The Thirty-Nine Steps and Gulliver’s Travels are both two amazing books, but which one is better? In my opinion, I prefer Gulliver’s Travels, because it has an interesting plot, and lots of strange and mysterious characters. The main character, Lemuel Gulliver, traverses the world in search of new intelligent races, and finds the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnnagians, the Laputians, and many more. He has different adventures with each of the races, and ultimately has many shocking experiences, such as talking to phantoms, and meeting talking horses who seem to be superior to humans, and even sighting Yahoos, a vaguely humanoid race that are savage and evil. He realizes that the human race is so entrenched in its faults, that it disgusts him to be near them, thinking of them as only Yahoos, and becomes a solitary recluse. But throughout the course of his adventure, he has seen many fantastical beings, and gotten the opportunity to eat tiny meat, talk to ghosts, and even talk to horses. I prefer Gulliver’s Travels over The Thirty-Nine Steps because it has a more interesting plot, more interesting characters, and includes many interesting tidbits that help make the story more convincing.
The plot of a story is one of the key points that renders a reader capable of determining whether a story is better than another. An interesting plot will have many plot twists that will really surprise a reader. It will also have lots of descriptive words that work together to make a story more vivid and believable. In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver is always on an adventure, but the adventures get more and more wild all the time. It’s impossible to predict what he’s going to do next, but in The Thirty-Nine Steps, most of the adventures are similar, in which Richard meets a person, and in some way or the other disguises himself using the garb of his acquaintance. Hannay then manages to escape his pursuers, and lives another day. Only one adventure deviates from this pattern, which is when he is captured by the Black Stone, but manages to talk his way into a jail cell instead of into heaven, and creates a bomb that he uses to escape. On the other hand, Gulliver is always on a different adventure, where he meets an astounding race, and always escapes imprisonment in a different way. Some adventures can become monotone, but others are always fresh with energy and shocks you, getting you more excited for the story. Plots are instrumental and essential in allowing a reader to sufficiently enjoy a book, as they are the centerstone of a story.
Major and minor characters alike both do much to influence the main character and affect the storyline immensely. The more diverse they are, the more ability we have to see themes and impactful messages. In Gulliver’s Travels, there are dozens of races and many interesting characters, such as the monarchs of Brobdingnag, the sorcerers of Glubbdubdrib, or even the philosophers of Laputa. They all have different looks, behaviors, and traditions. They interact with Lemuel in different ways, such as how the sorcerers welcome him and show him some of their magic, yet the talking horses eventually shun him. The common people of Brobdingnag put him in a box to show, but the king and queen welcomed him and treated him well. In The Thirty-Nine Steps, there are only really three types of characters. His pursuers, his friends, and government officials. They all act similar, and don’t particularly vary in looks. The only thing that varies is their job, such as innkeeper, milkman, freelance spy, and so on, but their occupations don’t really impact the story much, besides giving Hannah a cover. Characters in a story can change the book’s plot, and give readers another interesting characteristic that makes their story more riveting and captivating. All types of characters are interesting, and the more diverse they are simply make the story that much more enchanting and thrilling.
It’s not just the big parts of a story that makes it as thrilling as it is, it’s also the small bits of interesting information and descriptive words. A story has many layers, like a cake, and masterful words and thrilling trivia are the icing on top of the cake. In Gulliver’s Travels, Lemuel always describes everything he feels and sees, and talks a lot about ships and boats, making it feel like we, the reader, are actually there with Gulliver, experiencing exactly what he is talking about. We can almost see the vivid image of a Brobdingnagian, who’s appearance may look rough and coarse due to their large size, or imagine a Laputian, with their eyes looking in two different directions at once and their strange tilted heads. In The Thirty-Nine Steps, Hannay also describes his location and his thoughts, but not nearly as clearly as how Gulliver does it. The art of describing a specific location clearly is shown to be mastered by Jonathan Swift. Description is a key function in making a story easy to understand yet still giving a mysterious, deep vibe.
Gulliver’s Travels and The Thirty-Nine Steps are both two great books, but ultimately Gulliver’s Travels is better, due to its plot, characters, and description. The plot of a story is the main part, and Gulliver’s Travels has lots of different scenery and adventures, unlike The Thirty-Nine Steps monotone adventures, which are all similar. It also has very diverse characters, and many strange and cool races of species. The characters in The Thirty-Nine Steps are all quite similar, and do not significantly contribute to the story. They are also not as well described as in Gulliver’s Travels, where the narrator puts significant care into describing everything with painstaking detail. With these three reasons, we can clearly see how Gulliver’s Travels is better than The Thirty-Nine Steps. The plot, characters, and descriptive words all come together to make a satiric masterpiece of Jonathan Swift.
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