Number Two: Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift was certainly an interesting read.  When I read this book around six years ago, I was too young to understand much of the symbolism of the first three quarters of the book, and I certainly didn't fully understand it.  Luckily, I have been blessed with a relatively good memory, and after a brief review of the facts, much of the book returned to me.  Even when I read it the first time, I knew that it was absolutely full of the authors opinions about human kind.  Sadly, I disagree with most of the author's conclusions, and I find the book to be a relatively unimpressive read.
The idea which struck me when I read this book, and has remained with me ever since, is the idea of humans being no better than animals at heart.  At the fourth island that Gulliver visits, he finds animals called Yahoos which are exactly like humans in every way other than their minds which are the minds of brutish animals.  Living near these animals, he finds horses which speak with the tongues of men and have far more intelligence than any men described in the story.  Gulliver begins living amongst these horses and eventually decides that humans really aren't very different from the Yahoos.  Eventually, Gulliver was cast off of the island because the horses decided that he really was an animal himself and they couldn't allow him to live amongst them.  At the end of the story, Gulliver returned home but found that he couldn't be part of human society any longer because humans really were nothing more than disgusting animals.
Personally, I find this theme to be extremely far from the truth.  Human's are not animals, but rather beings created in God's own image.  They are damaged by their sin natures, and many do live their lives in sin, but they still aren't animals.  This book truly praises nothing.  It contains no bravery, it makes a mockery of religion, of law, and of humans in general.  There really are very few redeeming qualities in this book.

Hoping that someone enjoyed it more than I did,
Jodath