Gullivers Travels and Basho: Contrasts - Essay Example

Gulliver’s Travels and Basho: Contrasts Introduction The travel narrative has been used since time immemorial to tell stories about medieval societies. Today, it is still very much in use. However, it does not seem to stand out as it did then. The main reason for this is the fact that the world has become one globalized village. People like much closer together and are interconnected by modern means of information, transport and technology. As a result, much of the world looks the same. For instance you will see cars everywhere, good roads, mobile telephones and even food and drink. This was certainly not the case when Basho and Gulliver were making their travels. Basho travelled in 17th century Japan while Gulliver is a fictionalized character who travelled in a similarly unsophisticated Europe but at a different time. So what made the nature of the travels of these two so different? This is the question this paper shall seek to answer. Discussion There have to be some basic differences we have to tackle however between these two from the outset so as to show how different these two were from the get go. On the one hand Basho was a Japanese poet. He is credited with bringing the ‘haiku’ model of poems to international prominence. He travelled far and wide in the course of his writings. On the other hand, Gulliver was a fictionalized character invented by the prominent writer Jonathan Swift in his popular volume, Gulliver’s Travels. In the course of events, Gulliver travels to different parts but Houyhnhnm Land shall be the one of concern for purposes of this paper. It is also worth noting that this land that Gulliver travels to is a fictional land. Jonathan Swift was known for his unique brand of satire that could best be portrayed by characters’ that in many ways were ‘out of this world’. The other point worth noting is that Houyhnhnm Land was occupied entirely by animals while the places that Basho visited were of course real; and even exist under the same names in present day Japan. This distinction is also important because as we shall come to see, the kind of differences that existed between these two places are too big to be ignored. They also hold the key to determining the different outcomes in the course of their travel (Reichhold 25). Having established those differences, the ground is now perfectly set to establish the difference of the two travels. The foremost reason to account for the differences between the travels between these two was consent in the first place. Gulliver did not travel out of his own consent. We realize that the decision was made for him by those he sailed with. As a captain of the ship, he decided to sail to the South Seas. As was common in those days, his men arranged a mutiny and then dumped him on this foreign land called Houyhnhnm Land. This is important because if he did his travels under coercion then most likely he was not going to enjoy the outcome. We have Basho on the other hand. He was born into the lowly classes. He was introduced to poetry at an early age. He understood the lives of the poets too. He made a personal decision to roam the countryside. He as a result found them more productive. He got to interact with other poets who even called themselves his ‘followers’, he saw new terrain that really inspired him, he witnessed the practice of other cultures which pleased him very much (Davis 35). Therefore, consent played a huge role in the differentiation between the travels of these two. Apart from consent there is the element of purpose. What was the purpose that motivated each of these travelers? The purpose is also important because as we shall come to see, the traveler without a purpose ended up not enjoying their travel. First, there is Gulliver who really admired the sort of pace that was beyond conquest. We can at this stage say that he was motivated by exploration as was common in those days (Basho 15). People could sail for days on end to find new territories to plunder of their wealth or even to see new sights. However, the sights that Gulliver met in this land were far from good and so contributed anticlimactically. Basho on the other hand had good and concrete reasons to travel. First of all, poets in those days travelled to other places to witness other cultures and in the process collate material for their works. This was the same case with Basho. He travelled westwards and Northwards in search of new material for his poems. He was so accurate in doing so that even today, people refer to some of his poems when citing historical or cultural events that took place at the time. Gulliver did indeed land on this island with talking horses. They were a surprisingly a well organized society. The most interesting thing about this land however was that there was a kind of permanent role reversal in place. The horses here were king. They were also surprisingly reasonable. They depended, one might say, excessively on reason. A good instance is when a member arrived late for an annual meeting. The member cited the cause of the delay as the death of their husband. There was no room for emotion however. She was still expected to arrive early for the meeting and the meeting continued thereafter since it seems in this society punctuality meant an awful lot. This is one of the things that made this society inhabitable for Gulliver (Swift 85). There was too much use of reason and little space for emotion. This was not certainly the case for Basho. Basho met perfect human beings, in other words people who were prone to all the weaknesses that are inherent in humans. These normal people were therefore easier to interact with compared to talking horses that viewed human beings as lowly. This race of horses even mistreated human beings just like human beings do horses or other animals in normal societies. A good reason might however be suggested here as to why Gulliver’s travel was different. The writer might have had the intention of showing the folly in animal abuse. Therefore, a human being had to be made to pass through the torture that animals endured (Sato 44). Human beings are also known for their irrationality. Animals had to be used in this case to do right where human beings seem to have failed. However, even the rationality of these animals was not attractive at all and it bordered on inhumanity. There however can be traced a common motive that informed these travels. On the one hand Basho was a very reclusive person and so travel was a way perhaps to get away from the people because he was getting ever more attention with the success of his poems. He cited this reason in a letter to a friend. Gulliver on the other hand is an avid explorer who liked to know about new places. The author’s style also cannot be ignored. We all are aware that Swifts was very good at portraying Irony and satire and so reversing the roles between human beings and animals must have been a very seductive idea to him. Basho on the other hand was somehow doomed to wander the whole of the countryside in search of inspiration to write his poems. These travels also connected him to the environment and brought him peace. Conclusion On the whole therefore, there were different reasons as to why the two journeys turned out so differently. On the outset the main reason has to do with the nature of the characters that the authors chose to employ. However, with time we also realize there is even much more to do with how these characters interacted with other people in the course of their travels and even more importantly what their motives were from the start. Works Cited Swift Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. Print. Basho Matsuo ‘A Cold Rain Starting.’ Print. Reichhold, Jane.”Basho; The Complete haiku.”Kodnasha, 2008. Print. Sato, Hiroaki.”One Hundred Frogs.”Weathermill, 1995. Print. Davis, Paul. Harrison, Gary. Johnson, David and Crawford, John.”The Bedford anthology of World Literature: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. Print. Read More