The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan and Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift are two adventure novels that are enjoyable to almost all readers. The first follows a man named Richard Hannay who just returned from South Africa and made a fortune in the mining business. He accidentally gets involved with an organization called the Black Stone that tries to hunt him down. The Black Stone’s German spies are out to collect information on British air defenses. They chase after Hannay, believing that he knows their plans. Eventually, the tables turn and the government captures the spies. In Gulliver’s Travels, the protagonist and narrator, Lemmuel Gulliver travels to several remote islands that are home to several civilizations that embody the dark side of human nature. The Lilliputians valued him only for his size and power. The giants weren’t much better as the farmer who took him in sold him to the emperor. The Laputans overcommitted to their scientific efforts and worn out their whole country. The Houyhnhnms considered themselves to be the only civilized society in the world and believed everybody else to be uncivilized. I believe that Gulliver’s Travels is more interesting to read than the Thirty Nine Steps.
Hannay and Gulliver had many differences as characters with each having different traits that affected them in their respective novels. Hannay was persistent and never gave up no matter what hardships he suffered. He also was able to find a way out of practically any sticky situation, shown when he escaped the room that he was locked in. Hannay was described as “not braver than anybody else”, but his courage when allowing Scudder to hide in his flat despite the potential ramifications proved otherwise. Meanwhile, Gulliver was honest and, as his name may suggest, gullible. Unfortunately not everybody he met lived up to his moral standards of being honest, kind, and reasoning. While he was in Lilliput, the people essentially made him their servant without his knowledge. In several other encounters, the civilizations he met were either corrupt, greedy, or didn’t care about their common citizens. The Houyhnhnms were not much better than the other three and felt a certain level of pride, judging everybody else to be uncivilized. Hannay’s character traits helped him while Gulliver’s sabotaged him.
In their own novels Hannay and Gulliver were aided and hindered by the people they met. In The Thirty Nine Steps, Hannay met many people who were mostly on his side. The only exception was the old man who was secretly Scudder’s enemy. Everybody else that was not the German spies helped him. A roadmender named Mr. Turnbull helped divert attention away from Hannay while he ran away. A bar owner allowed Hannay to stay with him and took good care of him. The government officials were convinced that Hannay was not responsible for Scudder’s death and helped him capture the German spies that were after him. Meanwhile, most of the people Gulliver met just tried to use him for their own benefit or were neutral. The Lilliputians used him to conquer the Blefuscudians but after their victory, they showed their true colors and turned on their former benefactor. That was just one example, but Gulliver was not treated nicely by most people on his adventures. Whilst Hannay had plenty of help, especially later in the story, Gulliver faced countless difficulties from minor characters.
Hannay and Gulliver had very different purposes in going on their adventures, with both people ending up in dangerous situations. Hannay had the task of protecting British air defense secrets from German spies. Once he allowed Scudder to hide in his flat, there was no turning around. Not only did he have to run from both the police and the spies, he also got locked in a room once and was also forced to drive a car into a river while jumping out of the vehicle. To make things worse he often had to make his escapes on foot and faced starvation constantly. Gulliver didn’t have it much easier. As a ship’s former surgeon and captain in the 18th century, one could expect to be either shipwrecked or marooned at least once in their career. In his first ordeal, Gulliver’s ship crashed and he was the only survivor mentioned. Afterwards, he was abandoned by his crew while the ship was stocking up on fresh water. His next two adventures involved violence, with the third seeing him attacked by pirates and the fourth having his crew mutiny against him(he was the captain). Both of the protagonists had goals that differed from each other greatly but were equally risky.
The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan and Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift are two adventure novels that are must-reads. The first follows a former miner named Richard Hannay who just returned from South Africa who gets involved with an organization named the Black Stone that hunts him down because he knows about their plans to spy on the British military. The second is narrated by a man named Lemmeul Gulliver who started as a ship’s surgeon and got stranded four times in a row and meets several civilizations that represent the dark sides of human nature, like pride, greed, pettiness, and etc. These two novels share multiple differences. First, Gulliver had a much harder time than Hannay navigating the seas as he was gullible and believed that everybody was as honest as himself. Second, in The Thirty Nine Steps, most of the main characters were on Hannay’s side, while Gulliver barely received help from anybody, as even his own crew abandoned him on his penultimate adventure. Third and finally, they had set out on different goals, with Hannay aiming to capture the German spies and Gulliver wanting to explore new islands. The only similarities were that both novels had the protagonist go through dangerous situations. However, it's much easier to find Gulliver’s Travels to be the more enjoyable of the two.
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