John Condon Murray Libros

Gulliver's Travels explores the human need to create order out of chaos through an internal system of knowledge that affirms the subjective self. In this study, I examine how Gulliver integrates elements of knowledge from the native and the host-societies into an operative system of self-knowledge. Gulliver's self-knowledge threatens the status quo within these societies by placing him at the solipsistic center of the narrative, orchestrating his observations to maintain the subjective self. If Gulliver was successfully indoctrinated in England, then why does he exhibit such an imperfect understanding of the complexities that define the principles which shaped Western society? Furthermore, if Gulliver is brainwashed by his hosts, then by what authority does he continually transgress the rules of law that govern their societies? Specifically, why does he knowingly commit acts of disobedience and heresy if he has been successfully indoctrinated into their social systems? My study concludes Gulliver's empirical search for an answer to the question "Who am I?" fails because he is unable to harmonize subjective truths within the objective world.

The essays in this volume examine the conflict of self' in society as a leitmotif in Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, Joyce's Ulysses, and Pinter's The Dwarfs, The Lover, The Caretaker, and The Homecoming.In his analyses, Murray discusses the ideas of behavioral and ideological conformity in Swift's work. He examines Poe's use of the grotesque to suggest correlations between the moral, physical, and spiritual degeneration of the characters, and the natural decay of their environment. Murray examines passages of dialogue from Pinter's dramas and discusses how the characters within the plays use language to create spatial boundaries to secure their identities by making themselves impervious to the language of their social others.' Murray's final essay concentrates on the use of role-playing and misidentification in Joyce's novel.