilization. The king responds to Gulliver’s description of the government and history of England by concluding that the English must be a race of “odious vermin.” Gulliver offers to make gunpowder and cannon for the king, but the king is horrified by the thought of such weaponry. Eventually Gulliver is picked up by an eagle and then rescued at sea by people of his own size. On Gulliver’s third voyage he is set adrift by pirates and eventually ends up on the flying island of Laputa. The people of Laputa all have one eye pointing inward and the other upward, and they are so lost in thought that they must be reminded to pay attention to the world around them. Though they are greatly concerned with mathematics and with music, they have no practical applications for their learning. Laputa is the home of the king of Balnibarbri, the continent below it. Gulliver is permitted to leave the island and visit Lagado, the capital city of Balnibarbri. He finds the farm fields in ruin and the people living in apparent squalor. Gulliver’s host explains that the inhabitants follow the prescriptions of a learned academy in the city, where the scientists undertake such wholly impractical projects as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Later Gulliver visits Glubbdubdrib, the island of sorcerers, and there he speaks with great men of the past and learns from them the lies of history. In the kingdom of Luggnagg he meets the struldbrugs, who are immortal but age as though they were mortal and are thus miserable. From Luggnagg he is able to sail to Japan and thence back to England. In the extremely bitter fourth part, Gulliver visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses who are cleaner and more rational, communal, and benevolent (they have, most tellingly, no words for deception or evil) than the brutish, filthy, greedy, and degenerate humanoid race called Yahoos, some of whom they have tamed—an ironic twist on the human-beast relationship. The Houyhnhnms are very curious about Gulliver, who seems to be both a Yahoo and civilized, but, after Gulliver describes his country and its history to the master Houyhnhnm, the Houyhnhnm concludes that the people of England are not more reasonable than the Yahoos. At last it is decided that Gulliver must leave the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver then returns to England, so disgusted with humanity that he avoids his family and buys horses and converses with them instead. ANALYSIS Considered Swift’s masterpiece, Gulliver’s Travels is the most brilliant as well as the most bitter and controversial of his satires. Written in a matter-of-fact style and with an air of sober reality, the work defeats oversimple explanations. Is it essentially comic, or is it a misanthropic depreciation of humankind? Swift certainly seems to use the various races and societies Gulliver encounters in his travels to satirize many of the errors, follies, and frailties that human beings are prone to. The warlike, disputatious, but essentially trivial Lilliputians in the first section and the deranged impractical pedants and intellectuals in the third segment are shown as imbalanced beings lacking common sense and even decency. The Houyhnhnms, by contrast, are the epitome of reason and virtuous simplicity. However, Gulliver’s own proud identification with these horses and his subsequent disdain for his fellow humans