travels

Airi Sakai
(1) MLA CITATION
Swift, Jonathan. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. London: Oxford University Press, 256 pages, 1726.

(2) RESPONDING TO THE PLOT
If I were Gulliver, I would fight and kill the king of Lilliput as soon as I heard the news that he was going to kill me. It must not be impossible as Gulliver was bigger than anyone there. If I were the author, I would lead this story to a happy ending. I feel really sorry for Gulliver’s family because they are always left.
I began last Week to permit my Wife to sit at Dinner with me, at the farthest End of a long Table.(Page 255, when Gulliver came back to his home England, he had completely despised human beings including his own family.) I chose this part because I thought it was too sad that he even had to hesitate to treat his wife right. I felt very sorry for her.
(3) ANALYZING 7 LITERARY TERMS
Settings: Nottinghamshire, England in the 17th century

Point of view: This story is told from the first person.

Conflict:
Gulliver was in a conflict with the King in Lilliput. In the end, he became
extremely misanthropic, and he was in conflict with all the human beings.
Climax:
Gulliver proposed that the King in Lilliput should get along with the rival
country, Blefuscu as the reason of the war felt really stupid to Gulliver. However, the King became angry that Gulliver refused his order. The King planned to punish Gulliver cruelly, but an official who was a good friend of Gulliver’s secretly told him about it. As Gulliver helped Blefuscu from the war, they supported him to escape from Lilliput back to England. This is
the climax of the story.

Symbol:
“The hatred against the society” is the symbol of this story. Through the
scene of Lilliput, the author tells readers that people tend to fight over stupid things. Also through the scene of the country of the Houybnbnms, the author tells readers that people tend to tell a lie and deceive each other.

Irony:
In Brobdingnag, the master who first took good care of Gulliver decided to
show off him in front of many people for money even though it was very dangerous for Gulliver.

Theme:
The theme of this book is “the warning to live in peace.” The author is
sick of people being greedy. The author hopes that the world will be peaceful without lies, weapons, and wars.

(4) REFLECTING ON THE STORY
I found it very strange that he always left his family and went to travel alone. He ended up hating human beings including his family back at home. It was rather shocking to me. My life is completely different from Gulliver’s. I would not devote my life to travel around the world for such a long time as he. In this story, the environment seems too old days compared to my country. Nobody would ever see pirates in the sea. I think this has been made into some films before, but I have never watched them yet. I will try and watch them later. The author Jonathan Swift felt something wrong about England society at that time. His interest in government inspired him to write this story to tell people how wrong the society was.
I disagree with the author’s view of people and life. I think his view was very extreme. I am not that misanthropic as him. I learned from this story that people could sometimes easily betray people for their gains. I do not want to be like that. I have changed my ideas about novels after reading this book. I believed most books have their happy endings but this story was actually far from a happy ending. As mentioned before, I believed that there should be a happy ending after so many troubles. However, it never happened and in the end, Gulliver ended in being misanthropy and hating all the human beings.