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:
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.