It Is Unusual When A Masterpiece Develops Out Of An Assignmen

It is unusual when a masterpiece develops out of an assignment, but that is, more or less, what happened in the case of Gulliver's Travels. The Martinus Scriblerus Club proposed to satirize the follies and vices of learned, scientific and modern men. Each of the members was given a topic, and Swift's was to satirize the numerous and popular volumes describing voyages to faraway lands. Ten years passed between the Scriblerus project and the publication of Gulliver's Travels, but when Swift finished, he had completed a definitive work in travel literature. Moreover, he had completed what was to become a children's classic (in its abridged form) and a satiric masterpiece. Swift's main character, Gulliver, is a man who only pays attention to surface meanings and events. Gulliver is also, as might be expected, ?gullible.? Gulliver narrates details leaving the reader to ponder the deeper meaning. Gulliver's naive nature permits the reader to perceive the humor and the irony in Gulliver's Travels in the reader's own way, thus, making the novel's fascination seem inexhaustible. As the narrator of the Travels, Gulliver never detects the double meanings of events. Gulliver, a sailor and a surgeon, always notices the details but is not in the habit of contemplating significance. He gives the same deadpan, pedestrian account of the beginning of his voyages that he does when he tells of his foreign adventures. Gulliver believes almost everything he is told because he lacks the imagination to see contradictions. For example, when Gulliver travels to Lilliput, the Emperor entertains Gulliver with some court diversions. The diversions, however, prove to be quite different than one might expect; they are not plays nor masques nor musical performances. ?I was diverted with none so mush as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread...this diversion is only practiced by those persons who are candidates for great employments, and high favor, at court...whoever jumps the highest without falling, succeeds in the office.? (pgs 53-54) This passage describes the Lilliputian court custom by which men seeking political office demonstrate their agility in rope dancing, among other activities. How long and how skillfully a candidate can dance upon a rope determines his tenure in office. Besides the rope dancing there are other diversions. Noblemen compete for official favor by crawling under or leaping over a stick. They are then rewarded with various colored threads. The jumping and crawling games that Gulliver witnesses and describes sound innocent, like games children might play. To Gulliver the diversions seem as nothing more than ?...country shows, wherein they exceed all nations I have known, both for dexterity and magnificence.? (pg53) Gulliver accepts rope dancing as a valuable accomplishment and even praises the politicians for their agility. Unlike Gulliver, the reader is able to notice the folly of a system that advances politicians for rope-dancing; realizing that the significance of these diversions is far from innocent. The crawlers and jumpers perform for the amusement of the monarch and are rewarded with either blue, red or green threads. In this passage Jonathan Swift is satirizing politicians. Politicians, Swift is saying, are always ready to debase themselves by performing humiliating games, hoping to win the favor of the monarch or obtain ribbons, money, or titles. Similarly, Swift is satirizing the methods by which politicians are chosen in England in the eighteenth century. It is evident that the Lilliputian method of competing for office is comical. However, in eighteenth century England (as well as throughout world history) there have been many political elections which do not deviate in absurdity from rope-dancing. For example, politicians have often been chosen through bribery and trickery. Thus, the satire in Gulliver's Travels is applicable to all time periods. During Gulliver's stay in Lilliput he discovers that there is a war between the nation of Lilliput and Blefuscu. From Reldresal, the Principal Secretary of Private Affairs, Gulliver learns that the conflict started over a religious question: at which end should the faithful break their eggs? at the big end? or at the little end? ?...the primitive way of breaking eggs before we eat them, was upon the larger end: but his present Majesty's grandfather, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the Emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs. The people so highly resent this law, that our histories tell us there have been six rebellions raised on that account: wherein one