Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift



Gulliver’s Travels is a book about a man who travels to many different lands for the excitement of it. The main character is a man name Gulliver, a humorless surgeon who sails the sea for money. To me that is not a main character. Gulliver lands on “amazing” lands after a few “storms” hits his boat. The first land is the land of Lilliput. There, the natives are only six inches tall. The next place he lands on is a land where the natives are 76 ft tall. He then goes into two more countries which are indescribable. Each section starts with Gulliver sailing only to get hit by a storm. He then washes on some strange island and just talks about himself. How interesting.

I do not like the book. It has a slow pacing. There is no dialogue, which means the paragraphs are twice as long as normal one. There is absolutely no plot to start with. All Gulliver really does is run around and talk about politics. Gulliver is just not an appealing character. The adventure Gulliver has is also stupid. I mean a giant monkey. Ugly women stripping in front of a tiny Gulliver. That is just not right. If there is one thing Swift does right about Gulliver, it is the fact that he can adapt to any situation that comes to him, but that is about it.

I cannot recommend this book for anybody. Its slow pacing will bore the reader while the stupid situations will probably keep readers occupied for an hour or so. The lack of plot really brings the book down. The long paragraphs will scare readers away. If more action and dialogue were added into the book, then I would have enjoyed it a bit. I had high hopes for Gulliver’s Travels, but instead all I was left with was just a book of empty promises. This book is a no for me.