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Gulliver's Travels 24046 Views


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Description:

Gulliver's Travels is a classic tale of adventure with a dash of what-the-heck-is-happening thrown in for good measure.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

Gulliver's Travels, a la Shmoop. Lemuel Gulliver sure gets around.

00:10

He's like an 18th-century version of some dorky PBS travel host.

00:14

Thanks to good ol' Gully, we learn a lot about the lands of Lilliput <<Lilly-put>>, Brobdingnag

00:18

<<brob-dig-nag>>, Laputa <<lah-poo-tah>>, and all the rest.

00:22

We become pretty tight with Gulliver, too, but when it comes to the other characters...

00:26

...Jonathan Swift doesn't give us all that great of a view.

00:29

If Gulliver's Travels is such a great book...

00:32

...why did Swift slack off in the characterization department?

00:40

Possible slack motivation #1: It's called Gulliver's Travels.

00:45

That means precisely one character should be developed—guess who?

00:49

It's not "Lilliputians <<lilly-put-ee-ins>> vs. Wild," or "the Real Houyhnhnms [Who-Inn-Emms]

00:54

of Orange County."

00:55

If it's all about Gulliver... there's no need to worry about the rest of the gang, right?

01:00

Possible slack motivation #2: Gulliver's Travels isn't a book about character anyway.

01:07

Instead, it's a parody of a specific genre—travel narratives.

01:11

See, rich people of the Enlightenment spent their "hakuna matata" days traveling the world.

01:18

And they loved to wax poetic about what they saw.

01:26

Gulliver's Travels is just a parody of those types of books.

01:29

In other words, we don't get to know anyone because we're not supposed to get to know

01:33

anyone.

01:34

Characters aren't super developed in travel narratives, so why would they be here?

01:40

Possible slack motivation #3: The "characters" in Gulliver's Travels aren't so much characters

01:47

as they are symbols. Each of the characters represents someone or something.

01:53

Why? Because Gulliver's Travels is a satire. It's a comedic book designed to point out

01:58

the flaws in European society...

02:00

...so Swift's readers would have definitely recognized themselves in the story.

02:06

For example, any upper-class British dude would've read about the Lilliputians and said,

02:12

"hey, that's me!" So if the characters are actually symbols

02:16

of European society...

02:17

...then they don't need feelings, motivations, and all the other things that make up characterization

02:22

sausage.

02:24

They just need to have enough meat for us to be able to recognize what exactly they

02:28

represent.

02:28

From there, we can figure out the rest.

02:31

So what do you think?

02:33

Did Swift skimp on characterization because he wanted us to focus on Gulliver...

02:37

...because genre trumped characterization...

02:40

...or because the characters are just meant to be symbols?

02:44

Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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