How did Jonathan Swift's biting satire of British mores, published in 1726, become a children's classic?
Maybe because of the little people?
Most of us don't get farther than the voyage to Lilliput, where Gulliver encounters little people with a penchant for bluster over trivialities, sort of like European kings during the Age of Absolutism.
Some of us get as far as Brobdingnag, the land of the giants; the flying island of Laputa; the mythical country of Japan; and the land of the Houyhnhnms, sentient horses who think of humans as beasts.
I got through the whole thing in high school; I remember that when Gulliver finally makes it home, he is disgusted by the habits of the humans around him, and especially by their smell. He can't abide having his wife in the same room.
I could relate to that. I couldn't stand the way girls smelled, either. Disgusting sweet powders and perfumes!
There have been many film, tv, and cartoon adaptions, with Gulliver played by such diverse stars as Kerwin Mathews, Richard Harris, Ted Danson, and Jack Black.
Gulliver varies in age in the various adaptions, from child to middle-aged, but, except in recent movies where there always has to be a hetero-romance, he is excused from experiencing heterosexual interest.
Plus there's all that bondage.
And water sports. He saves the Liliputian queen by using the nearest convenient hose to put out a fire; she is not amused.
ReplyDeleteActually, the biggest fetish indulged by Gulliver's Travels would have to be macrophilia, the fetish for often impossible size differences.