Friday, May 22, 2009

Gulliver's Kong


In Gulliver's Travels the author is given his freedom with a set of limits set upon him as the only condition to be free. Being given his freedom didn't necessarily mean that he was completely free. The only difference between being free and not being free before and after he was given this opportunity was that he wasn't tied up. Does it make any difference between being tied up and not being tied up if you are free in one case and not in the other? It obviously does. Sometimes, however, it's not enough to bring us happiness. He was given some benefits, as being able to walk around the metropolis and not being tied up, but still he could not leave the empire and he began to be considered a tool of war. The author felt he had gained some trust with the empire, including the king, but now you begin to see why it is that they offered their friendship: to get him to help them in a war. This case scenario is extremely similar to that of the movie King Kong, which is the reason why I decided to choose this caption from the movie: A giant in a city of small people. That was how King Kong felt in his arrival to the human city. Both the author and King Kong might have felt a kind of curiosity about what was happening with all these small scale things, and even more after being left free. Both of them are set free, but are they really free?
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Being awarded freedom in a place where there really is no freedom, isn't much of freedom, or is it? Apart from that, they both have given their trust to someone, as did the author in Gulliver's Travels to the king and King Kong to Dwan, the woman he becomes obsessed with. By giving their trust to them, they await something in exchange, but it is that trust which causes the author to have to accept taking part in the war and King Kong to accept travelling out of his home. Another important thing of the caption from the King Kong movie is the feeling it makes the audience have. When you see this caption you see King Kong with a lonesome, resigned look while holding the one he trusted in and at the same time you see him being located in the middle of a strange city to him. The feeling of loneliness in the picture expresses what it is like to feel alone in a big strange place. The author in Gulliver's Travel is trapped in a place that is unknown to him, a place too "big" and different from what he is accustomed to. Choices he makes are all affected at what he can and can’t do, and how his new environment takes part in it as well.

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