英语毕业论文Analysis-of-Gulliver’s-Travels.doc

Analysis of Gulliver’s Travels

《格列佛游记》分析

Analysis of Gulliver’s Travels

Contents
Abstract………………………………………………………………….….1
Key words…………………………………………………………………...1
I. Introduction to the Author…..…………………………………………………...1
1.1 The Author’s Fame………………………………………...……………………2
1.2 The Author’s Life……..….…..…………….……………………………………2
1.3 The Author’s Main Works…..….....…………….…….…...…………………...3
II. Introduction to the Novel ……...……………………………………………….5
2.1 General Content…………..…………………...…….……......…………………5
2.2 Key Facts of This Work….....………………....………….....……..………..….6
III .Introduction to the Background…………………..…………………..……..7
IV. Introduction to the Main Characters…….…..……………………....…….8
4.1 Analysis of Lemuel Gulliver…..………………………. …..…..………………8
4.2 Analysis of Some Species in Lemuel Gulliver’s Four Voyages……...………10
4.2.1 A Voyage to Lilliput…....……..…..…..………………………….………..10
4.2.2 A Voyage to Brobdingnag……….……………....………….……….……11
4.2.3 A Voyage to Laputa…………….….…………………………………...…11
4.2.4 A Voyage to Houyhnhnms……..…….....………………..……………….11
V .Writing styles…………..…………………………….………………..………….12
5.1 Satire and Irony……....……………………..…..…………………………….12
5.2 Symbolism………….……….………..………...……….…..…………………12
5.3 Simple, Clear and Vigorous Words…….….….…..…………………………13
5.4 The Pirst Person…………….…...…….……...….…………………………...13
VI. The Meanings of This Essay…..………..…….…….……………….………13
VII .Conclusion…..………………………………..………………….………….. ..13
References….……………………………………..………….………………………14

摘　要：　《格列佛游记》使十七世纪的英国作家斯威夫特成为一位在英国乃至世界文学史上都举足轻重的大师。 斯威夫特在作品中把自己对现实生活的不满和对“乌托邦”式理想社会的向往表达得很充分。两者之间的对比贯穿始终，无处不在。小说在很大程度反映了他所生活在的同时期英国的社会现实。本文通过对《格列佛游记》描述的小说主人公格列佛及其四次旅行的经历进行分析来研究斯威夫特的写作意图，总结出作品的文学和社会价值。同时，熟悉作者的生平和主要作品，以及同时代英国的社会背景使我们对作者能有个更好的了解。
关键词：斯威夫特；格列佛；讽刺；攻击；理想

Abstract：Gulliver’s Travels makes the English writer Jonathan Swift of the 17 century a master in the history of the British literature even of the world literature. The whole novel is filled with the sharp contrast between his disapproval of the reality and his dream of a “utopia” society. To a great extent, the whole novel is an image of the English society of Swift’s time. This essay aims to study the author’s writing purposes, the novel’s literary and social value through the analysis of the hero in the novel and his voyages imagined by Swift Jonathan. In the meantime, additionally, a good familiarity with the life, the works of the writer and the social background of Swift’s time would get me to have a right and full understanding of this master.
Key words: Swift; Gulliver; Satire; Attack; Desire

I Introduction to the Author

This paper mainly deals with the author's thoughts reflected in the novel and the work’s literary and social value that complemented by readers and scholars. Before we discuss it, we must have a general understanding of the author.

1.1 The Author’s Fame
Jonathan Swift is generally known as a realist writer. Besides, because of his significant art of satire and irony he is also a satirist writer, a great master of satiric art. In fact, however, he was also very engaged in the politics and conducted many political deeds. His homeland was Ireland. Though he lived in England for many years, his affection for his motherland never faded away. In his times, Ireland was under colonial rule of England. To him, England was very unfavorable. And he alienated from it gradually. Then he devoted himself to struggle against English oppression for freedom of Ireland. Though he did not see their compatriots’ release from English slavery, he won a high reputation and reputation among his people.

1.2 The Author’s Life
Swift was born in Dublin. His parents were Englishmen. Unfortunately, his father died before he was born. His mother could not earn much money, which leaded his family’s economic condition was very poor, and so he was compelled to accept aid from relatives, who helped them reluctantly. When he entered Dublin University, he kept himself away from the curriculum, reading only what was interesting to him. Because a degree was necessary to his success, he knew its importance and had to accept it as a task from the examiners. After graduation, he went to England and became the private secretary to Sir William Temple, one of his grudging distant relatives. Temple was a diplomat and a writer. He was very proud of his achievements and social status. He treated Swift rather poorly and just regarded him as one of his slaves. However, Swift bore that and spent ten years living a very unhappy life in Temple’s house. But he created a large treasure for himself. During this period he read and studied widely and began to show his talent as a writer. He finished his first two important works, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. When he could not put up with his life in Temple’s house, he accepted orders from a church and began to work as a priest. After Mr. Temple died, he returned to Ireland with his sweet heart, Stella, accompanying him. After his returning to his motherland he continued his work as a priest and was given a salary in a small town.
Swift was deep devoted to his church duties and loved his suffering compatriots. He worked very hard to improve the living conditions of the poor people. Later he went to England and spent some time there. His life involved gradually into the strife of party politics. His pamphlets were the most powerful political weapons in the political battle which made him become one of the most important figures in London. At first he supported the Whigs and then he changed his stand and joined the Tories. For a long time of a few years he was looked as a dictator of political opinions in England. Great lords and cabinet ministers treated him with respect.
In order to contribute more in the struggle of the Irish people against rude English oppressors, he explored back to Ireland again. He used his talent and wrote some pamphlets concerning Ireland. All of them were about the miseries of the Irish people. In those works, he spoke up against the cruel oppression and exploitation under the control of the English ruling class and cried for the Irish people to resist the oppression. Among those pamphlets, the best-known pieces were The Drapier’s Letters and A Modest Proposal.
His masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels was also written in the period when he was closely linked with the Irish people and struggled for independence and freedom of his people. When the Tories lost the political dominance of England, the situation became unfavorable to Swift. What’s more painful was that his wife was tortured by frustration. During his last years, a brain disease held upon him. All these factors shaped his miserable late life. In 1745 this master died in an asylum calmly.

1.3 The Author’s Main Works
In his large number of writings about politics, the most forceful and best known are The Drapier’s Letters and A Modest Proposal. The former is a series of letters addressed to people of different professions and classes in Ireland, summoning them to stop the Wood’s plan of abolishing the Irish coinage. The fourth letter, To the Whole People of Ireland, is generally considered to be of the greatest importance. It is a direct challenge to English supremacy and an exciting appeal to the common men to master their own national destiny. And his harshest satire, A Modest Proposal, was written in indignant and stern accusation of English colonialism policy towards the Irish. In the cool tone of an impartial outsider, the author advises the poor Irish people should sell his children as food for the English nobles when they are one year old. Written with much conciseness and clearness, the “Proposal” is by far the most excellent artistic expression of Swift’s anger with the inhuman oppression and exploitation of the Irish people by the English ruling class. The apparent fervor and sincerity adds force to the biting irony and anguishing sarcasm.
The Battle of the book (unfinished) is a satirical dialogue between the Ancients and the Moderns in the role of the Bee and the Spider. In the long and complicated disputes between the two sides, Homer, Virgil, Aristotle, Plato and other well-known Ancients are put in battle against the Moderns, including Milton, Bacon, Dryden, Hobbes and other celebrities. With a light and playful narration, Swift manages to divulge many of the subtle implications of the debate in which he is also engaged. In fact, the battle of the ancient people and the modern people was not only about whether the ancients produced “better” authors and philosophers than the moderns but also basically about how “History” itself ran and should be seen and about the relationships between past and present, humanity and nature, and human understanding and knowledge.
A Tale of a Tub is a travesty on the various kinds of corruption in religion with also ridiculous comments on modern learning and philosophy. The title suggests a very conventional idea. It is referred to the custom of seamen to throw out a tub when they meet a whale to prevent it from attacking the ship. The tale recites the adventures of three brothers: Peter, Martin, and Jack, their quarrels with one another and their different treatments of the Coat left by their father. Exactly, the four main characters and the Coat symbolize different religious meanings (Roman Catholicism, Church of England, the Dissenters, God, the Bible, beliefs of Christianity) serving for the work’s theme. On surface, the parody seems to prefer to Church of England, but in fact it is a great satire on Christianity disregard of branch.
Gulliver’s Travels is Swift’s masterpiece. Today because of its fantastic stories and popularity with the children, it is widely known as a children’s classic of a legendary tale. But to most serious readers, it is an artistic achievement conceived on multiple levels, touching practically all fields of human endeavors---politics, religion, education, ethics---and help mankind hold up a mirror to review themselves. Gulliver’s Travels could in fact be described as one of the first novels of modern alienation from human culture, focusing on an individual’s repeated failures to integrate into societies where he does live but not belong. England itself is not much of a warm homeland for Gulliver. Swift tells us Gulliver can not support his family with his unprofitable surgeon’s business and his father’s insufficient estate. The hardship may get him to feel alienated from it. He never speaks fondly or nostalgically about England, and every time he returns home from his strange voyage, he will be quick to leave again. Gulliver never complains loudly about feeling lonely, but the frustration and antisocial feeling we see at the end of the novel discover clearly Gulliver is a profoundly isolated individual. Thus, Swift’s satire not only mocks the excesses of communal life, it also mocks the excesses of individualism through his description of a miserable and lonely Gulliver’s talking to his horses at home in England when people could not believe his dream-like adventures.

II Introduction to the Novel

2.1 Some Key Facts of This Work
The full title of this work is Gulliver’s Travels, or, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver. Its author is Jonathan Swift. It is a novel occupied with plenty of satire and irony.
Time and place written is approximately 1712–1726, London and Dublin respectively. George Faulkner published it in 1726 as a first publisher. In the novel, the hero, Gulliver, speaks in the first person. He describes other characters and an action as they appear to him. Gulliver’s tone is gullible and naïve during the first three voyages; in the fourth, it turns cynical and bitter. The intention of the author, Jonathan Swift, is satirical and biting throughout. The time of the stories is early eighteenth century. The place of the stories is primarily England and the imaginary countries of Lilliput, Blefuscu, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms. The major conflict of this novel is not obvious. On the surface, Gulliver strives to understand the various societies with which he comes into contact and to have these societies understand his native England. Below the surface, Swift is engaged in a conflict with the English society he is satirizing. The whole work could be separated into three parts according to the developments of Gulliver’s perception of human nature.
Gulliver’s encounters with other societies eventually lead up to his rejection of human society in the fourth voyage, which is rising action. Gulliver rejects human society in the fourth voyage, specifically when he shuns the generous Don Pedro as a vulgar Yahoo, which is climax.
Gulliver’s unhappy return to England accentuates his alienation and compels him to buy horses, which remind him of Houyhnhnms, to keep him company, which is falling action.
Its themes are easy to tell: Might versus Right; the individual versus society; the limits of human understanding versus the complicatedness of the world.
Actually, the satire is realized by the employment of symbolism. We can find many images used to express Swift’s love and hatred in human world, such as Lilliputians; Brobdingnagians; Laputans; Houyhnhnms and so on.
Gulliver’s ultimate rejection of human society, one of the novel’s focuses was foreshadowed by his experiences with various flawed societies in the first three voyages and climaxed in the fourth voyages.

2.2 General Content
Gulliver’s Travels consists of four parts. Each of them deals with one particular voyage of the hero and his brilliant adventures on some remote land.
In the first part, Gulliver goes to sea as a ship’s surgeon. In a big storm the ship is wrecked and he is cast upon the shore of the island of Lilliput. While asleep, he is captured and bound by thousands of the inhabitants there, who are all six inches tall. Gulliver soon finds out everything on the island is ten times as small as the things in the human world. The Lilliputians call him “the Great Man-Mountain”. They have great difficulties building a house and preparing food for him. In this country there are two parties, which are distinguished by the use of high and low heels. There is civil strife between Lilliput and neighboring country due to an argument “Should eggs be broken at the big end or the little end?” In this country, besides, Gulliver gets to know the chief ministers and candidates for high officials’ posts are given their jobs in accordance with their skill in dancing on a rope or in leaping over a stick or creeping under it backwards and forwards.
In the second part, Gulliver again goes to sea and his ship is again wrecked in a storm. Gulliver is abandoned on the land of the land of the Brobdingnagians. He soon finds out that all the inhabitants there are sixty—foot tall and every