Gulliver's Travels And An Essay On Man Analysis

1548 Words4 Pages

The Enduring Wisdom in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man

If learned men of a past era came to this present age of technological advance, modern man might be surprised at the observations these humans of yesterday would make. Over three centuries ago, two such men -- Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope -- made observations concerning their own time which have interesting insights to today's world. One thing Jonathan Swift might choose to expound upon is the institution of political democracy. In Gulliver's Travels, he comments, "That all true believers shall break their eggs at the convenient end: and which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion, to be left to every man's conscience, …show more content…

He believes that "good" writing uses well-established rules; it follows the path of successful writers of the past. Pope heeds his own advice regarding rules in "The Rape of the Lock" as well as his other pieces: "The Rape of the Lock" is written in the epic style previously used by Homer, Virgil, Milton, and other various poets of ancient times; "An Essay on Criticism" is written in the form of the heroic couplet -- a fitting form for an essay on literary rules. The science-fiction genre does not fit very well with Pope's literary theory on established rules. Modern science-fiction writers and editors place the beginning of their genre with Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, who both wrote during the end of the nineteenth century: hardly long enough ago to be regarded as ancients, and although their books are "modern classics," they are not set forth as examples to new writers in the same way as the works of Shakespeare, Milton, or Homer. If science-fiction is thriving a few centuries from now, perhaps Pope would conclude that it is indeed a worthy genre, at least inasmuch as established rules are concerned. But, beyond the theory of rules, Pope also believes …show more content…

But when it comes to the question of whether science-fiction really addresses the issue of human nature and human needs, they might have difficulty rallying a defense. Science-fiction, when it is about anything other than mere technology, is usually about how humans adjust to technology. Isaac Asimov's 2001: A Space Odyssey has a character named Hal -- he is a computer that kills humans. In this age, humans are learning how to deal with technology. In the future, the human race might be so accustomed to constantly changing technological advances that it will be unnecessary for them to cope by reading science-fiction -- assuming that no unforeseen event puts a stop to all technological progress by humanity. Science-fiction deals with some aspects of human nature, but unfortunately, it deals with aspects particularly relevant to this era instead of dealing with the broader scope of elementary human nature. Pope would have to conclude that unless human nature is undergoing a major change, science-fiction is doomed to failure because of its known irrelevancy to the past, and its possible irrelevancy to the

Open Document