320 pages
English language
Published Feb. 24, 2010
'I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.' Shipwrecked on the high seas, Lemuel Gulliver finds himself washed up on the strange island of Lilliput, a land inhabited by quarrelsome miniature people. On his travels he continues to meet others who force him to reflect on human behaviour - the giants of Brobdingnag, the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. In this scathing satire on the politics and morals of the 18th Century, Swift's condemnation of society and its institutions still resonates today.
It was quite a nice book to read. It is a satire, though I am quite sure that I did not notice everything. Actually, if it weren't for the introduction and notes, I would not have recognized a lot of things. But that is probably logical, since there are more notes than pages...
গালিভার'স ট্রাভেলস ছোটবেলায় যখন পড়েছি, শিশুপাঠ্য হিসেবে পড়েছি অর্থাৎ চারটি অভিযানের প্রথম দুটি। কয়েকদিন আগে ভারি ভারি বই থেকে হালকা কিছু পড়তে গুডরিডসের স্যাটায়ার জঁরায় ঢুঁ দিলাম। দেখি, গালিভার্স ট্রাভেলস। আষাঢ়ে গল্প বলা যায়, কিন্তু স্যাটায়ার! তো ভাবলাম, এমনিও পুরোটা পড়িনি, শুরু করা যাক!
ফিকশনের রিভিউয়ের বড় সমস্যা হচ্ছে স্পয়লার দেওয়ার সম্ভাবনা। কোনো কাহিনী না বলেও এটুকু বলা যায় বইয়ের তৃতীয় যাত্রাটি আমার সবচেয়ে পছন্দের। প্লেটোর ফিলোসফার কিং ও তার রাজ্যের একটা ভালো ক্যারিকেচার পাওয়া যায়।
তা বাদে সারা বইতে রাজনীতি, অর্থনীতি, ধর্ম ও বিচারব্যবস্থা এবং মোটের ওপর মানুষের বহুবিধ হিপোক্রেসী নিয়ে বেশ ভালোরকমের স্যাটায়ার আছে।
Gulliver's Travels is a masterful piece of satire and one of the masterful works of Western literature. Despite this, it seems that it is being lost to tides of ennui and a culture determined to undermine and belittle this masterpiece.
Going into reading this book, one would expect something of a children's story. That is how it has been presented for at least a century now, with the focus on Gulliver's adventure in Lilliput where he encounters a civilization in miniature. Aside from committing the absurd mistake of treating the Gulliver's Travels as if it were called Gulliver's Travel, this view ignores any sort of social commentary on human society, both in general and in Swift's time. It is also incomplete without his other travels where he visits the gargantuan Brobdignagians, the scientific minded Laputans, the necromatic Glubbdubdrib magician, the unfortunate immortals of Luggnagg, and the horse beings known as …
Gulliver's Travels is a masterful piece of satire and one of the masterful works of Western literature. Despite this, it seems that it is being lost to tides of ennui and a culture determined to undermine and belittle this masterpiece.
Going into reading this book, one would expect something of a children's story. That is how it has been presented for at least a century now, with the focus on Gulliver's adventure in Lilliput where he encounters a civilization in miniature. Aside from committing the absurd mistake of treating the Gulliver's Travels as if it were called Gulliver's Travel, this view ignores any sort of social commentary on human society, both in general and in Swift's time. It is also incomplete without his other travels where he visits the gargantuan Brobdignagians, the scientific minded Laputans, the necromatic Glubbdubdrib magician, the unfortunate immortals of Luggnagg, and the horse beings known as Houyhnhnms. To focus only on the Lilliputans is a disservice to the novel and to whomever you are introducing Gulliver's Travels to. Each journey is a new perspective on humanity, form being insignificant, to being grand, to being scientific, to being dumb savages. All these viewpoints with their advantages and disadvantages make an excellent whole that is lost if only a part is viewed, and that part is considered childish literature.
Ultimately, one needs to be ready to read Gulliver's Travels. If one is not in the right mindset, the purpose would be lost, the humour ignored, and it would become a chore to read. Which would be a tragedy, since it is definitively deserving of the term Classic.
