Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars yet highly recommended. This book is so much more than what I remember reading as a child.

I would still say children may enjoy Gulliver's adventures with Gulliver as a giant man among the tiny people of Lilliput. Children won't help but smile imaging Gulliver as a very tiny human stranded in a land full of giants and fighting off mice who might devour him. These vivid images have been the delight of children for at least a dozen decades.

Then again, Gulliver's Travels is very clearly a book for grown-ups. It probably should be mandatory reading before graduation of high school or college.

I've considered how I might best review this book. I believe the best would be to aim you at a great review with which I wholeheartedly agree. So in that line, here's a really great review by "Stephen" at Goodreads.

Secondly I thought I should review "by example or illustration". I selected Part 3, Chapter 6, [A further account of the academy. The author proposes some improvements, which are honourably received.]


In this chapter, Lemuel Gulliver is in the land of Lagado. He has met with the leaders of the country, and in due course has been taken by a prince's servant to the "Great Academy" where all solutions to all problems are well considered and resolved. Part 3 Chapter 6 is 14 minutes long read by David Thorn, or 4 pages in the app I was reading along. (Pocketbook Reader)

Mr. Gulliver is taken to the school of political projectors at the academy, where he is "ill entertained"; the professors appearing, in his judgment, wholly out of their senses.

He is introduced to other illustrious persons whose studies have discovered effective solutions to all manor of political corruption vices or infirmities of those who govern, as well as their licentiousness. Granting it is allowed, that senates and great councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant humours; with many diseases of the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the right; with spleen, flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrofulous tumours, full of fetid purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations: with canine appetites, and crudeness of digestion, besides many others, needless to mention.

Having kept up with current affairs in USA in this day and age, I found Mr. Gulliver's observations, comments and suggestions for improvements delightfully entertaining. I don't want to leave out too much in my example, but don't want to bore the reader with endless quotes from the book either, so I'll skip a few paragraphs to these observations…

"It is a general complaint, that ... princes are troubled with short and weak memories. The academic proposed, "that whoever attended a first minister, after having told his business, with ... brevity and in ... plain- words, should, at his departure, give the ... minister a tweak by the nose, or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by both ears, or run a pin into his breech; or pinch his arm black and blue, to prevent the minister's forgetfulness; and at every levee day, repeat the same operation, till the business conveyed upon the minister is done..." He likewise directed, "that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he delivered his opinion, and argued in defence of it, should be obliged to ... vote directly contrary (to his opinion); because if that were done, the result would infallibly (be) ... good (for) the public."

Having grown to trust Mr. Gulliver, his idea of beating politicians senseless and repeatedly until they can understand what is said to them might work in our US congress as well as in Lagado, providing they also are compelled to vote contrary to what they have argued in favor of.

Back to Chapter 6: The academy's suggestion of amputating and exchanging heads in order to facilitate reasonable thinking might be within our medical science today but I doubt it would have worked in 1906 England or in Mr. Gulliver's land of Lagado.

Reflecting on our FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, and at least 6 other alphabet concoctions of security I thought that Mr. Gulliver's adventures at just that one academy in Lagado might be relevant in today's society. Here I'll paraphrase what I read…

Another professor showed Gulliver a large manual for discovering plots and conspiracies against the government. (Our Department of Justice might have this manual and are possibly using it in an investigation of collusion of some sort.)

The instructions advised examination of the diet of all suspected persons; their times of eating; upon which side they lay in bed, and with which hand they wipe their posteriors. The examiners should take a careful and strict view of the suspect's excrement. From the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of the suspect's excrement will easily provide a determination of the suspects thoughts and designs. The reasoning is that men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool. The academic found by frequent experiment; affiliations, and trials that when the suspect was considering which is the best way of murdering the king, his excrement's ordure would have a tincture of green; but if the tincture of the excrement was quite different, the suspect thought only of raising an insurrection, or burning the metropolis.

Reading this brilliant method of discovery of plots and conspiracies against the government from the illustrious researchers at the great academy of Lagado gave me cause to conclude that this very same method is being employed still today in the halls of the Department of Justice and in the venerated committees of congressional investigative cabals.

This is only a few excerpts, paraphrased, lifted from only 4 pages in "Gulliver's Travels" that illustrate that classic literature is often timeless in its application of wisdom.

The book is brilliant. Why it is a classic is clear to me. One thing these great authors of legendary classics have in common is wisdom and insight into their times.

Using the Bible as a light upon truth, there is a scripture that assures us "there is nothing new under the sun". As I have read these classics from eras gone by, what Jonathan Swift expresses in his 1906 biography of Lemuel Gulliver might be lifted from the recent pages of Rolling Stone, The Huffington Post, or National Review. The same might be said of Daniel Defoe or Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in their respective classic novels.

I'm stepping off my soap box now and return to comments on Gulliver's Travels.

I had an idea about this book in my mind -- that was petty and small. That was an injustice I perpetuated upon myself. I recommend you pick up Gulliver's travels and read it or find an excellent narrator and listen to the audiobook.

I started reading and listening to this classic on Sunday, March 10, 2019 03:21 AM. I finished it on Wednesday, March 27, 2019 at 08:29 AM. The ebook and audiobook are free at dozens of web sites. If you sincerely can't find free copies, read our feature post.

This year I decided to read or re-read a number of Classic books. It has been a wonderful blessing to follow up on that decision. The classics I've read so far this year have enriched my life in so many ways. I've even concluded that should our college students be required to read a few of these books, the 6 digit loans they are paying for their education might have been worth it.

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