Book Review: Gulliver's Travels

Book: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Rating: 2 stars

Review:

I'm not quite sure how to rate this, so I gave it two stars since I thought it was just okay. There were things I enjoyed reading but the majority of the book was of Gulliver complaining about his country and the human race. This book has been described as being satire, but it just feels like nothing but a complaining journal instead of a story. I thought the idea of a traveler finding themselves on different and unique islands interesting. I just wish the writing was more than Gulliver hating on humanity. It got even worse by the end of the book.

This book detailed Gulliver's adventures in three parts (some other editions have Gulliver go on four adventures). His first travels found him shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput, which was ruled by very small people. There he was seen as a giant and had to adhere to their rules just to have some freedom. After some time, Gulliver had lost favor with the ruler of the Lilliput and if it wasn't for some quick thinking to get away he would have found himself being punished due in part to jealousy.

Even though he had a rather horrible experience, that didn't stop Gulliver from traveling again. On his second voyage, he found himself in the reverse situation on island of Brobdingnag where he was a tiny person among a land of giants. Although, he might have been under a lot of restrictive rules in Lilliput, he was still treated with more respect than he was in Brobdingnag. He was lucky a bird thought he was food and carried his house away or he would have continued to be trapped on that island.

Despite two harrowing experiences, Gulliver took another chance on traveling but this time found himself on the island of The Houyhnhnms, which was ruled by horses and use enslaved humans as servants. This is where Gulliver really starts to complain about humans and where he holds the horse rulers as the pinnacle of how to be. He doesn't think that the horses enslaving people is a bad thing because he doesn't even see them as people. He despises the sight of them as well as humanity in general. Unlike the other two situations where he desired to go home, he no longer wanted to be anywhere near humans. And if it wasn't for him being forced to leave, he would have chose to live there and forget about his wife and children he left behind.

Once, he found himself back home, he really couldn't stand to be around humans. He treated his family and everyone back in England as if they were lowly and he was too disgusted to be near them. I still don't get why he thought the horses were so noble, just like Gulliver they looked down at humans and didn't see anything good at all in them. How can you be so noble and prejudiced at the same time?

I was disappointed in reading this because it felt like a rather dull and boring complaining travel log instead of being an interesting story. I guess not all classical literature is interesting.