Soupçon, III. viii

                              Soupçon III                                                        In Memoriam Series.                                                      III.viii

The narrative voice in "Gulliver's travels" is indeed interesting. It is a first person narrative. Gulliver speaks of his adventures as an "I" informing the reader about all that happened to him. In other words, while he witnesses worlds beyond imagination, and audits the goings-on therein, he is very much a participant, nay, a central character, in the stories he is telling. Such a narration adds both an intimacy and hence a trenchant quality to his critique. 

In a way, he is a "fallible or unreliable" narrator because the events witnessed in the novel are only uni-focussed, have only his perspective. At times, despite his critical stance, he sounds partly naive n credulous, partly pompous. Surely, for Jonathan Swift, such a speaker makes his authorial attack on the shallowness of "l'affaire humaine'' that much more blistering and focussed.

Pratima Agnihotri