Fear of Death in Gulliver’s Travels
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18533/journal.v4i8.773Keywords:
Fear of death, fear of loss, Struldbruggs, Houyhnhnms.Abstract
Critics pay little attention to fear of death in Gulliver’s Travels. This paper aims to deal with the issue with Freud’s theory. According to Freud, fear of death results in death drive. In Gulliver’s Travels, the episodes of the Struldbruggs and the Houyhnhnms reveal fear of death. In the episode of Struldbruggs, fear of death is illustrated through fear of abandonment and fear of loss. Fear of abandonment and fear of loss cause the Struldbruggs to long for physical death to end emotional death. In the episode of Houyhnhnms, fear of death is represented by fear of intimacy. Fear of intimacy is expressed in Houyhnhnms’ cold attitudes to their friends and their family members.
References
Barroll, J. Leeds. (1958). “Gulliver and the Struldbruggs”, PMLA 73, 1: 43-50. Modern Language Association.
Bloom, Allan. (1973). “An Outline of Gulliver’s Travels” in The Writings of Jonathan Swift. Ed. Robert A. Greenberg and William B. Piper. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. pp. 648-661.
Ewald, William Bragg. (1954). The Masks of Jonathan Swift. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP.
Hinnant, Charles. (1987). Purity and Defilement in Gulliver’s Travels. New York: St. Martin’s.
Rembert, James. (1988). Swift and the Dialectical Tradition. London: Macmillan.
Suits, Conrad. (1986). “The Role of the Horses in ‘A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms’”. In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels: Modern Critical Interpretations. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea. pp. 115-128.
Swift, Jonathan. (1991). Gulliver’s Travels. Beijing: Foreign Language and Teaching and Research P.
Tyson, Lois. (1999). Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. NewYork and London: Garland Publishing, Inc. pp.13-32.
Williams, Kathleen. (1986). “Animal Rationis Capax” in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels: Modern Critical Interpretations. pp.48-82.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
