Post #5: A Call to Reform

Both The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano and Gulliver’s Travels are criticisms of their own relative worlds. Equiano uses the narrative of his travels to criticize slavery, while Jonathan Swift uses Gulliver’s Travels to criticize certain aspects of England. Both texts are travel narratives, although one of them is outlandish and a tad more chaotic. They both serve similar purposes.

At first glance, I noticed that both of these texts contain large chunk paragraphs. Although I have been reading on Project Gutenberg, I imagine that some of these paragraphs would span pages of a book in paper format. This may seem like a small similarity, but because these paragraphs almost always consist of a narration of a voyage, it is necessary to pay attention to what goes on in them. The scenery changes rapidly, and both authors try to fit as many details in these large paragraphs as possible. This allows the audience to become a direct observer, but still only allows the audience to see the voyage through the eyes of the speaker, limiting objectiveness. This comes into play with these criticisms a lot, because the reader must always question the speaker’s credibility.

Let’s now analyze content: When Gulliver narrates his voyage to Lilliput, he says that they use a system of rewards and punishments to run the country. He then says, “And these people thought it a prodigious defect of policy among us, when I told them that our laws were enforced only by penalties, without any mention of reward” (Swift, Chapter VI). This is a direct attack on his home country, and it is valuable to the reader because of its overtness. The reader is able to see that Swift makes a direct comparison between Lilliput’s system of rewards and punishments, and England’s use of strictly punishment. The call to action for English government is now “Look how well this works and look at how valued people feel. Let’s try this.”

Let’s move on to Equiano. His narrative travels to real places which is in stark contrast to Gulliver’s Travels, where the destinations are fictional. Equiano is still able to give completely unique accounts in each place and with each master. First of all, Equiano starts off his narrative with an address and in it, he lays out the purpose of his story: “the chief design of which is to excite your in your august assemblies a sense of compassion for the miseries which the Slave-Trade has entailed on my unfortunate countrymen” (Vassa). This is helpful to the reader because we can now see the exact purpose for which he writes, and our reading can shift to support his point of view. A specific example of a ‘misery’ the Equiano narrates is in section 9.6: “Such as were produced, and certain other things, were sent on shore till the ships were going away; and any person in whose custody a bible was found concealed was to be imprisoned and flogged, and sent into slavery for ten years” (Vassa, 9.6). Previously in the text, Equiano discusses how important religion is in his culture. For a slave, religion was often the only sense of purpose and comfort. Not only were people being punished for having that comfort with them, but the method of punishment was a ten-year period of slavery. If this was their punishment, then why were others thrown into slavery simply for their heritage?

Both of these narratives are effective in getting their point across. One important aspect to note is that a criticism does not have to be completely true in order to be effective. When we look at Gulliver’s Travels, we know that the places that he goes are not real places. His criticism is satirical, yet effective. Similarly, The Interesting Narrative can still serve its intended purpose even if some of the details are embellished. The only problem is that narratives can lose their credibility if the author does not admit embellishments or satire at all.

Works Cited

Vassa, Gustavas. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. 17 March 2005,

Project Gutenberg. Retrieved on 3 April from

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15399/15399-h/15399-h.htm

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. 20 February 1997,

Project Gutenberg. Retrieved on 4 April from

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/829/829-h/829-h.htm