How To Read Literature

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By reading literature, you can learn about the world around you, past and present, and more importantly, you can learn more about yourself. I believe that literature is a very relevant tool that you can apply to your life. I have enjoyed reading and analyzing several different texts throughout several periods of time. Each text is unique to its time period, but all were influential in one way or another. Of all the texts we discussed in class, one distinctly stuck out to me. My favorite literary work from this semester was Book 4 of Gulliver’s Travels, because I found it really interesting how Swift used the characteristics from both species to show that humans should strive to be a mixture of both.
Jonathan Swift, who was Irish was one …show more content…
He still finds no peace in England and, then goes to sea on a ship with hearty mariners. Soon they all form their own grievances against him and end up leaving him stranded on island. With only a sword and the barest of clothes on his back, Gulliver sets out to explore his island prison. He soon has an encounter with a group of wild savages. These wild creatures act animalistic, but they physically resemble humans. Shortly after seeing Gulliver, they flee when they see a few beautiful majestic horses coming near. Gulliver soon discovers that those horses are actually are race of intelligent equids with the gift of reason and speech. They are remarkably kind and sophisticated species. These horses are known as Houyhnhnms, and live, what seems to be, the perfect life. They have no war or internal conflicts, no sickness, and no crime or violent outbreaks. They act strictly based off of their reason and are completely dispassionate. Gulliver takes a liking to this species and tries to conform to their lifestyle. He is inspired by their simplicity and problem free lifestyle. He ends up trying to learn their language and live amongst them. At first the Houyhnhnms are suspiuso, because they see him as Yahoo, the other species living on the island. Yahoos are barbaric and uncivilized. They are filthy and stink. They prefer to eat meat and garbage. …show more content…
While at a glance, this can be interpreted as an entertaining and fun children’s book. As an educated reader, though, we can realize how rich this text actually is. At a glance, it seems that if you were given the choice between the two societies, the obvious choice would be the Houyhnhnms. If you look deeper, you would begin to doubt that choice. Yes, the Houyhnhnms society is completely benevolent and free of hate, but where something is free of hate, it is also free of love. When I first understood this theme, I thought of a truth I hear from one of my best friends often. She reminds me that if I never risk getting my heart broken, I will also never experience deep, true love. In other words, the risk of a broken heart is worth the one of a kind feeling of deeply loving and being loved by someone. While the Houyhnhnms, remain pain free, they never get to experience probably the greatest emotion in life. Yahoos definitely take their emotions to an extreme, but if given a choice, I would rather do that than to have absolutely no emotions at all. It would be such a boring life as a Houyhnhnms. Their safe, rational lifestyle is very predictable and offers no room for excitement. I thought that the way Swift encouraged readers to live midway between the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms was beautiful. We should not act strictly based off of reason, but at the same time it is equally as dangerous to live strictly off of
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