ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Literature and Writing Videos 23 videos
Historical fiction novels like The Help can whisk you back to a place and time that you may have only read about in history books. Or... a place an...
In Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, Death narrates the story of one girl who lived during the Holocaust. Not surprisingly, it's kind of a downer—bu...
Brave New World is supposed be an exciting book about a negative utopia and the corrupt powers of authority. So where’s the big car chase? What's...
Gulliver's Travels 24049 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.
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...
Full Transcript
- 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.
Related Videos
They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.
Do not go gentle into that good night. In fact, if it's past your curfew, don't go at all into that good night. You just stay in your good bed and...
