人性与社会的“镜像”

For the first time, I have completely read "Gulliver's Travels." My previous impressions were always stuck on the adorable and amusing stories of Lilliput seen in an animated film during a Children's Day celebration in elementary school, where the author was known as Tai Shan. There, the king of Lilliput conversed with him in his palm and he undertook the heroic feat of dragging the entire enemy fleet with a hook across the sea. Yet, the novel contains many more strange and wonderful countries and islands: the land of giants, Laputa with its flying island (a floating island), Balnibarbi (a country subservient to Laputa), the sorcery island of Glubbdubdrib, Japan island, and the island of Houyhnhnms (where horses are the most rational rulers). The vivid and peculiar imagination easily evokes adventures akin to "The Adventures of Sinbad" from "One Thousand and One Nights," the satirical novel "Journey to the West" from China's Qing Dynasty, or the long-running Japanese anime "One Piece," which perhaps inherits the style of "Gulliver's Travels" in many ways. The Age of Discovery's quest for gold and adventure, both wondrous and thrilling, reveals that these bizarre and ludicrous kingdoms have origins and real-world significance, reflecting complex human nature. The novel sharply satirizes the greed of the British government and human nature, senseless warfare and slaughter, and the pretensions of pseudo-science. Lilliput: A miniature England where government positions are gained through jumping on a tightrope, and a long-standing war between the high-heeled and low-heeled factions revolves around how eggs should be cracked (from the big end or the small end). Brobdingnag: A gentle giant race that is self-sufficient, isolated, non-competitive towards others, situated on a peninsula. The author becomes a child's toy and a means for their master to earn money. Later, the author enters the palace to please the king and queen. Conversations with the king of Brobdingnag introduce the government structure of England: the House of Lords, the House of Commons, courts and lawyers, finance and economics, and the powerful army and navy over the last hundred years. The king refutes each and every one, asserts that a series of historical events in England is just a string of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, and purges, with the worst result being greed, factionalism, and so on. The giant nation is a closed, intellectually stifled state, focused solely on ethics, history, poetry, and mathematics. The despotic king is worshipped, but faces internal rebellion from nobles coveting power. Similar to China's "land of giants," it is enclosed by mountains, deserts, and seas, a feudal autocratic state surrounded by small states and barbarians overseas. The country awoke as if in a dream only when the Opium War broke open its doors. Laputa Journey: A group of kings and ministers who spend their days pondering only mathematics and music, indifferent to everything else including wives and children. They are a tedious aristocracy of silly birds who even need servants to slap their ears and mouths with bladder urine to remind them to talk. Daily contemplation is worthless pseudo-science. For the rule of the city, it relies on the floating island that can be freely controlled, tormenting residents on the ground to submit, pay taxes, and maintain their luxurious lifestyle. The Ragado University, a group of visionary designers who are a waste of money, creates meaningless pseudo-scientific inventions: extracting sunlight from cucumbers, burning ice into gunpowder, reducing excrement to food, using pigs to cultivate land, judging loyalty by the color of excrement (similar to using "how's your stool?" to inquire about illness), and other oddities. The school teaches students, propositions, and algorithms using inks made from the medicine used to treat head ailments written on thin pastries. Students eat pastries, and the medicine runs into their brains, which is duck-style education. On the magic island of summoning, the author saw the most famous ancient sages, scholars, and historical legends, subverted traditional history, and the so-called historical heroes were also the ugliest. People use bribery, assassination, forgery, and other despicable means to seize high positions. Ragadangan, the pain of immortals, brought to them by the terrifying prospect of never dying, is as stubborn, stubborn, greedy, solitary, arrogant, and talkative as they are devoid of human and love. Houyhnhnms Island: The horse is the supreme ruler of this country, a model of rationality and morality, which contrasts with the barbarism and ugliness of Yehu (the lower creatures, similar to humans). By describing Yehu, the author criticized the greed and selfishness of human nature. Although Huiyin is noble and selfless like a saint, his life is quite boring, a country without words, and self-proclaimed moral gentlemen, but there is no difference between masters and servants.