Gulliver's Travels: A Signature Performance by David Hyde Pierce

Gulliver's Travels documents the unfortunate journeys of a fictitious character by the name of Gulliver. During the book Gulliver stumbles upon 4 majorly different civilizations, with each having a specific theme that sets them apart from the world we know. The minuscule Lilliputians, the gargantuan Brobdingnagians, the impractical Laputians, and the noble Houyhnhnms.First, Gulliver is shipwrecked onto the shores of Lilliput, and finds himself tied down by hundreds of tiny ropes. He makes contact with the people native to the island, and is shocked to find them only a few inches tall. He is taken into servitude by the tiny race and learns their language. He soon finds out of another civilization of little people across the small body of water that is a sea to them. They were originally members of the same nation, but they rebelled over a dispute over which end of an egg should be cracked. Political issues lead to plans of Gulliver's execution, but he is informed by a friend of this and moves to the other civilization. Here he repairs a boat of his size that is found in the water and leaves the island, taking a few small animals to use as proof of his journeys.For his second adventure, Gulliver is stranded on Brobdingnag, and island of giants. Here, even the smallest man is the size of a house. He is discovered by a farming family, and is put on display across the country as a novelty. The family makes its way to the capital and sells Gulliver to the queen. He spends many months as a joke and in severe danger by even the smallest creatures. He is nearly killed by rats and wasps, giving him a true sense of his powerlessness. The king of Brobdingnag inquires with him about the state of the world off the island, and is in tears with laughter. He finds the squabbles of such a small race endearing and cannot take any of it seriously. The king has created a society where free speech is not a right given to the people and finds it absurd to be any other way. Gulliver's stay is interrupted by a bird carrying him off into the ocean, where he finds a ship and gains passage back to England.Gulliver only stays home for two months before he goes out into the sea once again - and is attacked by pirates. After offending the captain, he is set free into the ocean with only a boat and four days of food. He makes his way to an island and discovers a floating landmass nearby. He hails it and is brought up into the island and meets the king. The people of the island, Laputa, are constantly absorbed in thought, and care only for mathematics and music. Their entire society spurns practicality and suffers for it, houses are poorly made and crops barely grow. Gulliver is sent to a scientific conference, and discovers hundreds of experiments that are all heavily impractical and most are failures. One such presentation hopes to propagate a breed of hairless sheep. He leaves peacefully by travelling to Japan through trade routes.For his final voyage, Gulliver captains his own ship. That is, until a mutiny left him on the shores of Houyhnhnm. He discovers a race of humanoid savages and a race of intelligent horses. The horses think he is one of the savages, "Yahoos," but are surprised by the civility he displays. He is taken to the leader of their village, and is instructed in their language. To the disbelief of all the horses, "Houyhnhnms", he is as intelligent as they are. Their leader inquires about his world, and is stunned to find that the roles of horses and men are reversed. He is disgusted by the society Gulliver reveals. The society of the Houyhnhnms is much friendlier, but less personal. They do what needs to be done to survive, and don't nurture hate nor encourage violence. Gulliver's eyes are opened by the Houyhnhnms, and finds himself progressively more disgusted by humanity. It slowly dawns on Gulliver that the repulsive Yahoos are actually humans who arrived on the island far earlier. He falls in love with the society of the Houyhnhnms and no longer wishes to leave the island. He is sadly forced off of the island and tries to live in seclusion on a nearby one. He is discovered by sailors and taken aboard against his will. The captain is a very kind and patient man and cares for Gulliver despite his repulsion.When he arrives home he is disgusted by his own family and can't stand their presence for over a year, instead conversing with a pair of horses he purchased. He ends with a statement about how these islands he visited are technically property of England but that he sees no advantage to colonizing any of them. He desires to protect the Houyhnhnms most of all, as their noble society is something he believes we should all strive for.While I found the book fairly interesting at times, the language used was hard to follow, and it often went off onto rants that were both uninteresting and irrelevant. However, I do know that this book was intended to be a satire, and the boredom experienced may be an intentional act by Swift. I found many of the ways these societies operated purely ridiculous and totally unsustainable, but perhaps this was also intentional. I would assume that this was done to make me think about WHY I found them ridiculous, and if it was the product of close mindedness or fact. After looking into the story more when writing this, I found many small hints that indicate the satirical tone of the book.While the first reading was a little grueling, the review and discovery of small hints was very enjoyable. I would recommend this book to anyone with the perseverance to get through the dry parts, as the rest of it is truly interesting.

I was pleasantly surprised by Gulliver's Travels, a book that I expected to be a tediously difficult read. Instead, I found it to be fast-paced and interesting, though filled with references to various bodily excretions almost to the point of obsession. Having been introduced to some of the book's cool words that have been dictionary-ized (like "Lilliputian" and "Brobdingnagian") in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, I enjoyed learning a bit about how they came to be, though was most intrigued by two countries, Laputa and Luggnagg, that I'd never heard of before.In Part I, Gulliver sets out on his first voyage and lands in Lilliput, were the natives are only one-twelfth his size. After freeing himself from bondage, he ingratiates himself with the Lilliputians in various ways, including, in a moment of quick thinking, putting out a fire through peeing, in one of the many bodily-excretion-related incidents Swift shares with the reader. Another, on the same island, involves his dismay at having to...ahem...rid his body of fecal matter, including the lengths (involving wheelbarrows) that the locals must go to to facilitate the situation. Typical throughout his travels, Gulliver is able to learn the language and get on good terms with the native people. As happens after each major stop, he heads home to hang with the wife and kids, then and goes off on his next adventure. In Part II, readers learn about his second destination, Brobdingnag, basically, the land of the giants. Field laborers track him down and his caregivers end up showing him off to others at times as a sort of freak due to his diminutive size. Due to bad feelings about him on the part of a dwarf, he's involved in several "accidents" involving things like apples, a dog, etc. Again, he heads home. In Part III, where he visits several destinations, he gains passage as a ship's surgeon. Unfortunately, the captain takes on some bad guys, which leads to Gulliver being left adrift. He finds his way to Laputa, the land of math and music, where, among other things, the island is a perfect circle and its residents eat things formed into perfect geometric shapes. From there he moves on to Balnibarbi; Lagado, where they employ some backwards-seeming practices for plowing and constructing houses; Glubbdubdrib, where persons from the world over may be called up from the dead and questioned for a period not to exceed 24 hours; and Luggnagg, land of the extremely intriguing Struldbruggs, whose status as immortals turns out not to be as appealing as one might expect. In Part IV, he journeys to the "Country of the Houyhnhnms," where, in Planet of the Apes-like fashion, the beasts (horses) rule, and the Yahoos, more primitive versions of humans, are ruled.Within the story of his various adventures, even a semi-oblivious (in terms of history and politics) person like me will find interesting discussions about and references to social, religious, political, and philosophical issues that still exist today, almost 300 years after Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels. Also good: Silence by Shusaku Endo, Shogun by James Clavell, and Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick.

These comments relate to the Kindle version with picture of Gulliver on cover. I have not read any other Kindle versions and cannot say whether others have the same issues. Firstly, this is an abridged version and does not start with letters from Gulliver, but jumps straight into story. In the first chapter there are ridiculous errors. Immediately, it refers to Lilliput as being in the USA (that arrangement did not exist in the time of Queen Anne and certainly not in Jonathan Swift's mind!) It then refers to "forty kilos" and "thirty kilos". In Swift's book, these are mentions of £40 and £30, i.e. pounds sterling, not pounds weight. It shortly goes on to refer to a "page(boy)" as a "web page". At that point I gave up.

I read this book in a conscious effort to read more of the classics. There were parts of this book that were very interesting but the enjoyment for me was spoilt by the flowery ramblings of Swift. The book became a tedious read and I was very close to giving up on several occasions. I accept that this book was written nearly 300 years ago and the style is naturally dated but generally I found the book slow and bland. Never mind there are lots more classics to read and I am sure that I will read lots of great reads and unfortunately the odd bad one.

The adventures of the narrator are still pretty clever and interesting even today, and gives some refreshing perspective on human nature and society. That being said, some of his concerns and viewpoints are pretty outdated and colonial, and despite the overall brevity some sections of the book drag terribly, especially his strange fascination with complicated spatial descriptions. Overall, though, if you can't stomach the usual dullness of political critiques, this is a fun and enjoyable entry point.

Written almost like travel diary entries ,the style is quite functional and basic.This fortunately helps serve the narrative of a seafaring doctor chronicling his strange adventures on unexplored islands.There are usually no grandiose diatribes or useless flowery descriptions that distract from the catalogue of events and conversations detailed within the book.It certainly helps with suspension of disbelief later on with some of the more fanciful places the narrator ends up.The attraction of the stories is of course that the places and situations serve as a metaphor for the human race.It dark and warlike nature,its selfishness,vanity and general inhumanity to his fellow man.The Lilliputians warring over eggs?? ,the savage and brutal yahoos embodying every single undesirable trait of human kind etc.I cannot recommend this book enoughIt is a joyously cynical experience

Recently, I've been tempted by the chaep (free?) and easy access to classic books on Kindle to re-read a number of those I read/studied at school and university. Gulliver's Travels is the one that's really stood out as better than I remembered from childhood (prose too difficult) and university (so much cross-checking of historical and political references). This time I've read purely for pleasure and it's been a real treat. The only thing that's sad is how little human behaviour, especially in politics and religion, has changed in 300 years - the satire is just as pertinent today as it was in Swift's time.