Anthology of Ideas

One of the most important literary lessons one can learn from “Gulliver’s Travels” is the separation of protagonist, narrator and author. Although some times these three personalities blend into one many times they are two or three separate personalities. For example Shelly’s “Frankenstein” separates the author from the narrator and protagonist, although the protagonist is the narrator he does not know what is going to happen, just what has. Atwood’s “Happy Endings” is narrated by the author with the protagonists (although it is a stretch to call them that) are powerless. By contrast Alcott’s “I Know Why A Caged Bird Sings” combines the narrator, protagonist and the author into one single personality. An even more important part of this is how much of the author pervades the narrator and protagonist?

For “Gulliver’s Travels” it is hard to say this or that is the authors feeling or this is definitely the way the author thinks because Swift allows Gulliver to act insane and say some quite…er insane things. So unlike La Rouchefoucauld where it is easy to see what he thinks Swift hides behind Gulliver. Although the reader can easily pick up on the overwhelming theme of the book it is harder to decide what Swift’s exact feelings on the subjects are. Was Swift misanthropic I don’t think we will ever know for sure, we just have centuries old clues to go on. However one has to wonder if Swift was misanthropic why did he write a book about how man can fix his more problematic behaviors? It would seem more likely that if he was misanthropic he would right the same book without leading the reader to a path towards self improvement. Swift does list all the things that humans do wrong, and most of us will agree with them. But instead of saying that humans do all this wrong, have no good qualities and should just give into their base natures Swift also tells the reader how he thinks that humans should behave.

Swift may or not have been misanthropic, however what is clear is he was a humanitarian. Although these two terms may seem and are by definition antonyms it is possible to be both and Swift if he was indeed a misanthrope would be a good example of how the two qualities can mesh. Swift was most obviously concerned about social welfare, he believed in humans reaching above what they were and this is the very definition of humanitarian. Another way to think of is it is a blind man tells you that a flower smells beautiful do you laugh at him and tell him that he can’t tell you the flower smells beautiful because he has never seen beauty? The same way, even if Swift hated humanity he believed in humanities ability to overcome its short comings and he knew how humanity could do it. He used logic a la Orwell that unshort means the same thing as tall, instead of saying that this is what you need to become, he says this is what you are, know what are you going to do about it?