Reviewing an established literary classic is never easy, since you feel that if you give it a 5-star rating, everyone will think "well duh, tell us something we didn't know" and if you give it a bad rating you'll be berated for not appreciating a treasure.
I've given it 5 stars.
(All say in unison: "Well Duh…")
Gulliver's Travels is perhaps the best satirical novel ever written. The eponymous hero embarks on his chosen career as a ships' surgeon but things quickly start going wrong when a storm wrecks the ship. With no other apparent survivors, Gulliver finds himself adrift, but eventually reaches land. The land is not inhabited – but the inhabitants aren't quite what you'd call human…
His travels thereafter lead him from one strange group of individuals to another, culminating in a most extraordinary encounter with a race that change his perceptions forever. Each of the races he encounters satirises a particular ideology with the inherent strengths, weaknesses, excesses, and at times downright stupidity of that ideology being mercilessly exposed. (When I first read it I was younger [well duh] and thought that he was merely satirising political parties, the second time I thought it was systems of government, but the third time I read it I think I pretty much understood what Swift was actually trying to do!!) Without wishing to reveal too much of the plot, what Gulliver observes in the attitudes of the people he meets has a profound effect on how he views his native England with its many faults and foibles.
Considering the age of the book, the writing has a remarkably fresh and modern feel to it. There are some writers from yesteryear that I simply cannot bear reading because of their writing style (Dickens annoys me with his excessive detail, Defoe and Conrad just give me a headache), whereas I find others like Swift and Mary Shelley immediately readable. Personally I really enjoyed the satirical element of Gulliver's Travels (though to me the storyline is strong enough for it to have been a good book even without the satire), but my wife just thought Gulliver was a grumpy old moaner – so I guess it's all a matter of taste. (Women in my family have always got in trouble for their literary interpretations though – apparently my mum was frowned on by her English teacher for complaining that Romeo only dumped Rosalind for Juliet because the latter was a bit prettier, while she dismissed Heathcliffe in Withering Heights as "miserable" and the book as "not romantic at all.) Er… anyway, if you do enjoy satire, you'll also enjoy this. Stylistically it's a bit mixed up – at times there's the gentle humour of 3 Men in a Boat (Jerome K Jerome) while at others it almost veers into the territory inhabited by the likes of the viciously funny Catch 22 (Joseph Heller). I don't pretend to understand everything Swift was trying to say in this book because I don't think that would be possible without a thorough knowledge of the politico-socio-religious climate of the time. Nevertheless, Swift's satirical commentary of his own times contains many relevant observations about our own society today. To enjoy reading the book it isn't necessary to try to understand or even care about the social commentary element, but it does add a whole new dimension to the book (and is what makes it a true classic).
Very young readers will be better off with the simplified Ladybird version, but any young teenager with a reasonable reading ability should be able to cope with the full text in this version. The only people I would not recommend Gulliver's Travels to are those who dislike satire or those who prefer a very upbeat look at social and political conditions.
Like all Penguin Popular Classics (though the product image is for the Ladybird version, according to the ISBN it is actually the PPC version) , this book has a foreword explaining a little about the history of the book and the author. This is a worthwhile (albeit short - just two pages!) addition to all readers and particularly of use to those who may be studying the book in English Literature class.
Film Versions
There are probably loads of film versions around, but there are only two I remember seeing. The first is the mini-series (ok so not quite a film) starring Ted Danson, which was very good and actually extremely faithful to the book. Less authentic to Swift's text but still enjoyable in its own way is the film version starring Richard Harris - CLICK HERE for the review.
This was…
…unless of course I’m way too late, an entry in MsMorvay’s “Resurrecting the Oldies” Write Off.
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