Gulliver's travels

I don't think there will ever be a time when Gulliver's Travels doesn't feel like a perfect mirror of humankind. I remember the first time I read it, as a child. I was immeasurably impressed with the sudden insight that things are small or great depending on comparison with other things, and that there are no absolute values. That knowledge, combined with the idea that you learn to understand yourself by seeing your peculiarities through the eyes of people who do not share your social and cultural background, helped me navigate my globetrotting childhood. When I reread the Travels as a grown-up, I focused more on the political satire, finding pleasure in discovering that the typical idiocies of my own time apparently had their correspondences centuries ago. Somehow, that made life easier to bear.

But now I am beginning to wonder. Are the yahoos degenerating further? When will they hit rock bottom? And could we maybe ship off some of our worst yahoos to Lilliput, where they can claim they are great without lying?

Thank Goodness there are authors like Swift, who are capable of making humanists in despair laugh on dark November nights after reading the never-ending misery called news. Oh Lordy, I wish they were fake.

But they are likely to mirror the world - without the wit and irony that Swift added to make life endurable, enjoyable even! That is a quality in an author that is always needed, now more than ever! Yahooooooooooooo!

*Matthew (Jan 08, 2013) rated it 5 of 5 Stars - it was amazing:
Shelves: favorites, fantasy, classic, required-reading-high-school*
This was my favorite required reading in high school (well, actually, probably tied with Animal Farm). It was a very pleasant and unexpected surprise. The reference points I had were cartoon re-telling of this from my youth. I only really had an image of Gulliver vs the Lilliputians - and that was only the most basic "giant in a land full of very small people" story-lines (well, they were trying to entertain children, so it doesn't have to get much more complex than that).