Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Jeff used the word "Lilliputian" the other day, which led us to a discussion of Gulliver's Travels. I said that although I'd heard about the book since childhood, I never read it because I was told that it was a satire on the politics of Swift's time, which I didn't think I would understand. Jeff said he believed I'd enjoy the book even if I didn't know about the politics of the 1700's -- how many people do? So I bought the book.

First off, it took me a while to get used to Swift's style. Needless to say, the English language has changed in three hundred years. Some of the expressions are puzzling, such as using "mine eyes" to mean "my eyes", which I assume is because "eyes" starts with a vowel sound; some are old-fashioned, such as "six and thirty" instead of "thirty-six"; and some, such as "above an hundred thousand inhabitants", suggest that the "h" at the beginning of many words was silent in the old days. Many words were also spelt differently: chuse (choose), croud (crowd), œconomy, phænomenon, phœnix, politick, sate (sat), shew (show), shoar (shore), stroak (stroke), taylor (tailor), etc. It is interesting to observe that while the old style "œ" became just "e" in most cases, "phoenix" escaped the change, which is why I've always found its pronunciation odd. A persisting suspicion of mine, that the surname "Taylor" came from "tailor", was also validated.

Once I became familiar with the writing, I thoroughly enjoyed the stories. Anyone in computer science would smile at the story of the Big Endians vs. the Little Endians. Some of Gulliver's antics are hilarious. While it's true that a little background on the politics of the day would be helpful, one doesn't need much knowledge on history to recognize the satirical tone throughout the book. Many of Swift's commentaries on society and politics are loud and clear, and are still very much applicable today. It is a testament to the depth of the author's thinking that while his writing style is dated, the essence of the book is not.