LEMUEL GULLIVER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21645, 4 May 1940, Page 5

LEMUEL GULLIVER

Lilliputian’s View Of Giant Given In Cartoon Film

During the last 200 years millions of people have read and chuckled over Jonathan Swift’s immortal history of the wanderings of Captain Lemuel Gulliver. Children have read it and loved it for the fantasy which made it a fairy tale. Adults have read it and loved it for its devastating satire on politics and politicians. Millions have read it in English, French, German, Swedish. Italian. Spanish, Portuguese and almost every other printable language. Language made no difference. The fantasy was there for the children and the satire was there

for the adults, because politicians are universal. However, Swift wrote the book from the viewpoint of Gulliver, but what was the viewpoint of the Lilliputians, for example? Swift told how Gulliver regarded the Lilliputians, but how did the Lilliputians regard Gulliver? What kind of a person was the king of Lilliput, the king of Blefuscu? Were there eccentric characters in Lilliput as there were in other races? What were their foibles? Gulliver’s feelings when he awakens on the beach and finds himself tied down by a race of tiny beings was outlined in the book, but what about the reactions of those tiny beings at seeing a terrifying monster in their midst? Swift arouses in his readers an intense curiosity about a people in the book, but gives only clues with which that curiosity can be satisfied. So when Max Fleischer decided to make the full-length animated cartoon in Technicolour, ‘‘Gulliver’s Travels,” he turned the story around. The satire and the fantasy are still there. There is no change in the story in any important detail, it is stated. The famous scenes of tying Gulliver down on the beach, of Gulliver pulling the enemy warships through the water are still in the picture. They have not been touched. But the story is done purely from the viewpoint of the Lilliputians. It’s Gulliver, the ordinary man, who js the giant and the audience will see him as though they, themselves, were Lilli VMans.