*Gulliver’s Travels

Acing questions on Gulliver's Travels is easy if you simply memorize the names of the different people and nations that Gulliver meets.

The book presents itself as a simple traveller's narrative with the disingenuous title Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, its authorship assigned only to "Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, then a captain of several ships".

Gulliver's Travels has been called a lot of things from Mennipean Satire to a children's story, from proto-Science Fiction to a forerunner of the modern novel. Possibly one of the reasons for the book's classic status is that it can be seen as many things to many people. It is even funny. Broadly the book has three themes: ~a satirical view of the state of European government ~an inquiry into whether man is inherently corrupt or whether men are corrupted ~a restatement of the older "ancients v. moderns" controversy previously addressed by Swift in the Battle of the Books.

**Names to remember Lilliputians: the very small Brobdignags: the very large Houyhnhnms: very smart horses who rule over the human Yahoos. They have cancelled all feeling in favor of reason. Yahoos: brutish subhumans Laputa: a flying island The Struldburgs: unhappy immortals who would like to die Blefuscu – rival country of Lilliput

A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal may account for a question or two on your exam, but the sheer ridiculousness of the argument should tip you off to Swift's satire.

The author (who is not to be confused with Swift himself, but is merely a persona) argues, through economic reasoning as well as a self-righteous moral stance, for a way to turn the problem of squalor among the Catholics in Ireland into its own solution. His proposal is to fatten up the undernourished children and feed them to Ireland's rich land-owners. Children of the poor could be sold into a meat market at the age of one thus combating overpopulation and unemployment, sparing families the expense of child-bearing while providing them with a little extra income, improving the culinary experience of the wealthy, and contributing to the overall economic well-being of the nation.

He offers statistical support for his assertions and gives specific data about the number of children to be sold, their weight and price, and the projected consumption patterns. He suggests some recipes for preparing this delicious new meat, and he feels sure that innovative cooks will be quick to generate more. He also anticipates that the practice of selling and eating children will have positive effects on family morality: husbands will treat their wives with more respect, and parents will value their children in ways hitherto unknown. His conclusion is that the implementation of this project will do more to solve Ireland's complex social, political, and economic problems than any other measure that has been proposed. This is widely believed to be the greatest example of sustained irony in the history of the English language.