"gulliver's travels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

^^^^^^^^^^GULLIVER'S TRAVELS: CHAPTER VII

Gulliver has worn out his welcome in Lilliput. He receives a "secret visit" from a government official who tells him that the emperor and the council are preparing a list of articles for Gulliver's impeachment for high treason. The charges are: 1. urinating in a public place; 2. having refused to destroy all the Blefuscudians who wouldn't forsake the "Big-Endian heresy"; 3. having helped the Blefuscudians with the terms of the peace treaty; 4. preparing to go to Blefuscu, for which the emperor has given only verbal permission.

Some in the council, including the treasurer and the admiral, insist that Gulliver immediately be put to a painful death. Their plan was to set Gulliver's house afire and then shoot him with poisonous arrows as he tried to escape. His sheets and clothes would already have been treated with a poison that would have him tearing his flesh. What do you think of this? Even if you believe the Lilliputians have a claim against Gulliver punishable by death, what do you think of their form of capital punishment?

After debate, the council decides instead to blind Gulliver, as a mark of their "lenity" (mercy). But let's look for a minute at the debate that preceded this decision. Some ministers argued that when blinded, certain fowl eat more than before. If this should happen to Gulliver, his diet might well cause a famine for everyone else in Lilliput. Another suggestion was to starve Gulliver to death--this way the treasury wouldn't be exhausted, and Gulliver's corpse wouldn't smell so bad as it would if he were well fed at the end. It would, of course, carry a stench; so they'd chop his body into little pieces and bury it in the far corners of the kingdom. The plan adopted is to put out Gulliver's eyes:

That the loss of your eyes would be no impediment to your bodily strength, by which you might still be useful to his Majesty. That blindness is an addition to courage, by concealing dangers from us; that the fear you had for your eyes was the greatest difficulty in bringing over the enemy's fleet; and it would be sufficient for you to see by the eyes of the ministers, since the greatest princes do no more.

No mention is made in the public records of the plan to starve Gulliver.

NOTE: Compare the importance of sight as held by the Lilliputians, Gulliver, and Swift. For the Lilliputians sight approaches blindness. We learn at this point that "lenity," in the same way, is nearer to what we normally consider punishment. Gulliver's visitor observes that shows of the emperor's "lenity" were much feared, "that the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent." Gulliver says, "I was so ill a judge of things, that I could not discover the lenity and favour of this sentence...." He's right--there is no lenity in his sentence--and mistaken in doubting his own judgment.

Gulliver is careful to give us detailed reports of what he sees. In fact, he gets lost in the literal. Swift, by playing with literal perspective--big, little; animal, human; etc.--expands the vision of our mind's eye.

Gulliver resolves to flee to Blefuscu, which corresponds to Bolingbroke's fleeing to France just before his trial.

^^^^^^^^^^GULLIVER'S TRAVELS: CHAPTER VIII

While Gulliver is in Blefuscu, the Lilliputian emperor sends a request that Gulliver be returned bound hand and foot to Lilliput to receive his punishment. The Blefuscudian ruler refuses, and offers Gulliver complete protection for the rest of his life.

But Gulliver resolves to return to England. He stays there just two months, "insatiable" as he is to see foreign countries.

NOTE: What do you think of Gulliver? Considering what he's been through, he seems to be a solid character. He isn't cruel, though he's been treated cruelly; he isn't violent, though he's been dealt with violently; and he isn't crafty, though he's been dealt some rude blows by Lilliputian cunning. Gulliver seems as naive as he is good; perhaps, he's good because he's naive. It is his finer qualities of character, rather than his physical size, that lend Gulliver stature while he's in Lilliput.

^^^^^^^^^^GULLIVER'S TRAVELS: PART II

The tables are turned on Gulliver when he reaches Brobdingnag. Here the natives are giants, and Gulliver begins to think of himself as Lilliputian. Throughout the book he is constantly afraid of being injured, and indeed he is often hurt; his feelings of insecurity give rise to other feelings we have not seen in Gulliver before, notably disgust, violence, and shame.

^^^^^^^^^^GULLIVER'S TRAVELS: CHAPTER I

Gulliver's ship gets blown off course by a huge storm. You may notice that Gulliver's description of this is almost impossible to follow. Swift is satirizing specialist language, nautical jargon in particular. After all the East North Easts and South South Wests, he seems to be saying, you lose all sense of direction.

When an island appears, a group of sailors including Gulliver goes off to explore it. Gulliver leaves the group to do some looking around on his own. After a while he sees his mates running for their boat, pursued by a "monster." The sailors make their getaway, but Gulliver is left on this island of monsters.

He is sure he will die here, and for the first time Gulliver yearns mournfully for his family. "I reflected," says Gulliver, "what a mortification it must prove to me to appear as inconsiderable in this nation as one single Lilliputian would be among us." At this point he has enough presence of mind to realize that such prideful thoughts are ridiculous at such a time. For, he reasons, he'll probably end up a "morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous barbarians...."

A Brobdingnagian reaper approaches and Gulliver screams for all he is worth so he won't be trampled underfoot. The "monster" inspects Gulliver, Gulliver tells us, as though he were "a small dangerous animal" much as he himself has done with a "weasel in England." Gulliver feels sure the reaper will dash him to the ground "as we usually do with any little hateful animal." Later Gulliver likens himself to a "toad," a "spider," a "kitten," and a "puppy-dog." His self-image is really taking a beating. Why? Because he appears small.

The reaper, however, doesn't harm Gulliver, recognizing that the tiny creature can speak and gesticulate, and recognizing too that he is frightened. So maybe the giant is not such a "monster." The reaper brings Gulliver to the farmer, who takes him home. His family places Gulliver on the table where he bows, speaks, gesticulates, offers his entire purse of gold (the farmer doesn't recognize the pieces as coins, so tiny are they), kisses the farmer's hand to thank him for not allowing his son to harm him. Gulliver is "performing" like a minuscule freak in a circus.

After dinner the mother nurses her baby. "I must confess," says Gulliver, "no object ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous breast...." He goes on to give us an unsettling description of this six-foot breast. Gulliver reflects on the "fair skins of our English ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size." He remembers, too, that the Lilliputians, when they looked at him close up, were disgusted by the coarseness of his skin and features.

Here is another first in Gulliver's narrative. Awakened by rats during a dream of his family, he is so startled, frightened, disoriented (he says the rats are the size of bulldogs), and disgusted, that he kills one of them. You can argue that this is self-defense, but what about Gulliver stabbing the other rat in the back as he is escaping? That is the low-down rage of someone who feels impotent.

NOTE: In Part I Gulliver felt no shame about his bodily functions, even after he was impeached for urinating in public. Here his language is euphemistic regarding excretion ("I was pressed to more than one thing, which another could not do for me"), and he takes care to hide himself between sorrel leaves so that no one will see him as he "discharged the necessities of nature" (another euphemism). He then apologizes to you for making mention of this at all, and justifies himself by saying that his only interest in writing up his voyages is in "truth." Yet what a defensive apology it is. He addresses you as "gentle reader" but raises the possibility that you have a "grovelling vulgar" mind.

Gulliver--scared, disoriented, disgusted--anticipates criticism and can't keep himself from lashing out.