ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

See All

Gulliver's Travels 24050 Views

Share It!

Description:

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

Author:

Author / Swift - Jonathan Swift

Language:

English Language

Subjects:

Tags:

Common Core Standards:

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.
Full Transcript