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    Gulliver's Travels
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    Gulliver's Travels
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    Gulliver's Travels
    Audiobook11 hours

    Gulliver's Travels

    Written by Jonathan Swift

    Narrated by Gordon Griffin

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and the brutish Yahoos give him further insight into human behavior. Presented through Swift's satiric hall of distorting mirrors, mankind is cast as diminished, magnified, and bestial-the composite of which is an uncompromising reflection of human nature.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateOct 17, 2017
    ISBN9781520082103
    Author

    Jonathan Swift

    Born in 1667, Jonathan Swift was an Irish writer and cleric, best known for his works Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, and A Journal to Stella, amongst many others. Educated at Trinity College in Dublin, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity in February 1702, and eventually became Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Publishing under the names of Lemeul Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, and M. B. Drapier, Swift was a prolific writer who, in addition to his prose works, composed poetry, essays, and political pamphlets for both the Whigs and the Tories, and is considered to be one of the foremost English-language satirists, mastering both the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. Swift died in 1745, leaving the bulk of his fortune to found St. Patrick’s Hospital for Imbeciles, a hospital for the mentally ill, which continues to operate as a psychiatric hospital today.

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    Reviews for Gulliver's Travels

    3.5/5

    27 ratings91 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Jonathan Swift must have been smoking opium when he wrote this because it is wackadoodle. It is also weird to have a female read the book when the main character is a man. I don't think I would have read the physical book.
    • 2/5
      Far more interesting than I'd hoped, given how old it is. I see both why it has historically been praised, and why I'm glad to say I've read it and now never pick it up again.
    • 3/5
      Got around to read this classic. Book is essentially a collection of author's imaginations on what people will do and act in different strange societies. Author imagines well on social culture and actions based on people but doesn't think through a lot on social and technological environment. All socieities - small people, monsterous people, floating people, horse people - have pretty much that distinction but rest of world - animals, plants, things and inventions - are similar to rest of normal world. Transition from one society to another, through multiple sea voyages, is fast and not dwelt much upon. Lots of people found this work of Swift to be satire on modern world, and it kind of is, but very peripheral one. For instance religion and politicians can be arbitary and foolish and that's mentioned as such without really understanding depth of things. In the end, excitement of new world goes away from readers and long monologues of narrator's experiences and discourse within those society becomes boring. It's readable but forgettable book.
    • 5/5
      Swift's ideas about human nature and government are timeless. Gulliver's Travels is a must read!
    • 1/5
      would not wish upon my worst enemy

      also made me feel really uncomfortable about horses
    • 5/5
      Swift's ideas about human nature and government are timeless. Gulliver's Travels is a must read!
    • 4/5
      Meesterlijk in zijn passages met kritiek op algemeenmenselijke toestanden. Frisse satire, al is het verhaal van de reus in Lilliputtersland intussen wat afgezaagd, dat wordt ruimschoots gecompenseerd vooral door het laatste verhaal.
    • 2/5
      Read this in college. Obviously, extremely over-discussed. Not really my kind of read.
    • 1/5
      Aargh. Really tedious. The tale of being in Lilliput was fairly humorous, but the rest were just tedious to the point of beating a dead horse (or a Honyhnhnm, as the case may be).The Lilliput saga worked as a story, but none of the others did and I didn't think any of it worked as allegory either. Instead of learning from the civilizations he encountered, he became an unhappy shell of a person who couldn't even stand being in the same room with his wife and children. If there was no hope for the human race, why didn't he just off himself and put the reader out of his/her misery?!
    • 4/5
      I went into this story having no idea what it was about and I found it to be very fun to read. The story is told in a straight forward, easy to understand way and the author's bluntness makes it easy to follow and not get bogged down.Books 1 and 2 felt almost like a children's story, with fantastical creatures. Books 3 and 4 dealt with more advanced themes, and I felt like each book held its own.My favorite part was book 3 when Gulliver was touring through the academy and visiting with the various types of academics. I sometimes had to remind myself that this book was written in the 1700s. Lawyers clearly haven't changed a bit!
    • 4/5
      This book is darling and lovely. Great for children, but enough symbolism in it for worth-while analysing for adults.
    • 4/5
      For something written in 1735, the humor is surprisingly applicable to today's audience. It is the tale of Lemuel Gulliver's journeys to several distant lands and is rife with hilarious satire and biting wit. I particularly enjoyed his descriptions of English government. I was also amazed at how much influence on modern language it's had, from lilliputian to big-endian. There are so-called classics of which I don't understand the attribution, but this is one comedy that is sure to be timeless as long as there are human societies.
    • 3/5
      I am doing work on masculinity with this book, but even with that interest in mind I did not particularly enjoy Gulliver.
    • 5/5
      Written in 1727, a critique of our industrial policy in 2014: In these colleges the professors contrive new... tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. .... The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair.
    • 3/5
      I am doing work on masculinity with this book, but even with that interest in mind I did not particularly enjoy Gulliver.
    • 4/5
      This book is about travels of Gulliver, the main character of this book. Gulliver traveled two strange place. One is the country where very small people live and the other is the country where very big people live. It is written that how Gulliver spend in each country meeting his match.This story is a rhal Gulliver's travels. The story that I have even heard was obviously nothing like this story. I think this is very interesting. The storyline is creative. When I read this book, I feel like being in this book and watch at Gulliver nearby!
    • 5/5
      Alot of variety in this book. The different lands that Gulliver visits are never the same. A good book indeed.
    • 4/5
      Such a witty, clever, fun critique of society. Like a true traveler, he pushes the limits of what one is naturally inclined to believe is possible or normal. I would read this book again and again.
    • 4/5
      : Disturbing and times depressing book of insights into the frailties of the human character. Especially the last voyage to the Houyhnhnms and their counterparts the Yahoos. Yahoos are human creatures without any civilized qualities and the portrait is so accurate that at times I lost my faith in all human activity. Thinking that everything that we do has as root in our natural beings. Observing life the way people talk about each other when their not in the room, the envy, the laziness, the pride and at times open malice that I see, and oftentimes in myself. I wonder why a God would condescend to send his son to save us.
    • 5/5
      Sweepingly entertaining & popular from the year it was published until this day, among adults & (duly expurgated) with children. Whether Swift "intended" to create one of the earliest English novels, a pioneering work of science-fiction or fantasy, a travel narrative - or, as often put forward, a bittersour satire of British politics - he achieved it all. This frankly insolent example of what we mean when we say "work of genius" was before its time in so direct a way that many never thought twice about it. Whether it concluded the Baroque century or introduced the Age of Enlightenment is less important than the vast *imaginative* freedom - more fundamental, even, than freedom to express - conquered for humanity with those impossible tales of High-Heel Lilliputians, lascivious Brobdingnag ladies & Baconian scientism reduced to parody. Not to forget the chilling Houyhnhnms & their wretchedly humanoid underlings, the Yahoos.A treasure of civilization, which may still feel like science-fiction in the 22nd Century.
    • 5/5
      Even on (fifth? sixth?) read, and even with a stronger acquaintance with the sources (hello, Gargantua! sup Lycurgus), the inventiveness never flags. And the satire certainly has its flat-in-2010 moments (mockin' on Walpole and Bolingbroke, like that immortal Simpsons moment when Barney and Wade Boggs get in a fistfight about whether the greatest British prime minister was Pitt the Elder or Lord Palmerston), but overall it surprises you with its Juvenalian saturninity, its baleful eye. These are stories you'll never forget, as useful for an impromptu fairytale as for thinking about the good society in a new way at 17, realizing "hey, the Houyhnhnms aren't the good guys at all . . . ."

      No, the reason this loses a half star as I return to it in fullblown manhood is that I'm a lot less susceptible to the Augustan smoothness with which Swift invites us to agree with him, a lot less willing to accept the "dark failure" view of mankind as seductive now that I know I won't just forget it as soon as I go outside in the teenage sunshine. I won't condemn Swift's misanthropy on general principle. But I think we have to condemn him on the specifics too. So often he's condemning lawyers and whoremasters and degenerate nobles and all the usual targets, and then he gets around to women, and you'd expect the usual stuff about how they're silly and grasping or whatever, but Swift condemns them for "lewdness", and given the state of patriarchal relations at that time, that is fucking appalling. Or another example: footnote tells me that when he makes fun of "fiddlers" in Book IV, it's far from idle talk--this man, this deacon and thunderbolt moralist refused to come to a man's defense on a rape charge because he was a fiddler. It's "hang 'im! If he's not guilty of this it'll just be something else. Fiddlers."

      And it comes across in the satire. How can it not? And it makes me sour. So don't love Jon Swift, but read Gulliver's Travels, the vividest English novel of the 18th c.

    • 5/5
      The writing is beautiful, the riffs on law, politics and general intellectual attitudes are hilarious, and the structure was great. The third part's a bit tough to get in to, but otherwise, first class. Easy to read, too.
    • 4/5
      This is one book that must be read at least twice. The first time to discover the purpose, and the second time to laugh all the way through.
    • 2/5
      I liked this book quite a bit. It does read like a journal, which was new to me in a novel, although at the time it probably bothered me a little, although I still thought it interesting.I liked how there were new areas and races, even if it may be political satire. I was glad to read about several that aren't usually featured in the movies.
    • 5/5
      The earliest continually recorded satire piece of literature, plus being long-lasting in human culture via jONATHAN sWIFT'S WONDERFUL IMAGINATION. The whole of the four voyages comes through after several readins. At first, the Lilliputians is all one remembers, and indeed, is all that is filmed, but the Houghyhm (sp) (neigh) horses pick perfectly at the imperfect society of thazt time (and of this).
    • 4/5
      Swift is always great to pull out for prime examples of satire, and Gulliver's Travels is one of the best. It helps I read it and enjoyed it before we picked it apart it college. As with most, the Lilliputians were my favorite episode. A must read!
    • 3/5
      At first , I thought this book was a fairy tale. But after I read this book, I realize that this book had lessons.for example, this book teaches us that people tell alie ,steal something and fight, just they have always done, and probably will always do.We usually don't notice that fact.So we should think our own lives deeply.
    • 4/5
      Was Glubbdubdrib on J.K. Rowling's mind when she envisaged Hogwarts? Swift's deadpan satire is a treat, but so is his earnest advocacy of freedom.
    • 3/5
      I thought this was an okay book. I understand what Swift was trying to accomplish with his 4 different worlds--the lessons he was trying to teach--but I wasn't that engaged with the stories. There were some interesting bits of writing, but overall, just one of those classics I felt I needed to read to be a well-rounded person. Yes, I am much rounder now but it has nothing to do with this book.
    • 4/5
      A very well-known tale this one. Especially his first travel to Lilliput. The fantasy of the tale is fantastic. But that could be told in a hundred pages. But this is not really a work of fiction, it was written as a political satire, so Swift writes a great deal about human nature and how bad it is performing. Which is far less eye-pleasing.