FINAL ESSAY

Just Visiting

 

It is hard for us to identify ourselves with an external problem. It’s hard to identify ourselves with anything external for that matter. When something is not our problem, as hard as we may try, it is difficult to care. This is a theme that comes up in both Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and the video game “Façade.” This game is similar to all the cities in Calvino’s novel in that the cities are external places to Kublai Khan.

 “Façade” is a video game in which you are the main character. You choose a name for yourself and you see everything as if you were actually playing. It’s like a game in first person. In “Façade,” you play Trip and Grace’s friend. You’re invited to their house. Everything seems to be going well, but suddenly, after all the small talk is over, your character begins to witness a continuing argument between Grace and Trip. They argue over everything. The wine. The decorations. After a while, you start to see that these two are not compatible with one another. You quickly learn that you were the one that introduced them, and you see that the only reason for your being there is their attempt at rejuvenating the spark that was there when they first met. The spark, unfortunately, is long gone. Their marriage is on the brink of ending because they cannot live together. It is too hard. It isn’t your problem though. As much as they’re fighting, you are just a visitor. You are simply observing a situation which you cannot help. Their problems are internal, and they come from the fact that they are not a suitable match. You cannot take this as a reality because it really doesn’t concern you.

Kublai Khan has the same problem the entire time Marco Polo is describing cities to him. He cannot really consider them as a reality because they are external to him. He has not seen them. Because they only exist in Marco Polo’s tales, Kublai spends his time wondering about other things. Also, the cities only exist in the mind. “Everything I see and do assumes meaning in a mental space…” (Calvino 103) Only existing in his head, Kublai is free to do what he wishes with the cities Marco Polo describes to him. At one point, he rearranges the elements of one city and asks Marco Polo if the city he has created exists. At another point, Kublai Khan asks Marco Polo to go out and search for a city that he has dreamed. In the end, Khan realizes how useless all these cities are: “It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us.” (Calvino 165)

I believe this is why Calvino’s novel is called Invisible Cities. They don’t really exist other than in the tales. Their importance is in the ideas they represent and not in their supposed existence. Khan wants to know what his subjects are thinking, what is happening in his empire, what people need. He doesn’t really care about staircases or columns. He could care less about rivers or mountains or churches or ale houses. 

Why Women Take So Long

Why Women Take So Long…

A little Nap.

7:30

7:45

8:15

8:35

8:37 8:45

8:55 9:05

9:10

Teach Us Then

When Gulliver finally returns from his travels, I am appalled at what he says when he sees his family again.

"I must freely confess the sight of them filled me only with hatred, disgust, and contempt; and the more, by reflecting on the near alliance I had to them. For although, since my unfortunate exile from the Houyhnhnm country, I had compelled myself to tolerate the sight of Yahoos, and to converse with Don Pedro de Mendez, yet my memory and imagination were perpetually filled with the virtues and ideas of those exalted Houyhnhnms. And when I began to consider that, by copulating with one of the Yahoo species I had become a parent of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion, and horror." I get that he grew to hate the Yahoos in his travels, but this is his family. His kids. I don't recall whether his marriage was for love or whether it was arranged, but either way, these are people whom he should love.

I am really pissed off by Gulliver's attitude after he leaves the land of the Houyhnhnms. They may be virtuous and all that good cuddly stuff but he can't hate humanity the way he does. It's ridiculous. If he's so much better than us, why doesn't he do something about it? Why doesn't he try and fix the vices and cruel nature of humans? He claims to, "write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind," but what he really is doing is hiding and running away from the problem.

Although the travel stories are cool, his attitude at the end really ruined the entire experience. It makes me think that Swift has this opinion of man and I don't like it.

What Is Wrong With Gulliver?

As I read chapters VII IX and X of Gulliver's Travlels, all I kept thinking was how dominated Gulliver was by his master. Gulliver should have been troubled by the state of his fellow humans in that remote island. Instead, he not only starts to think they are inferior to him, but he also begins to hate his own race. As benevolent as the Houyhnhnms might be, he shouldn't forsake his own people. He should have been a liberator, freeing the Yahoos from their cages.

Another thing which I find curious is the Houyhnhnms philosophy. "Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the Houyhnhnms; and these not confined to particular objects, but universal to the whole race." Although this is what they believe and although it is a big part of their daily conversation, this train of thought is very hypocritical. Not only do they have an entire race enslaved under horrible conditions, but they also hold the majority of their own species in servitude. That doesn't sound very friendly or benevolent to me. Benevolence certainly isn't holding conferences in which they talk about whether to exterminate the Yahoos.

To go back to my point about Gulliver being dominated by his master, I also want to talk about what this means. Swift shows a lot of resentment to humanity. We may be fowl creatures that deceive and do all types of horrible things, but we do not by any means, deserve what Gulliver feels and does.

Those Yahoos

Swift's description of what Gulliver's master has seen in the yahoos of his country calls to mind what humans would be like if we had stayed wild and without civilization and culture. Our nails would be longer. We'd be stronger, faster, and abler at climbing trees and other similar tasks. There's a tendency to fight and a lust for having a lot of things. These two factors are huge in the development of what we are now. All our modern weaponry and laws arose from quarrel settling. There's the violent way, and the peaceful way.

Gulliver's master also relates some strange behavior from the female yahoos: "At other times, if a female stranger came among them, three or four of her own sex would get about her, and stare, and chatter, and grin, and smell her all over; and then turn off with gestures, that seemed to express contempt and disdain." This observation is Swift's way of telling us he believes women have been the way they are since forever and that it is not because of culture that this phenomenon occurs. 

Don't Pay the Lawyers

If I had to describe how the world worked to someone who has no idea, it would certainly be a very hard task. First of all, everything you say would seem foolish because after all, a lot of the things we do are stupid as hell. Gulliver's master seems perplexed at the idea of war and how we manage to kill so many of our own kind. He is also confused by our trading and money systems. He cannot believe that a country has to go to other countries for goods. In his explanation of why we trade, Gulliver feels that in return, "we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity, that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, flattering, suborning, forswearing, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, free- 

thinking, and the like occupations." Although I agree that a lot of our vices come from interactions that have to do with getting something that you want, this long list mentions good things, not vices we acquire. Voting and free-thinking, for example, are vital to the advancement of culture. Without these two, our world would be something completely different.

Another thing that made me think in chapters V and VI of Gulliver's Travels is the way that Gulliver talks about lawyers and the law. "that in all points out of their own trade, they were 

usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse as in that of their own profession." This is harsh. People today still talk about lawyers in a way that makes them seem liars. This "corruption," however, doesn't come from the law or the profession itself, but for the money that comes with being a lawyer. The law is meant to protect and organize us, and lawyers are supposed to seek justice. When money is involved, though, things change. Lawyers no longer care about justice but rather turn their attention to money, and in this game, whoever pays the most wins. Justice is thrown out the window when money is involved. 

This makes me think about the article I read recently about Medicare in McAllen county. Here, doctors are over using medicine for profit. When it comes to the law and healing, money shouldn't be involved. If possible, doctors and lawyers shouldn't be paid.

True or False

Swift makes our customs and ways of life seem even stranger in the moments when Gulliver is explaining to his master his life story. His master cannot believe a lot of the things Gulliver mentions, among them lying. His argument is as follows: "that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now, if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated, because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving information, that he leaves me worse than in ignorance; for I am led to believe a thing black, when it is white, and short, when it is long." (Swift 187) This quote is very true. The point of language is communication, and lying takes away the point of communication. Then again, the point of lying is exactly that. These are two very weird concepts.

Horses Are People Too

In the first two chapters of part IV of Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver meets the Houyhnhnm and the Yahoo. In this island, the relationship between man and horse is reversed, and the Yahoo (who are human-like creatures) play the role of horses: "About noon, I saw coming towards the house a kind of vehicle drawn like a sledge by four Yahoos." (Swift 179) We can see clearly that the Yahoos are the horses in this world. They live in cages. They are uncivilized. They eat horrible food. The fact that the Houyhnhnm are the people who take care of them and that they have language and customs is Swift's way of pointing out the peculiarity of our own human-horse relationship.

It's weird that for hundreds of years we've completely dominated the horse. We ride them at will. They have been part of horrible battles and died. They have been our slaves. Another animal. The whole thing really is pretty weird. Who was the first to realize riding a horse would be faster? Who figured out how to ride it without getting seriously injured or killed?

This is just another example of Swift questioning our way of life. This time, instead of making us think about our religion, political struggles, and burial rituals, he is making us think of the cruelty we do to horses. What were to happen if roles were reversed? This is exactly what Gulliver encounters on the island.