Hello. How are you doing? I have a huge paper due tommorrow, and want to work off of one of the papers on this site — don’t get me worn now. I am not plagerizing it, but quite simply, copying, pasting, and revising it to suit the over-demanding expectations of the IB curriculum, as well as the ridiculous new English teacher I have this year. Well, that’s my essay.
By the end of Book II in , it is very clear that the
character of Gulliver is not the same man who wrote the letter in the
beginning of the story. In fact, he is not the same man he was in Book I.
From the onset of Gulliver’s Travels, Swift creates for us a seemingly
competent character and narrator in Gulliver. In his account we learn
how his adventures have changed him and his perception of people, for
the central theme of this story is how human nature and reason reflect
society. On the whole, Gulliver is a very frustrating character to deal with
for a number of reasons. For example, he’s not steady; this unsteadiness
as a narrator leads us to question the validity of what Gulliver tells us.
This means that we have to be on our guard against what he says, and
even though he’s our guide, we can’t follow him everywhere, which is just
what Swift wanted. Gulliver makes many apologies for himself and his
actions and puts us the reader emotionally involved in the story.
Gulliver
seems to direct a good deal of hostility toward us, creating a tinge of
hostility back at him. Ultimately, Gulliver works as a narrator because
we can relate to him and as a result find him engaging. We too can jump
from emotion to emotion, but in the long run, Swift is not attempting to
create an Everyman. This Gulliver is not, by any means a wholly
allegorical character, but as much an individual as the next person. In
certain ways, Gulliver proves to be more resilient than the average man
by managing to survive the disaster shipwrecks and people so foreign
they might as well be aliens. Still in other ways Gulliver is a naive
person, bereft of decency and consideration.
Gulliver is an entirely
credible and probable person at the same time that he is precisely the
person to be the instrument for Swift’s satire. In his incredible
circumstances, Gulliver shows himself to be very resourceful and
observant of his surroundings. With that he changes in relation to the
places he visits and the events that befall him as he voyages. As a
traveler in Lilliput, he’s careful in his observations and complete in his
descriptions. Occupied as he is with the surface of things, we see
Gulliver’s problem of not seeing with eyes wide open. Gulliver wanes in
his judgment of character as he becomes more and more narrow-minded
as the story progresses.
So do we still see him as a good, all-around type
of guy? Lest we forget that he does get knocked around while he’s
traveling, a primary reason for his shift in attitude. In Lilliput he seems
to be eminently fair-minded compared to the cunning, vindictive, petty
Lilliputians. Literally a giant in their land, Gulliver never takes unfair
advantage of his size in his dealing with them. Though they ” re violent
with him, he never retaliates. However in Brobdingnag, Gulliver appears
Lilliputian in more ways than one.
Still, his size is a dire problem. He is
frequently injured, as the king’s dwarf takes out his frustrations on
Gulliver, but the latter is an improvement from his job as a freak at
village fairs. Ultimately, Gulliver has a hard time keeping it together
under the strain of repeated attacks on his ego, and in his dealings with
the Brobdingnagian king, Gulliver appears as nasty and cruel as the
Lilliputians themselves. This is his tone when he returns to England, an
angry man who thinks himself more a Brobdingnagian than anything
else.
Topic #2: Satire in “Gulliver’s Travels”
Jonathan Swift displays a clever use of satire in “Gulliver’s
Travels.” From what I know about 18 th Century British Parliament, Swift
would have been severely penalized for openly condemning the
Parliament, so he had to find a way around the penalty system. His
answer to this predicament was a skillfully disguised condemnation of
bureaucracy within the whimsical, humorous misadventures of Lemuel
Gulliver.
Perhaps, because Swift is an Irishman, and he often wrote
petitions to the English Parliament to lower their oppressive taxes, he
might use this novel to criticize unreasonable taxing. During Gulliver’s
voyage to La puta, he visits the Grand Academy of Lag ado. In the school
of political projectors, Gulliver overhears a debate between two
professors; “The first professor proposed a method of taxing man on his
vices and follies, with his neighbors acting as jury… The second professor
disagreed, saying that each man should decide how seductive, witty, and
valiant he is… each woman should decide how beautiful and fashionable
she is” (Swift 205). Then, the professor suggests to lay a tax on the
citizens’ virtue and beauty.
This “debate” is an excellent satire of some of
the absurd measures of taxing that England’s Parliament had lain upon
their colonies.
Revision Goals:
choose a specific topic
make thesis more specific
find an “attention getter”
organize into proper essay format.