Perusing Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, I was thinking about the various ways in which he utilizes satire to discuss political flaws without being attacked. I genuinely laugh out loud thinking about the kind of content that Swift could have produced during this election cycle and over the past year especially. Swift's style is so unique because everything he produces is such a cosmic joke that you don't understand unless you first can understand that it's a joke. If you take him too seriously, everything makes sense in the way that fictional things make sense. But, if you know it's a joke, it makes sense on such an all-encompassing level. I would love it if he could somehow live again for just enough time to be caught up to speed on everything and write something roasting everything happening today. It would truly make 2020 more bearable.
Between Oroonoko and The Fair Jilt , I'm entirely puzzled by Aphra Behn as an author. In an entirely Swiftian manner, I simply cannot decipher if her writing is meant to be a commentary on unsatisfactory happenings or if she is actually racist and sexist. If you've read my previous blog on Behn, I further explained this situation in relation to The Fair Jilt and the different lenses it can be viewed through. Where Oroonoko is concerned, she could either be explaining the issue of the noble savage concept or genuinely have a type of savior complex by inserting herself into the narrative and humanizing a brutal story. I would be very interested to read different analyses of her works to see if there is an answer hiding in all of this.
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