Category: Novel

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s travels’ is not a travel writing at all. It is a travel into absurd and fantastic lands. It uses maps, figures, speed of ships, latitudes, longitudes. It uses markers of travel literature like topography, climate, bridges. It provides actual physical details but all of these are journeys into fantastic lands. Swift is also mocking the tradition of travel writing itself. He is suggesting that most of this travelogues written during the Elizabethan and early Enlightenment ages were actually admixtures of facts and fictions. Therefore there is a strong critique of the factuality of the travel writing within the text also. And Swift’s satire in Gulliver’s Travels is well portrayed.

Gulliver’s Travels is not a travel writing. It is a particular kind of satire, Mennipean satire ( a satire which is directed towards a particular school of philosophy). In this case Swift is a comprehensive critique of the philosophy of the Enlightenment.

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Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hardy’s plot construction in Far From the Madding Crowd suffers from a few weaknesses. In the first place, the plot is rather thin and slight. The entire story is about a woman, namely, Bathsheba Everdene who is loved by three men. At the end of the novel, two of the lovers, Sergeant Troy and Mr. Boldwood are removed and the scope is made for the third one, namely, Gabriel Oak, to marry the heroine. To a host of critics, the way in which this end is achieved is rather unconvincing and contrived. Oak is in reality, the first lover of the heroine, though throughout the novel there is no sign of affection for him on her part while she married Troy and promised to marry Boldwood after the supposed death of Troy. Perhaps through this Hardy offers a reward to the steady and consistent love of Oak, but it is far from satisfying if thought from logical point of view. Moreover, according to many critics, it does not suit the entire tragic foreboding of the novel also. Throughout the novel, Hardy shows the struggle between man on the one hand and an omnipotent and indifferent Fate on the other, which is malevolent to all human hopes. The ending of the novel runs contrary to this tragic bias.

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Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hardy is primarily a storyteller and should be viewed more as a chronicler of moods and deeds than as a philosopher. Yet a novel such as Far from the Madding Crowd which raises many questions about society, religion, morals, and the contrast between a good life and its rewards, is bound to make the reader curious about the authors vision of life, which is behind of his work.

Continue reading “Chance and Co-incidence (Role of Fate) in Far from the Madding Crowd”