Gulliver’s Travels was definitely my favourite work we studied this semester and to honour it I thought I would share my favourite moments from the book. Here goes, in no particular order:

1. Where we find out the King of Lilliput’s full name. Golbasto Momaren Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue is an awesome name and I would be so impressed if I casually mentioned this name in conversation sometime and the other person caught the reference. I used to play this game called Concentration, where two people have to take turn coming up with different names while following a beat. Whoever could keep it up the longest wins. If I could remember the King of Lilliput’s name, I would have eight names that can be legitimately used. If no one believed me I could just whisk out my copy of Gulliver’s Travels!
2. Gulliver’s utter inability to convince the King of Brobdinag of England’s virtues. The part I found the funniest is when Gulliver thinks that the guns and machines of England would impress the King because they are so powerful and received the opposite reaction wherein the King was horrified and deemed the items inhumane.
3. Basically every mention of the Houyhnhms language. At first I didn’t even realize that “Houyhnhms” mimicked what horses sound in real life, but afterward I learned about that characteristic, pronouncing the word pretty much made me smile every single time. It’s also amusing how Yahoo is tagged onto other Houyhnhm words to change the meaning into the negative.

There were a lot of other close contestants to those three, and if I had had more time I probably would have made a longer list. But that list is all there is now. I have a feeling I will be re-reading Gulliver’s Travels once in a while and my list of favourite moments will most likely expand with each reading. Swift sure wrote an entertaining and funny book.

It is hard to believe that four months passed so quickly! Here I am at home now with all my exams finished (but still working on school-work like this blog post due to my procrastination). It is just past midnight now, at the time when the bustling noise of life has finally settled down into a cozy silence. Before the busyness that will surely have me bursting out of bed tomorrow, I thought I would take some time to reminisce on what taking this course has done for me.

Honestly, I didn’t do as well as I had hoped to in this class. At the beginning of the semester I went through that wooden door in the Math Building marked 203 thinking that I would push myself to speak up in class, form defined opinions and analyze the text at my maximum capability but I admit I fell short of that goal. A favourite quote of mine is “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss at least you will land in the stars.” I think that in this case, I probably reached the tip of one of the trees in the UBC endowment lands.

That being said, I still learned. Going back to the first post I wrote for this blog, the epiphany I described there about slow reading is a lesson that has stayed with me. It’s just that recognizing I needed to think more did not directly translate to thinking more. I did try to reach farther in analysis for my second essay, but it was evident that what I did then wasn’t enough. I am extremely glad for the day I went to talk to Prof. McNeilly about the term paper that afternoon because I think I came away with a better idea of how to analyze deeper and express that in writing.

After four tiring but thought-provoking months in this class I am grateful to have grown mentally a little bit and I do love Gulliver’s Travels. That book is so much more than I expected and so funny. I hope I get to revisit it in another English class and it was a great way to end the semester. =)

Today in lecture we talked about Aphra Behn’s various names and what they might mean, which led me to ponder on the subject of naming.

I love studying the names of literary characters because names authors choose are often relevant to the role a character plays in the work. A few examples of these from this semester’s selections would be the names Adam (from earth), Caliban (anagram for cannibal), Miranda (wondrous) and possibly Gulliver which sounds like “gullible”.

As an aspiring writer, I love naming characters for my stories (finding names for locations and titles are much more frustrating and annoying though). I often spend way too much time looking up names in baby books and on the internet. But I never feel like picking the perfect name is a waste of time because to me it is a meaningful task. I wonder how many readers actually search up the origins of names to see if they reveal a trait about the characters.

In reality names are very interesting too. For example, when I look at a picture of a stranger, sometimes, for an inexplicable reason I will just feel like she is an “Eleanor” or a “Jennifer” etc etc. and I know I am not the only one who says “she looks like a [insert name]” since many of my friends act the same way. I think that part of the reason why this phenomenon occurs is because certain names have been associated with certain images throughout the years. The name “Jane” and its connotation as a plain name is probably the most well-known example of this tendency, having been started by the Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (I love this book). Since we have been discussing the idea of canonization, I want to note that in a way many names have been canonized by literature. It will be interesting to see if Katniss and Peeta will become familiar names in the years to follow.

While reading The Tempest, the character of Prospero confused me to no end. I just didn’t know what to make of him. He is disillusioned about his right to rule, a puppeteer who treats his slaves horribly, but yet has this wonderful “art” (at least wonderful to me) that can enchant and mesmerize, creating spectacular shows for his audience.

I personally love the idea of Prospero as a representation of Shakespeare, especially considering the epilogue he gives, bidding his long-time audience farewell. However, if the playwright really intended to write himself into this character, how then are we supposed to interpret Prospero’s self-centered demeanor and actions throughout the play? Like the introduction found in our Oxford editions of the play notes, The Tempest has “…been used to support radically differing claims about Shakespeare’s allegiances” (pg.11).

Ambiguity certainly is a defining trait of this play, causing confusion and mayhem not only for the characters but for the audience as well. In that aspect I am reminded of Midsummer Night’s Dream (which is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays) where the characters get in huge mix-ups. However, at that play’s conclusion everything is resolved whereas in The Tempest I am left with questions such as what happened to Caliban and does Prospero really give up his art?

I feel like this is one of those literary works that can be viewed a hundred times from different perspectives but still have some nugget of thought hidden in it. I wonder if I will ever be able to see Prospero and his story in a definitive way in the future.