Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings

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Summary: Perfect for desert island!
Review: Many would bring some escapist fiction like Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family Robinson which tell of ways to deal with such a situation. I choose Gulliver's Travels. Gulliver, thanks to the inventiveness and satire of Swift, manages to escape numerous times from many uncharted locales. While I may never run into Lilliputians or the like, at least I'll have optimism and the knowledge that I leave my impression wherever I go.

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Summary: A delightfully humorous satire
Review: Lemuel Gulliver is a surgeon/ship¨ˆs captain who embarks on several intriguing adventures. His first endeavor takes him to Lilliput, where all inhabitants are six inches tall, but resemble normal humans in every other respect. His next voyage lands him on Brobdingnag, where a grown man is sixty feet tall, and even the shortest dwarf stands thirty feet tall. On his third trip, he travels to several locations, including a floating island. During Gulliver¨ˆs final voyage, he is abandoned by his mutinous crew on the island of the Houyhnhnms, which are extremely intelligent horses. No evil or concept of lying exists among these creatures. The island is also inhabited by Yahoos, savage, irrational human-like creatures who are kept as pets by the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver wishes to spend the rest of his life on this peaceful island, but he is banished and forced to return to England.
I really enjoyed this book, and I would recommend it to people 14 or older. Since the novel was written in the 1700¡¯s, the words, grammar and usage are a little confusing. The reader also must have prior knowledge of 18th-century politics to get a full image of what Swift is trying to convey. At some points, the author goes into detail about nautical terms and happenings, and that tends to drag. Overall, the book is well-written, slightly humorous, if not a little confusing.

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Summary: Proceed with caution.
Review: It is only fair that those unfamiliar with this work are warned of its 18th century prose, which may distract, if not exceedingly annoy, some readers.

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Summary: Swift's Satire
Review: Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift, is an adventurous story with deeper political meaning than many realize. Written to appear historical and realistic, by directly enforcing the reader as the audience, these fanciful stories become believable. Currently becoming more apparent as a children's story, this story holds a much deeper meaning. The political satire that this author portrays is evident throughout the story. I could relate events in Swift's novel very easily to outside events, which proves that he purposefully set his story up as a political satire, full of social commentary. He wanted to accent on the political confusion and corruption that occurs, and successfully delivers this through an interesting, twisted plot. Overall, I feel that this book can be appreciated by many age groups because it can be taken on several different levels. I think there is still more I can learn about this book, but truly took it to heart to understand the majority of political satire that the author developed, and I appreciate Swift's attention to the audience and presenting the book through the perspective of Dr. Gulliver.

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Summary: Gulliver's Travels
Review: Gulliver's Travels Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, 1947,306pp.,$5.99
Jonathan Swift ISBN number is 0-671-00174-4

Gulliver's Travels is a wonderful adventure by Jonathan Swift. At first I didn't want to read it, but once I reading, I just had to keep going! In the beginning, we find a young man named Lemuel Gulliver. Mr. Gulliver was sent to Emanuel to be an apprenticeship to Mr. Bates. By being an apprentice, Mr. Gulliver becomes a surgeon on a ship called the Swallow. But when Mr. Gulliver marries and settles down in London, Mr. Bates dies and his business begins to fail, so Gulliver goes back out to sea. On the Antelope, they leave Bristol with the voyage bound toward the South Sea. Due to a miscalculation by the crew, they are already tired and ill when a storm brews. The captain, crew and Gulliver are forced to abandon the ship. Because Gulliver knows how to swim, he reaches land. That's when the half a pint of brandy from the ship forces Gulliver to fall asleep. When he wakes up, he can't move and he finds strings on his upper body. When Gulliver breaks the strings he's showered with tiny arrows and spears from an army of small people. When Gulliver doesn't fight back, most of the miscommunication has ended with this "Man Mountain". Gulliver finds himself in a city, a country of little people that speak an odd language. When he knows enough, he asks the emperor for his freedom back every day. All the while, Gulliver mainly wonders how he will get back home once he gets his freedom, that is, if he ever gets his freedom.
Jonathan Swift, the author of this wonderful tale, was born on November 30,1667 in Dublin, Ireland. He died at the age of 78, and was known as a writer, satirist, and political writer. For 40 years, he had a political career and many were afraid of his political reviews. A political position which he was trying for was blocked by a Bishop and he was soon exiled from England to Ireland. The disillusioned Swift soon began writing Gulliver's Travels, which is a satire on the corrupt English government.
I would recommend Gulliver's Travels to anyone. I would give this book * * * *. This book is wonderful and even though it's been around for a long time, it's never `out of date'.


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Summary: Gulliver's Travels Book Review
Review: Gulliver's Travels is a good book, even if you just read it as an adventure story, but when you can understand the wit and satire of Jonathan Swift, the book is great. It is a fictional narrative, written anonymously by Swift under the pen name Lemuel Gulliver. It is about the voyages and mishaps of Gulliver as he travels to uncharted islands, which are slightly different then a normal trip. He meets six inch tall people, visits a flying island, entertains some sixty foot tall royalty, encounters people that never die, and lives with horses that talk, reason, and have men-like animals for slaves. Along with this imaginative epic, Swift adds ironic humor and lays out his ideas of politics, religion, and humanity. Even though it was written in the eighteenth century, it is easily understood and fun to read for all ages. Some of the more subtle references and satires are hard to connect with, but if your book has footnotes explaining certain things, it will make it more enjoyable. I really like this book and I think you will, too.

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Summary: Gulliver's Travels
Review: Gulliver's Travels is a wonderful adventure by Jonathan Swift. At first I didn't want to read it, but once I read the first chapter, I just had to keep going! In the biginning, we find a young man named Lemuel Gulliver. Mr. Gulliver was sent to Emanuel to be an apprenticeship to Mr. Bates, who is a surgeon. Gulliver becomes another surgeon along with Mr. Bates on the ship the swallow.

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Summary: A worthwhile edition of a classic
Review: I'm not going to get into the whole "Is this great literature" debate with this novel. If you don't think already this novel is a masterpiece, nothing I say is going to convince you otherwise. This edition, though, is well worth picking up. It preserves the orthography and other quirks of Swift's prose and includes an intriguing, though a bit abrupt (as though written on deadline) "introduction" by Jeanette Winterson, who puzzlingly preoccupies herself with the Houyhnhnms at the expense of the other parts of the novel.