Gulliver’s Travels book review

Jonathan Swift penned his most well-known novel, Gulliver’s Travels, in 1726. Most readers are familiar with the first part of the book – Gulliver’s journey to Lilliput where he is taken captive by the diminutive Lilliputians, and later lives among them for several months. But the full novel is actually written in four parts where Gulliver travels to several other locations, meeting other strange and fascinating creatures.

In part two, he finds himself in danger of being crushed by the huge inhabitants of Brobdinghag whose size is roughly twelve times that of Gulliver. Gulliver is rescued from this community by an eagle, who seizes the traveling box in which Gulliver sleeps, and drops it into the ocean where he is picked up by an English vessel.

Part three introduces the reader to the flying island of Laputa where the inhabitants are thrilled by music and mathematics, but have no practical skills.

Finally (in part four), Gulliver makes his way to the country of the Houyhnhnms who are actually horses who rule the country and the deformed creatures (“Yahoos”) who are, in fact,  human beings in their base form. Gulliver is welcomed into a horse’s household, and eventually rejects humans as merely Yahoos with very little reasoning ability which simply adds to the vices Nature has given them. Eventually Gulliver is expelled from the country as he is seen as a danger to civilization.

Gulliver’s Travels is primarily a satire which pokes fun at European government, and the petty differences between religions. The Lilliputians perhaps are the most petty of all – squabbling over the size of their shoe heels, and going to war with their closest neighbors because of a disagreement over how to eat an egg. The book becomes darker as it progresses, with Gulliver moving from an optimistic and rather innocent character, to one whose view of the world becomes more cynical.

Although I found this novel to be an interesting read, I must admit that some of the long, circular sentences left me skimming at times. This book is full of cultural, political and religious references which might be best explored as part of a book club or in a classroom. For the reader simply looking for an entertaining book, Gulliver’s Travels might be a little too deep.

Despite some of my reservations, Gulliver’s Travels is a good classic novel. As with many people, my favorite section was the first. It is hard not to be delighted with Gulliver’s time spent in Lilliput.

In the movie Gulliver fakes being a travel writer and gets sent to the Bermudian triangle to write a report about it. While Gulliver is in the triangle he gets sucked into a giant spinning pillar of water and faints. When Gulliver wakes up he finds himself covers in tiny people called Lilliputian. The book is deferent from the movie is several ways. The movie is set in modern time where as the book is set in a time where people still use boats to travel the world.  the themes of the book and movie are different because in the book it takes things in society and points out all the wierd problems. In the movie the theme is "there are no small people only small jobs". Now would somebody tell me what that means?  

Macbeth

Macbeth is a great warrior who helps win an important battle for his King, Duncan. The King wishes to reward him by making him Thane (kind of like knighting him). Before he finds this out, on his way back to see the King, Macbeth meets three witches who predict he will be Thane. Macbeth is suspicious of them. They then say he will be one day be King. Macbeth doesn't believe them and thinks them evil. On meeting with the King, he learns he is to be Thane - wow, the witches got it right! But if that's true... is he really going to be King? When he meets with his wife, Lady Macbeth, he tells her all that; lmurdering Duncan and his heirs, who are guests at Macbeth's castle. Macbeth murders the King, and Duncan's sons flee in fear of their lives, leaving the way clear for Macbeth to become King.

To cut a long story short, Duncan's son Malcolm, and other allies, mount a rebellion against King Macbeth, who has become a tyrant and has murdered lots of people to cling on to power. The witches again appear and tell Macbeth not to worry as he can only be killed of a man not born by a woman. The battle commences and Macbeth is fighting well, like a man who believes he cannot be killed (everyone is born of a woman, right?) However, when he meets the warrior Macduff, one of Malcolm's allies, Macduff says that he was born by caesarian section - not born normally, but cut from his mother's womb. Macbeth then knows the game is up. Macduff murders Macbeth and Malcolm, Duncan's son, is crowned the new King.

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is considered as one of the major beginning marks in English Literature. The Canterbury Tales, written in 14th century is a collection of short stories mainly in verse form. The stories in The Canterbury Tales are told by a group of 24 pilgrims on pilgrimage from Southwark to Canterbury to visit the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.

  One of the first few tales is called “The Man Of Law” in it The Man of Law tells a Romance tale of a Christian princess named Custance who is married to the Syrian Sultan on condition that he converts to Christianity. The Sultan's mother connives to prevent this and has Constance set adrift on the sea. Her adventures and trials continue after she is shipwrecked on the Northumberland coast.  I didn’t really like this one because I despise romance books. I think the moral is that you shouldn’t believe something someone tells you unless you really believe it.

                The Canterbury tales are the kind of book you read when you have nothing else to do and you have a glass of tea. The tea is to keep you awake. If you achieve that then the rest of the book isn’t that bad. The style of righting used in this book reminds me of the book the Knights of the Round Table, also a medieval adventure. The Canterbury Tales righting style reminds me of this because of the way the characters talk. They talk all like: “hail thou mistress” and stuff like that, you get the idea.


                I would give Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales four stars out of ten. One star because it’s a very famous book, one star because I was able to finish it, one star because for some unexplainable reason it reminds me of Monty python and the Holy Grail, and finally the last star because I somewhat enjoyed reading it. I would recommend this book for teenagers who like to read and are able to understand big words.              

First Lego League

I participated in First Lego league this year. The theme was Body Forward, and our team team chose how to heal or improve a body part. We decided to focus our research on the spine.

In our grand search for a problem we searched dangerous jobs online.

We came up with an entire list but finally narrowed it down to spine surgery. It’s not really a dangerous job but it can be very hard.

We then interviewed a neurosurgeon who does spine surgery. He taught us all about spine surgery and what was required.

After that we went on other field trips.

I went to the MIT museum in Boston. We got to see the Black Falcon, an early surgical robot.

We also visited an operating room at St. Peter’s Hospital.  While we were there we got to see the Da Vinci robot which is a actual robot that is being used today.  Go to my mom’s blog, at Albany Kid, to read about this field trip.

Our team decided to solve the problem of surgery in urban bomb situations. This solution solves two kinds of problems: improving the body, and healing a body. Currently, surgeons are limited in what kind of surgery techniques they can do with their human body. In addition, a war situation can be very dangerous and it can be impossible for a surgeon to do shrapnel surgery in war conditions.

Dr. Scheid, the neurosurgeon that we interviewed, told us about soldiers who have to be flown in to hospitals in the US to get this kind of surgery. And, he told us that many times they are flown in for the surgery, and then flown right back afterwards.

We wanted to create a surgical robot that would allow this surgery to be done right on the field in such a way as to keep the surgeon safe, while providing a sterile medic conditions for the patient.

Our solution was DREGS: Disaster Robotic Emergency General Surgery. This robot cures shrapnel wounds in war situations while defending the patient.

Our Robot’s key features are:

• A bullet proof titanium body
• An auto turret
• It is remote controlled

I can see this kind of robot being manufactured someday, but with a lot of updates.

 

Video: First Lego League Poster

Here is a list of articles we used:

• Robotic surgeon finds, removes shrapnel alone
• Nanooze: The Nanomedicine Issue
• National Geographic: Merging Man and Machine

King Henry VIII

King Henry VIII was a very important man.  Besides his six marriages, Henry VIII is known for his role in the separation of the Church of England from the normal Catholic Church. Henry's battles with Rome led to the separation of the Church of England from papal authority. Since he wanted to divorce his wife but couldn’t because of the pope he made himself the leader of the church. He changed religious ceremonies and rituals and suppressed the monasteries, while remaining a believer in core Catholic teachings.

Henry was an attractive and charismatic man in his prime. He ruled with absolute power. His desire to provide England with a heir, led to the main thing that Henry is remembered for today: his wives. I know I should respect history people but he was one heck of a hound dog. If I had a time machine I would send back a IPod with all of Elvis’s music.

A Kids Voice For Blog Action Day

Change.org|Start Petition

Hi many of you may know about blog action day, its a day where bloggers around the world all work together to raise awareness of one particular problem each year. This year the problem is water all though I know its a pretty big problem all over the world like in places where dirty water kills 80% of the people who live there I think there bigger problems like my sisters face, no just kidding she.... has....... a very.......pretty......face..... HA HA HA LOL ROFL A HA HAAAAHAHAHA HA HA HA! anyway I just want to tell you how big a deal it is so please join us in our fight against  water, Justen Bieber, war, my sister and all the other threats to the world.

Secretariat

Last night I went to see the movie Secretariat with my friend Catherin. We both liked it a lot. It was about a mom that finds out her mom died.  She then goes to her mom’s house where she then finds out that one of their best horses is pregnant and raises the baby to be one of the best race horses ever. Both of our favorite parts were when the trainer swears in French. The one bad thing about it was that nothing blew up, I have a dark and twisted mind! ;)