In the fourth book of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift uses satire to draw reader’s attention towards his concerns about humanity and uses irony to reveal his cynical views towards human kind. According to the Great Chain of Being, a term developed by the Renaissance that describes a divinely hierarchical order in every existing thing in the universe, human beings are placed a tier higher than animals (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english /melani/cs6/ren.html). However, by comparing human traits with unpleasant qualities of animals, Swift blurs the definition of human being and questions the hierarchical place of human. In the fourth book of Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver starts his journey as a well-educated European person who is considered to be a decent example of humanity. The first group of inhabitants Gulliver finds on the island where he is dropped off on are the Yahoos. Gulliver is disgusted by the behaviours of these wild creatures at first and he considers them to be animals that are owned by the dominate beings on this island. Gulliver then discovers the Houyhnhnms whom he perceives as brute beasts (Swift 2420) and animals (ibid.) because they share similar physical qualities compare to the horses in England. After a brief interaction with the two Houyhnhnms, Gulliver is taken to the house of a Houyhnhnm whom he will later refer to as his master. Through the interactions with the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver is able to show the ability to reason even though he shares some physical similarities with the Yahoos. Due to this quality and the fact that the Houyhnhnms cannot see his bare skin under his clothes, he is able to live with the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver starts to relate himself more to the Houyhnhnms than the Yahoos becau...
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...Chain of Being. Although human are reasonable beings, Swift argues that the amount of reason is not enough to overcome the desire for power. Thus, instead of using reason to create peace and harmony in the world, powerful countries allow desire to overtake their conscious and produce chaos under the name of “Divine Right”. As Gulliver tries to relate his society to the Houyhnhnms’; he comes to accept that reason in human does not help to improve humanity but only to breed barbarity because they use reason to justify their heinous actions.
Works Cited
Melani, Lilia. "Introduction to the Renaissance." Introduction to the Renaissance. English
Department, Brooklyn College, 30 Mar. 2009. Web. 08 Feb. 2014.
Swift, Jonathan. "Gulliver's Travels, Part 4." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Eighth
Ed. Vol. C. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2006. 2418-462. Print.
A major theme that is seen during the Gulliver’s final adventure is the reversal of roles. For the first time in the novel, Gulliver’s crew forms a mutiny and throws him overboard. On this island, we are introduced to Houyhnhnms and Yahoos. Gulliver first meets the Yahoos; a group of humans that act like farm animals and have the brain equivalent of a horse. Meanwhile, the Houyhnhnms are an intelligent race of horses that have their own language and use the Yahoos as cattle. When reality is presented with a different face it allows the reader to make less biased opinions based on previous beliefs. Most people are completely fine with how people treat cattle as a source of food, but when we see the
Irishmen, educated, father and husband. All these titles make Jonathan Swift more than qualified to be the author of “A Modest Proposal,” published in the 1729. It discussed the astonishing poverty that was sweeping the Irish nation, his home country, during the early 18th century, which in his opinion was not the nations own doing. He adopts a sarcastic tone in order to display to the Irish people the injustices cast upon them, and to inspire his countrymen to rise up from poverty and stand up to those who held them down.
Political issues or matters concerning the well-being of mankind is not something new to us. Social and political hierarchies have existed for millennia, yet the ways in which people have voiced their concerns or opinions on sensitive topics related to these hierarchies have evolved over time. One way in which people have addressed important society matters has been through satire. Typically satirical writings are fueled by anger brought about by a political event or societal issue. Instead of voicing their anger directly to the people, Jonathan Swift and other satirical authors, have used satire as “the engine of anger, rather than the direct expression of anger” (Egendorf 40). In doing so,
Any change to spare? To roam the streets of Ireland is to walk through a country full of depression, as this is one of the commonly asked questions by the many beggars on its streets. It is the combination of the English, the overpopulation and the prosperous landowners of Ireland that are the cause of the poverty and melancholy of the population. The appalling economic and social conditions that deprive the Irish prevent them from providing sufficient care for both themselves and their children. Many parents, unable to work for their honest sources of revenue, are forced to employ all of their time panhandling for alms. Meanwhile, their children grow up to become thieves or emigrants. Author Jonathon Swift, has proposed a “modest” solution to this on-going problem. In his satirical essay “A Modest Proposal,” Swift effectively argues that the Irish deserve better treatment from the English while suggesting to his readers, in a humorous manner, that the impoverished country should alleviate their monetary and societal issues by selling their children as food and clothing to the wealthy. Swift does this by utilizing a satirical tone while also using verbal irony and pathos to make his point.
By having the Houyhnhnms speak and talk, its shows Gulliver the truth in the world and how he lives among a savage race, mankind. Boris Ford comments on Swift in his article “The Limitations of the Houyhnhms”: ‘In the real world the gift of reason is bestowed upon human beings and withheld from animals. In the land of the Houyhnhnms reason has been given to horses and withheld from--.’ Ford fills in the blank with “…withheld from human beings”, which Swift does to make the reader question what makes people ‘human’ and if they compare to that of a savage (Ford 148). Swift does this by bringing down the status of humans by comparing them to that of a Yahoo, a being less intellectual than that of a Houyhnhms. Even if Houyhnhms know that they outsmart...
The comparison of Yahoos to humans in Book Four of Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels is entirely inappropriate. The Yahoos are shown as base creatures of barbaric nature and with little or no aptitude for learning. Swift's use of these lowly creatures to symbolize man is harsh, however, it does serve to enhance his satire to a certain degree. Nonetheless, his comparison is inaccurate and degrading to Mankind.
In Book IV, Lemuel Gulliver’s fourth and final journey places him in the land of the Houyhnhnm, a civilization of intellectual, sensible horses, and senseless, inferior, and indecent humans. As Swift does throughout the novel, he ties his satire closely with Gulliver’s perceptions of the different world around him in his last adventure; these chapters do not change the method of Swift’s satire.
After a series of different looks at society through the first three voyages, Gulliver travels to Houyhnhnmland where the nature of people themselves are given the strongest censure, by being directly paralleled with the loathsome Yahoos. Here Swift bluntly attacks almost every aspect of society, which is then compared to the Yahoos point by point by the Grey Mare. Gulliver and the reader finally identify themselves completely with the Yahoos (see close commentary), and Gulliver decides to abandon Yahooism forever. But, he is then immediately banished from the island by the Houyhnhnm assembly.
In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver learns that experiencing different lifestyles he thought were better than his own actually makes him appreciate his own life with a more meaningful disposition through his journeys to Lilliput, Brobdingnag, and the Country of the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver’s journey to Lilliput effectuated forlorn feelings of his home. Likewise, Gulliver’s trek to Brobdingnag assists in his realization that changing perspectives also alter his attitude towards his homeland. Finally, Gulliver’s expedition to the Country of Houyhnhnms, where horses act civilized on and people act like wild animals. Gulliver soon learns that through his mystical journeys that changing the perspective in which he views the world reverses feelings of gratefulness towards his home. Gulliver’s first journey set sail to the Lilliputians on May 4th, 1699.
In the last part of the novel Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift, a dichotomy is established which crtiticizes two extreme ideas of man. The Houynhnms, a race of horses, are meant to symbolize man as a supremely rational being and the Yahoos, a primitive, vulgar version of humans, are made to symbolize man as an animal. The narrator Gulliver is a sort of reference point between the two, since in physical appearance he seems to be a Yahoo, but his ability to reason enables him to relate well to the Houynhnms. Readers have interrpreted the rational horses in a number of different ways. Some feel that the Houynhnms are the ideal to which humans should strive to attain. Others feel that the Houynhnms are as evil as the Yahoos. It is my opinion that Swift uses the Houynhnms and the Yahoos to illustrate both ends of the unattainable spectrum of reason, and why both are completely undesireable ways of life.
In the fourth voyage, Swift presents a case study for opposing states of nature, with the Yahoos representing the argument that man is governed by his passions, seeking his own advantage, pursuing pleasures and avoiding pain, and the Houyhnhnms representing the argument that man is governed by reason. If this is the case, then Swift’s misanthropy was such that he saw men as the foul and disgusting Yahoos, and made it plain that reform of the species was out of the question. A major fault with this theory is that it leaves no place for Gulliver. When attention is drawn to the figure of Gulliver himself, as distinct from his creator, Swift, he is taken to be the moral of the story. If you can't be a Houyhnhnm you don't need to be a Yahoo; just try to be like Gulliver. The trouble with this idea is that when taking a closer look at Gulliver, he isn't worth emulating. The final picture of him talking with the horses in the stable for four hours a day, unable to stand the company of his own family, makes him look foolish. Another theory is that Gulliver made a mistake in regarding the Houyhnhnms as models to be emulated: so far from being admirable creatures they are as repulsive as the Yahoos. The Yahoos might be ruled by their passions, but these have no human passions at all. On this view, Swift was not advocating, but attacking reason.
In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver Travels, satire is ever-present: in plot, character and setting. Dystopia and utopia set the story, with grotesque added to sharpen character facets. The title character narrates the novel, and all actions are told through his point of view. His voyages expose him to extraordinary and absurd circumstances, used as fodder for mockery, and all throughout Gulliver’s travails society is ridiculed, and a bitter light is cast on humanity. Character growth is not spared: in the beginning Gulliver is much one-dimensional, and as he changes, Swift uses his growth as another ancillary conduit to let loose more satirical prowess.
He puts the main character, Lemuel Gulliver, through four distinct journeys, which all inadvertently reveal vices in human society. In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the theme of corruption is portrayed through the evils of politics, the deceitful nature of humanity, and the characters’ exploitation of pride. Throughout the novel, seizes and retentions of power are always accompanied by corrupt means. “He had heard, indeed, some curious Houyhnhnms observe, that in most herds there was a sort of ruling Yahoo (as among us there is generally some leading or principal stag in a park), who was always more deformed in body, and mischievous in disposition, than any of the rest; that this leader had usually a favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment was to lick his master's feet and posteriors, and drive the female Yahoos to his kennel; for which he was This favourite is hated by the whole herd, and therefore, to protect himself, always keeps near the person of his leader,” (Swift 241). Some Yahoos observe that the Yahoos often pick terrible leaders who surround themselves with even worse subordinates to make them appear less abysmal.
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels presents a narrator, Lemuel Gulliver, who recounts his various sea voyages to fantastical lands. During each voyage, Gulliver encounters different societies and customs to which Gulliver must adjust to. in order to be accepted into their society The entire novel serves as a commentary on how people everywhere have a tendency to abuse the power given to them.
Lemuel Gulliver recounts his findings over four of his most impactful voyages in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver gives his own candid account of all significant characters encountered and manages to fall into almost every influential person’s favor. Swift tactically shapes Gulliver’s encounters with characters from varying backgrounds to compare the behavior of the esteemed nobility with the behavior of commoners. Swift has Gulliver alter his demeanor based on his present surroundings to appeal to those around him and maintain his pride. By doing so, Swift intended to didactically explain his contempt for nobility, his misanthropy, and the dangers of pride.