Nov 28, 2003 02:49 PM
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(Updated Nov 28, 2003 02:49 PM)
I guess there is not a single one of you who loved books as a child who has not read some adaptation of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. To be swept from your cozy retreat where you have retired with this book, into the swaying rocking seas, and getting trapped in lands in which nothing seems improbable is a lovely way to kindle your imagination.
When I was a small kid, I read this book, marvelling at the simple innocent story which takes you to the lands of little men called Lilliputs, giants of Brobdingang, and later to Laputa and to repulsive deformed Yahoos.
The famous website Yahoo! was named from the word Yahoo invented by Jonathan Swift and used in this book. A Yahoo is a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves Yahoos.
I usually read books that I find myself, without the recommendations or aid of anyone, and without spoiling the fun of discovering the world by pre-reading discussions. The book was read solely for innocent pleasure from its imaginative plots in different worlds, and it was much much later that I came to know that the whole story was a huge work of satire! An incredulous grown-up me again picked up the unabridged version of the same old book and re-read it - there was so much depth in the same old words read as a youngster (in an adapted form that time), that the belief of innocence in the original meanings was replaced by some infinitely wiser vision that Jonathan Swift had meant for his readers to see!
These are universal points that crop up in anybody's life, and even though the book aims directly at the English politics of his time, the theme of man's triumph over his nature, and his fall over his ego is universal. The vision can be seen in some of the various epic-like comparisons:
LESSONS FROM LILLIPUTS
- Gulliver feels like a huge giant among the little puny Lilliputs, and his ego bloats as he wins battles for them and they start revering him, but he is humiliated and made to escape from their land after the same puny little spirits look down on his actions of saving the palace from burning as unholy.
LESSONS FROM BROBDINGANGS
- Soon after that he is lost in the land of the giants of Brobdingang, where he is himself a lilliput, powerless when once he had been the most powerful! Here there is no ego, but despair, and he is an object of ridicule instead of worship.
LESSONS FROM LAPUTA
The book brings out the dangers of forgetting the small routine things in life and concentrating on the so called 'higher' things like arts and mathematics.
Perhaps it warns us about the dangers of being in-betweens - there is a suggestive reasoning that one can be really happy on either concentrating on worldliness and mundane things like common men or to be completely lofty visionaries and spend all your energy and imagination on the things inwards, like sanyasis.
LESSONS FROM YAHOOS
- Gulliver who is a good man by heart, tries to imitate the Yahoos, who are ugly deformed creatures, and in doing so completely loses his objectivity and sanity. Thus the book gives us food for thought that no one seeking the company of evil can be truly happy.
I feel everybody must read this book even today, for most of the busy people shy from reading books of advice and thought-provocation, but all enjoy a nice imaginative work of fiction. This book gives lessons when you are least expecting them, and uncovers them through hidden undercurrents of the main story, and thus makes sure that these eternal principles will seep down into your heart deeply and unconsciously while reading the petty tales of fantasy...thus making it a book that instructs you during the troubled times pooping up in your entire lifetime.
That, I feel is what a work of literature must aim at, and it serves its purpose with a mind-blowing aim, with you as the unwitting target! If this review has served its purpose don't click away before rating my humble words now...
