Moon’s Day, October 22: Life’s Little Troubles

EQ: How did Jonathan Swift turn satire against humanity?

  • Welcome!
  • Opening Freewrite: The Spirit of Laughter
  • Lecture/Presentation: Jonathan Swift and the Art of Righteous Ridicule
  • CLOZE: Swift
  • GroupReading: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
  • Reading Guide with Freewrites

ELACC12RL-RI2: Analyze two or more themes or central ideas of text

ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop

ELACC12RL6: Distinguish what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant

ELACC12RI6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text

ELACC12RI8: Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal British texts

ELACC12RL-RI9: Analyze for theme, purpose rhetoric, and how texts treat similar themes or topics

ELACC12RL10: Read and comprehend complex literature independently and proficiently.

ELACC12W4: Produce clear and coherent writing appropriate to task, purpose, and audience

ELACC12W9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis

ELACC12W10: Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames

ELACC12SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions

ELACC12L6: Acquire and use general academic and domain-specific words and phrases

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)

Excerpted from the book’s final paragraph

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall.

His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something.

Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something.

I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

[In other words, Scripture tells us that Jesus smiled and wept and even got mad; but, so far as we are told, he never laughed.]

Freewrite 100 words: Comment.

Review: The Age of Reason

aka The Enlightenment, Neoclassical Age

  • 1670s – 1790s
  • Major philosophical idea: humansdo not need Divine Intervention to solve problems; we must insteadbe applying Reason
  • Newton – predicting planets’ orbits using mathematics
  • Scientific Revolution
  • But not everyone believed that human problems should be reduced to rational, scientific, mathematical equations.

Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745)

He’s Irish. The English HATED Irish, and vice versa – and that hatred continues!

He’s A Priest – Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin

  • He was a criticof the Age of Reason. Reason cannot solve human problems because sins – greed, lust, pride, etc. – areirrational; cannot use logic to repair illogic. Requires change of soul, not change of mind. (He thought such a change was unlikely, so is often labeled a misanthrope, “people hater”
  • Swift was, and is, Britain’s greatestmaster ofsatire:making fun of something in order to make a serious point about it.
  • He wrote that satire’s job is “prompting men of genius and virtue to mend the worldas far as they are able” b/c it “laughs men out of their follies and vices”
  • “Although some things are too serious, solemn, or sacred to be turned into ridicule, yet the abuses of them are certainly not” – we cannot ridicule Religion or Human Rights, but we MUST ridicule abuses of Religion and Human Rights (“the Swift rule”)

Apocalypse= Greek: “revelation”

“cozy catastrophe”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726)

Adapted and edited; full text widely available

[Swift’s most famous work was published anonymously, and both satirized and cashed in on the popularity of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Both books were pure fiction – but gullible Englishmen believed that both were memoirs written by actual shipwreck survivors. Lemuel Gulliver’s four voyages each find misfortune – storm, shipwreck, pirates – resulting in Gulliver’s being cast ashore alone, on what seems to be a deserted island but which proves to be peopled by strange beings radically different from himself, yet shockingly recognizable also. Each voyage gives Swift a chance to satirize different aspect of English life, sometimes using the strange islanders’ bodies and habits to make his points, sometimes targeting Gulliver himself.

Part One: A Voyage to Lilliput

[Gulliver ships for adventure, but his ship miscarries, and he washes ashore alone on an island.]

I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder than ever I remembered to have done in my life, and, as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for, as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner. I likewise felt several slender ligatures across my body, from my arm-pits to my thighs. I could only look upwards; the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me; but in the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky. In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when, bending my eyes downwards as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human creature not six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back. In the mean time, I felt at least forty more of the same kind (as I conjectured) following the first. [Gulliver yells and tries to get up, scattering the little men; then] in an instant I felt above a hundred arrows discharged on my left hand, which, pricked me like so many needles; and besides, they shot another flight into the air, as we do bombs in Europe ….When this shower of arrows was over, I fell a groaning with grief and pain; and then striving again to get loose, they discharged another volley larger than the first, and some of them attempted with spears to stick me in the sides….I thought it the most prudent method to lie still, and my design was to continue so till night, when, my left hand being already loose, I could easily free myself: and as for the inhabitants, I had reason to believe I might be a match for the greatest army they could bring against me, if they were all of the same size with him that I saw …. When the people observed I was quiet, they discharged no more arrows; but, by the noise I heard, I knew their numbers increased; and about four yards from me, over against my right ear, I heard a knocking for above an hour, like that of people at work; when turning my head that way, as well as the pegs and strings would permit me, I saw a stage erected about a foot and a half from the ground, capable of holding four of the inhabitants, with two or three ladders to mount it: from whence one of them, who seemed to be a person of quality, made me a long speech, whereof I understood not one syllable. [This leader gives orders in a strange language, and ] immediately, about fifty of the inhabitants came and cut the strings that fastened the left side of my head, which gave me the liberty of turning it to the right, and of observing the person and gesture of him that was to speak.

[By his gentleness Gulliver earns favor with these folk, and soon picks up their language. They feed him and move him by rollers to their biggest house, and begin to teach him their customs.]

The emperor had a mind one day to entertain me with several of the country shows, wherein they exceed all nations I have known, both for dexterity and magnificence. I was diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread, extended about two feet, and twelve inches from the ground …. This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for great employments, and high favour at court. They are trained in this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or liberal education. When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens,) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office. Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset several times together, upon a trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a common pack-thread in England …. These diversions are often attended with fatal accidents, whereof great numbers are on record. I myself have seen two or three candidates break a limb. But the danger is much greater, when the ministers themselves are commanded to show their dexterity; for, by contending to excel themselves and their fellows, they strain so far that there is hardly one of them who has not received a fall, and some of them two or three.

[Gulliver wishes to serve these folk in some impressive way, and one night, he gets his wish.]

I was alarmed at midnight with the cries of many hundred people at my door; by which, being suddenly awaked, I was in some kind of terror …. Several of the emperor's court, making their way through the crowd, entreated me to come immediately to the palace, where her imperial majesty's apartment was on fire, by the carelessness of a maid of honour, who fell asleep while she was reading a romance. I got up in an instant; and orders being given to clear the way before me, and it being likewise a moonshine night, I made a shift to get to the palace without trampling on any of the people. I found they had already applied ladders to the walls of the apartment, and were well provided with buckets, but the water was at some distance. These buckets were about the size of large thimbles, and the poor people supplied me with them as fast as they could: but the flame was so violent that they did little good. I might easily have stifled it with my coat, which I unfortunately left behind me for haste, and came away only in my leathern jerkin. The case seemed wholly desperate and deplorable; and this magnificent palace would have infallibly been burnt down to the ground, if, by a presence of mind unusual to me, I had not suddenly thought of an expedient. I had, the evening before, drunk plentifully of a most delicious wine called GLIMIGRIM, which is very diuretic. By the luckiest chance in the world, I had not discharged myself of any part of it. The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate by urine; which I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from destruction. [Gulliver is shocked by the response of the Lilliputians – they are not grateful but outraged, especially the Queen. Gulliver is put under arrest, but helps them win a battle against their enemies, another tiny folk. Then, Gulliver escapes.]

Reading Guide: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

Introduction and Part One: A Voyage to Lilliput

  1. Gulliver’s Travels satirizes ______by ______.
  2. Both books were ______, but readers believed both were ______– perhaps because although Swift was a famous satirist, the novel was published ______.
  3. When Gulliver wakes on Lilliput, why can’t he get up?
  4. What is odd about the people of this land?
  5. When Gulliver tries to move, what do these people do that causes him “grief and pain”?
  6. “I thought it the most prudent method to ______” until when?
  7. Gulliver says he believed himself “a match for ______”
  8. Gulliver hears a speech by ______, “whereof I understood ______.”
  9. Briefly describe the “diversion” Gulliver sees at one of the “country shows”:
  1. What sort of person has to perform this ceremony?
  2. What is the reward for winners?
  3. What is the danger for those who fail?

THINK ON 9-12: What satiric point is Swift making about politics? (50 words on back)

  1. To what emergency does Gulliver respond one night?
  2. How does he solve the emergency?
  3. What shocks him about the response of the Lilliputians?

THINK ON 13-15: What satiric point is Swift making by describing Gulliver’s“solution”? (50 words on back)

THINK ON 13-15: What satiric point is Swift making by describing the Queen’sresponse? (50 words on back)

Regarding Questions 9-12:

DELRAY BEACH, Fla.—When Mitt Romney meets President Barack Obama in Monday's third and final presidential debate, the GOP candidate will face a crucial dilemma: How aggressive can he be against his Democratic opponent without alienating swing voters?

In recent weeks, Romney has straddled the line between a more centrist message on the campaign trail on issues including immigration and abortion, and aggressively challenging Obama. The latter tone has fired up the Republican base voters Romney desperately needs to turn out on Election Day, but his advisers acknowledge it hasn't played well with the narrowing list of undecided voters likely to determine the outcome of the campaign.

A senior Romney aide, who declined to be named, tells Yahoo News that internal focus groups didn't like the aggressive exchanges between Romney and Obama during the last debate. The aide was careful to note that both candidates were viewed negatively during those moments—including one in which Romney and Obama seemed close to getting into each other's face. But their reaction was considered riskier for Romney, who has struggled to improve his likability numbers against Obama's after months of negative ads from Democrats.

Ahead of the first debate, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who has been acting as a stand-in for Obama during Romney's debate prep, was instructed to poke at Romney to teach the candidate to control his temper and avoid showing irritation with his opponent. In recent days, according to one Republican privy to Romney's debate prep, the candidate has been working on that style issue again.

Closing Freewrite:

  • How is this voyage a “cozy” catastrophe?

Turn In Today:

  • Opening Freewrite: Laughter
  • Reading Guide: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels: “A Voyage to Lilliput”
  • Closing Freewrite: Cozy Catastrophe

TONIGHT: Watch The Presidential Debate

  • 9 PM: all networks and news stations
  • Focus: Foreign/International Policy
  • Format: Both seated, face moderator (Bob Schefer, CBS), “Not obsessing time limits”
  • Situation: Election 2 wks, most polls tied
  • Look for: Swift’s “tightrope” idea; Libya, Syria, Foreign Trade (esp. China)