Gulliver's Travels Summary and Analysis of Part IV, "A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms,"

Chapter I

"The Author sets out as Captain of a Ship. His Men conspire against him, confine him a

long Time to his Cabin, and set him on Shoar in an unknown Land. He travels up into the

Country. The Yahoos, a strange Sort of Animal, described. The Author meets

two Houyhnhnms."

After five months at home, Gulliver leaves his children and pregnant wife yet again to go

on his fourth voyage, this time as captain. Not long into the trip, his crew mutinies,

locking him into his cabin for a great deal of time and threatening to murder him.

Eventually the crew, who plan to become pirates, drop Gulliver off on an unknown

island.

Gulliver walks inland until he comes across a field of strange creatures. After observing

them for some time he comments, "Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my Travels so

disagreeable an Animal, nor one against which I naturally conceived so strong an

Antipathy." Soon Gulliver comes to realize that these are actually naked human beings

behaving like cattle. Gulliver comes face to face with one of them. He hits it with the side

of his blade when it comes at him violently. The animal-like human (which Gulliver later

learns is called a Yahoo) cries out, causing the rest of the forty Yahoos to surround

Gulliver.

Gulliver fears the worst until the Yahoos suddenly flee because of a grey horse coming

toward them. The horse takes an interest in Gulliver and circles him until another horse

comes along. Gulliver observes that their whinnies to each other sound almost like a

language. Gulliver hears the word Yahoo several times and repeats it to the great surprise

of both horses. The horses then teach Gulliver the word Houyhnhnm, which Gulliver

later learns is their word for themselves-for horse. Afterward, the grey horse signals to

Gulliver that he should walk in front of him, which he does.

Chapter II

"The Author conducted by a Houyhnhnm to his House. The House described. The

Author's reception. The Food of the Houyhnhnms. The Author in Distress for want of

Meat. Is at last relieved. His Manner of feeding in this Country."

Gulliver and the grey horse arrive at a home where Gulliver expects to meet the horse's

human masters. The two move through every room of the house and meet several other

horses before Gulliver realizes that the grey horse is the master of the house.

After some discussion between the horse and his wife about whether or not Gulliver is in

fact a Yahoo, he is brought out to the stable where the Yahoos are kept and is made to

stand next to one of them. Aside from the extra hair, longer nails, and nakedness of the

Yahoo, they are the same.

Gulliver makes a kind of bread out of the horses' oats for his dinner and is given a small

room near the house with some hay to sleep in.

Chapter III

"The Author studies to learn the Language. The Houyhnhnm his master assists in

teaching him. The Language described. Several Houyhnhnms of Quality come out of

Curiosity to see the Author. He gives his Master a short Account of his Voyage."

After about three months of living among the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver has learned their

language quite well and can answer most of their questions. He tells them about the

mutiny that landed him on their shores, but they have a very difficult time understanding,

because they have no concept of what a lie is. They tell Gulliver that "The Word

Houyhnhnm, in their Tongue, signifies a Horse, and its Etymology, the Perfection of

Nature."

The horses believe that Gulliver is a Yahoo-but a more rational and civilized Yahoo.

Gulliver, wanting to separate himself from the Yahoos as much as possible, asks not to be

called a Yahoo anymore.

Chapter IV

"The Houyhnhnms' Notion of Truth and Falsehood. The Author's Discourse disapproved

by his Master. The Author gives a more particular Account of himself, and the Accidents

of his Voyage."

Gulliver continues explaining the concept of lying to his master. He also explains the

relationship of horses and humans back in England. The horses cannot believe that

humans would be able to control creatures that are so much stronger than they are, but

Gulliver explains that horses are tamed beginning at a very young age.

Chapter V

"The Author at his Master's Commands informs him of the State of England. The Causes

of War among the Princes of Europe. The Author begins to explain the English

Constitution."

Over the next two years, Gulliver explains much about the English government and

political systems. Gulliver tries to explain war and the reasons why humans kill each

other. His master says that Yahoos in England are worse than Yahoos because they use

their reason to gain power but use it badly.

Chapter VI

"A Continuation of the State of England. The Character of a first Minister."

Gulliver continues telling his master about the vices of the English people. He paints a

particularly disturbing picture of lawyers and doctors, saying that lawyers are the

stupidest among the Yahoos and doctors are corrupt and seldom cure their patients.

Chapter VII

"The Author's great Love of his Native Country. His Master's Observations upon the

Constitution and Administration of England, as described by the Author, with parallel

Cases and Comparisons. His Master's Observations upon Human Nature."

Gulliver has come to love the Houyhnhnms, their society, and their way of living. He

writes, "I had not been a Year in this Country, before I contracted such a Love and

Veneration for the Inhabitants, that I entered on a firm resolution never to return to

human Kind, but to pass the rest of my Life among these admirable Houyhnhnms in the

Contemplation and practice of every Virtue."

Gulliver then describes a conversation with his Master in which he is honored by being

asked to sit farther away. His Master tells Gulliver that his conclusion, after learning all

about Gulliver's fellow human beings, is that they are not as different fromYahoos, "their

Brethren," as originally thought.

Chapter VIII

"The Author relates several Particulars of the Yahoos. The great Virtues of the

Houyhnhnms. The Education and Exercise of their Youth. Their general Assembly."

In order to study the Yahoos more closely, Gulliver asks to spend some time among

them, which is granted. Gulliver is completely disgusted by the Yahoos. They smell

terrible, are completely unkempt, and act ridiculously, even throwing their excrement at

one another. When Gulliver sneaks away to a pond for a bath, he is nearly assaulted by

one of the female Yahoos but is saved by a Houyhnhnm.

Chapter IX

"A grand Debate at the General Assembly of the Houyhnhnms, and how it was

determined. The Learning of the Houyhnhnms. Their Buildings. Their manner of Burials.

The Defectiveness of their Language."

Gulliver's master attends a great assembly as the representative of his district. When he

returns he tells Gulliver that they were discussing whether or not to exterminate the

Yahoos-and that he suggested they be castrated when young, just as Gulliver told him

horses in England often are. That way they will be easier to tame, and they will

eventually die off. In the meantime, the Houyhnhnms can breed asses, which are much

stronger and more manageable than Yahoos.

Gulliver tells the reader that the horses have no system of letters and do not read or write,

but that they maintain their knowledge through oral tradition. They also have very few

diseases and can calculate the year by the revolutions of the sun. Houyhnhnms live to

about seventy or seventy-five years old, and when they die no one makes a big fuss.

Chapter X

"The Author's Oeconomy and happy Life among the Houyhnhnms. His great

improvement in Virtue, by conversing with them. Their Conversations. The Author has

notice given him by his Master that he must depart from the Country. He falls into a

Swoon for Grief, but submits. He contrives and finishes a Canoo, by the help of a Fellow-

Servant, and puts to Sea at a venture."

Gulliver is given a nice room in the Houyhnhnms' home, where he settles in very

comfortably. He makes new clothes and enjoys his life very much. The other

Houyhnhnms, however, begin to worry about a Yahoo living among Houyhnhnms. They

fear that Gulliver may lead a revolt among the other Yahoos. They tell Gulliver's master

that it is time for him to leave the island. When Gulliver hears this news, he faints from

grief. Having no other choice, Gulliver builds a canoe over the next two months.

Heartbroken, he sets sail, but not before kissing his master's hoof.

Chapter XI

The Author's dangerous Voyage. He arrives at New-Holland, hoping to settle there. Is

wounded with an Arrow by one of the Natives. Is seized and carried by Force into a

Portugueze Ship. The great Civilities of the Captain. The Author arrives at England."

Gulliver paddles away from the shore, determined not to go too far from the

Houyhnhnms. He writes, "My Design was, if possible, to discover some small island

uninhabited, yet sufficient by my Labour to furnish me with the Necessaries of Life,

which I would have thought a greater Happiness than to be first Minister in the Politest

Court of Europe." He finds a small island, where he lives for four days on raw oysters

and other shellfish until he is discovered by the natives. He runs to his canoe and rows

away, but not before being shot in his left knee.

Gulliver sees a Portuguese ship, but he feels disgusted by the thought of sharing a ship

with Yahoos, so he chooses to return to another side of the same island. The Portuguese

land and find Gulliver. He refuses to leave, but the crewmates decide not to leave him by

himself on the island. The captain, Don Pedro, is very kind to Gulliver, but Gulliver

cannot stand to be near Yahoos, so he spends most of the voyage in his cabin alone.

Finally back in England, Gulliver's family is thrilled to see him alive, but Gulliver thinks

of them only as Yahoos and cannot stand to be near them. He buys two horses and spends

at least four hours a day in the stables conversing with them.

Chapter XII

"The Author's Veracity. His Design in publishing this Work. His Censure of those

Travellers who swerve from the Truth. The Author clears himself from any sinister Ends

in writing. An Objection answered. The Method of planting Colonies. His Native

Country commended. The Right of the Crown to those Countries described by the Author

is justified. The Difficulty of conquering them. The Author takes his last leave of the

Reader; proposes his Manner of Living for the future; gives good Advice, and

concludes."

Gulliver concludes the tale of his travels, saying that everything he has written is true. He

also tells the reader that he is now able to eat at the same table with his family although

he is still working to teach them to overcome their vices. He only wants to help the world

he lives in to become more like the world of the Houyhnhnms.

Analysis

In the country of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver meets the species that is the most skeptical

of him-and for good reason. Gulliver must do everything he can to separate himself from

the Yahoos, a very different situation from his distinct positions in Lilliput and

Brobdingnag. In order to accomplish this, Gulliver does small things daily like using his

best manners, eating with a knife and fork, keeping his clothes on, and being as clean as

possible. He shows that he can use language, can reason well, and can be prudent and

mannerly.

It is interesting to note that from the very beginning of his time in the country of the

Houyhnhnms, Gulliver strives to separate himself from his own species. Is this what

Swift has been trying to do his entire life? It often is difficult to strive for individual

human greatness among a mass of people who hardly try and have hardly any notion of

what greatness would be. In Brobdingnag, when Gulliver explained the English people

and their way of life to the king, the king decided they were lowly creatures and Gulliver

became offended, trying to defend his people. Something is different now in the country

of the Houyhnhnms. When the grey mare tells Gulliver that he thinks his people are

worse than the Yahoos, Gulliver is quick to agree.

What is different here? Only Gulliver's experiences since Brobdingnag and his contact

with the Yahoos. Through the Yahoos, Gulliver has come to see some awful aspects of

human nature, and Swift has shown his readers what they would be (and often are)

without the intelligence and graces of which they are capable. Gulliver seems willing to

turn his back on the English people in favor of those he deems better than the English.

Now that he has been exposed to many alternatives, he can think carefully about who to

admire and what political systems to favor, and the English certainly come up short in

relation to the Houyhnhnms.

Also interesting in these chapters is Gulliver's plain admonishment of lawyers and

doctors. Gulliver's negative commentary about lawyers is in many ways not surprising

except for its level of ferocity. Lawyers seem no better than politicians, going to court

over the petty human squabbles that Gulliver satirized as early as Part I. Gulliver's

description of doctors as shallow and greedy people who would kill a patient as soon as

cure him is surprising to contemporary readers, especially because Gulliver has spent so

many years working as a surgeon. One should remember that eighteenth-century

medicine was still rather poor.

Gulliver tells his master about the way horses are treated in England, and the master

cannot believe it, just as the English would never believe that there was a place where

humans are ruled by horses. Yet, in the country of the Houyhnhnms, this relationship

makes perfect sense. (Compare Planet of the Apes.) Again perspective plays an important

role in Gulliver's journeys. There has been a major change between the two places. Here

the horses have intelligence and virtue while humans, according to the grey mare, are

different from Yahoos only in appearance-their morality is the same. Gulliver does not

disagree. Swift encourages us to consider what really does distinguish better and worse

examples of humanity.

Swift creates an interesting parallel between the governments of the Houyhnhnms and of

the English when the grey horse attends the great assembly-both exhibit similar senses of

entitlement to rule on the basis of merit. The Houyhnhnms are discussing whether or not

to exterminate the Yahoos, never pausing to discuss whether or not they have the right to

subjugate and kill the morally weaker species. Similarly, the English colonists of Swift's

time often felt moral superiority to the native peoples-but if they really were like Yahoos,

they had little right to think so. And even if they were superior in various ways, the

English needed to think carefully about the alternative ways of ordering life and society

before deciding what to do about it-as Gulliver has learned.

The Houyhnhnms' decision to do away with the Yahoos is very interesting. First of all,

the idea to slowly kill off the race by castrating the males came from Gulliver. He has

directly contributed to the destruction of a subspecies of his own race, but he shows no

remorse. Also, the horses seem to feel better about killing off the Yahoos slowly by

keeping them from breeding rather than actually murdering them, even though the end

result is the same.

Even though the reader has been on Gulliver's side throughout his adventures so far, here

we wonder if Gulliver has gone too far in giving up on humanity in favor of another

species altogether. Why would he choose to abandon his people, his life, and his family?

It is true that Gulliver is the kind of person who is called to the sea, to live apart from

traditional society. And we understand the criticism of humanity, especially if we have

some of the religious sensibilities of most of Swift's readers, knowing that humans are

flawed in many ways. Can we redeem ourselves? When Gulliver returns, he slips into his

reclusive state, spending large amounts of time talking to his horses, but he retains some

interest in helping humans become better-apparently through the work of comparing

alternatives and choosing what is better-the life of the Houyhnhnms.

Meanwhile, one should not forget that even though the Yahoos are disgusting, they

express something attractive about human nature. The Yahoos have strong emotions and

are sexual beings. They have fun, frolicking and playing in the fields. They are not afraid

to get dirty or to have less-than-perfect manners. The Houyhnhnms, on the other hand, do

not have love, do not shed a tear when one of them dies, and are aloof and rather cold.

Perhaps it is not so bad being a Yahoo-but we should be wary of this pull toward rough-

and-tumble life. It was not quite right to be an absentminded intellectual, and it is not

quite right to be aloof like the Houyhnhnms, yet it is not quite right to be a Yahoo. We

must consider the alternatives and decide for ourselves.

Gender Differences

Gender Differences 1: Gulliver illustrates the carelessness of women, when he retells the story of the fire. It started, apparently, by the mindlessness of one of the Empress's maids. Furthermore, the only way to extinguish the fire is through urination, an act so lewd and grotesque that a woman could not handle it. She decrees that public urination be banned and that the contaminated building be left as it is. The method by which Gulliver describes this event, leads the reader to believe that only a woman would act so harshly to his actions.

Gender Differences 2: When the farmer initially shows Gulliver ot his wife, she screams with disgust, the way a woman would react to a bug. Later, Gulliver is repulsed most of all by the sight of a woman's breast. He looks up close at the woman's anatomy and thanks God for the women of England. Whenever Gulliver notices women in Brobdingnag, he is perpetually repulsed, for he sees all their faults and blemishes in expanded form.

Gender Differences 3: Glumdalclitch adopts Gulliver as her little pet/doll, and loves him dearly. Her feminine touch and attention is what Gulliver needs while living in Brobdingnag. Perhaps only a young woman (child) would have been able to care for Gulliver with such attention, affection, and detail. However, her youthful feminine cries are also a disturbance to Gulliver, for he must deal with the negatives as well as the positives.

Gender Differences 4: When Gulliver describes a grotesque vision of humanity in Brobdingnag, he generally uses women as the objects of repulsion. Initially it is the Empress who eats in a grotesque fashion, and now it is the homeless beggar. The beggar is a horrific site, as Gulliver can see into the crevices and cavities in her body, destroyed by vermin and waste and disease.

Gender Differences 5: Again, Gulliver describes a repulsive experience with a woman. Glumdalclitch brings Gulliver to visit the maids of the palace. However, they change in front of him, making him gag at the sight of their blemished skin and sickly smell. One maid even placed him on her nipple so that she could play with him closely. Gulliver does not describe men purely by their physical and flippant attributes - only women.

Gender Differences 6: Women are repeatedly described separately from men, as is the case in the flying island of Laputa. The women are described by geometric shape and mathematical figures. The entire population is described in the same way, however, Gulliver makes a point to tell the reader that the women are separate. Furthermore, the women are not allowed to explore or travel off the island without specific doctrine from the King.

Gender Differences 7: Women are taxed differently than men are in Balnibarbi. They are taxed on the basis of what their most important virtues are - beauty and fashion.

Gender Differences 8: Gulliver relates a story of the yahoo women and how they are different from the men. One day he was bathing and a female yahoo jumped after him, leaping and attacking. Gulliver was so shocked, he didn't know what to do. Furthermore, he learns that the female yahoo can leave her family after she gives birth. There is no allegiance to anyone.

Politics

Politics 1: When Gulliver first meets the emperor of Lilliput, he is honored. He wants to impress this man who runs the country so well. Gulliver discovers the mathematics involved with the country and how intelligent these people are. Furthermore, he politically plays his cards right, as he demonstrates kindness and clemency with the Lilliputians. By putting them down, instead of eating them, Gulliver politically showed the population his generosity and kindness.

Politics 2: Gulliver requests his freedom from the Emperor of Lilliput, however, is turned down. The Emperor, however, uses Gulliver for his own political gain. Gulliver allows the Lilliputian army to march through his legs. Furthermore, the Emperor orders an edict about Gulliver that would eventually grant him his freedom. It is a long and complicated list of orders and mandates.

Politics 3: When Gulliver learns about the opposing political forces in Lilliput, he sees the futility in their arguments. The parties are in opposition because of a feud on how to break an egg; either by its big end or small end. Because of such a feud, the Big-Endians must flee and find refuge in the neighboring enemy island of Blefuscu.

Politics 4: Gulliver helps the Lilliputian army by pulling out the anchor of a Blefuscu ship and carrying it to victory for Lilliput. Upon such a victory, the Emperor makes Gulliver a Nardac, a position of superior honor, and praises him for his political edge. However, Gulliver soon commits political suicide by expressing his values and virtues. He refuses to enslave the Blefuscu island. He helped Lilliput win, but he will not harm Blefuscu. This statement causes further political problems for Gulliver during his stay on Lilliput.

Politics 5: Gulliver learns of the different political system of Lilliput. The good is rewarded, as opposed to not simply the bad being punished. Children are raised outside of the family in nurseries, there is no Divine Providence, and ingratitude is a capital crime. Gulliver takes note of such staunch differences in the political culture of Lilliput from England.

Politics 6: Reldresal informs Gulliver of the threat on his life. The Emperor and assemblymen have voted to have Gulliver killed because of his actions as a traitor, of public urination, of refusing to obey the Emperor's command, and so on and so forth. Because of such political problems, Gulliver is forced to flee Lilliput to Blefuscu.

Politics 7: Gulliver describes the political system of England to the King of Brobdingnag. After a while, the King jokes with Gulliver about the differences between Whigs and Tories.

Politics 8: Gulliver explains more of the political system of the United Kingdom to the King of Brobdingnag. This time, the discussion continues for days and in front of several more people. The king wants Gulliver to have an audience, so he brings in some of his royal friends to listen. They do not understand Gulliver's system of politics, and offer rebuttals to each law cited.

Politics 9: Gulliver learns of the problems with the continent lands and of the method of controlling them. There are three ways by which Laputan politics and governance control the land, in order of gravity. First, they throw stones and rocks on the land, forcing people to flee into caves. Second, they cover the continent with Laputa, preventing lightness and rain from entering the land. And finally, they smash Laputa on top of the land, causing complete disaster. The latter is never used.

Politics 10: Munodi explains the political problems that he has with the people of Balnibarbi. After the revolt in Lindalino, they people established an Academy, full of impractical and ridiculous experiments. The people of the land are frustrated with Munodi for not helping the problems with agriculture and food. Therefore, Munodi must not show his face at the Academy.

Politics 11: Gulliver learns of the laws pertaining to the Struldbruggs of Luggnagg. They do not favor these people and mandate certain actions be taken against them when they reach a certain age. When Gulliver decides to bring back some of these Struldbruggs to England, the laws of transport do not allow it.

Politics 12: Gulliver explains a bit of English politics to his master when he explains the differences between horses and humans. Humans (or yahoos) control the horses (or Houyhnhnms), chaining them, raising them, using them, and even castrating them. This differential nature shocks and confuses Gulliver's master horse.

Politics 13: Gulliver begins to explore the differences in politics between England and Houyhnhnm, beginning with the rule by reason. Everything is done differently in this land, and much to Gulliver's pleasing. The master doesn't understand lawyers or laws or politics or parliament or any of the core values by which England (and thenceforth Europe) is run.

Politics 14: Gulliver is forced to leave Houyhnhnm after the Assembly voted him to leave. They had been discussing the political expulsion and extermination of all yahoos from the land. After his master speaks in his favor, the Assembly of Houyhnhnms still votes that Gulliver must leave the land because of his close association and likeliness of the yahoos.

←Themes, Motifs & Symbols

→Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Might Versus Right

Gulliver’s Travels implicitly poses the question of whether physical power or moral

righteousness should be the governing factor in social life. Gulliver experiences the

advantages of physical might both as one who has it, as a giant in Lilliput where he can

defeat the Blefuscudian navy by virtue of his immense size, and as one who does not have

it, as a miniature visitor to Brobdingnag where he is harassed by the hugeness of everything

from insects to household pets. His first encounter with another society is one of

entrapment, when he is physically tied down by the Lilliputians; later, in Brobdingnag, he is

enslaved by a farmer. He also observes physical force used against others, as with the

Houyhnhnms’ chaining up of the Yahoos.

But alongside the use of physical force, there are also many claims to power based on

moral correctness. The whole point of the egg controversy that has set Lilliput against

Blefuscu is not merely a cultural difference but, instead, a religious and moral issue related

to the proper interpretation of a passage in their holy book. This difference of opinion seems

to justify, in their eyes at least, the warfare it has sparked. Similarly, the use of physical

force against the Yahoos is justified for the Houyhnhnms by their sense of moral superiority:

they are cleaner, better behaved, and more rational. But overall, the novel tends to show

that claims to rule on the basis of moral righteousness are often just as arbitrary as, and

sometimes simply disguises for, simple physical subjugation. The Laputans keep the lower

land of Balnibarbi in check through force because they believe themselves to be more

rational, even though we might see them as absurd and unpleasant. Similarly, the ruling

elite of Balnibarbi believes itself to be in the right in driving Lord Munodi from power,

although we perceive that Munodi is the rational party. Claims to moral superiority are, in

the end, as hard to justify as the random use of physical force to dominate others.

The Individual Versus Society

Like many narratives about voyages to nonexistent lands, Gulliver’s Travels explores the

idea of utopia—an imaginary model of the ideal community. The idea of a utopia is an

ancient one, going back at least as far as the description in Plato’sRepublic of a city-state

governed by the wise and expressed most famously in English by Thomas

More’s Utopia. Swift nods to both works in his own narrative, though his attitude toward

utopia is much more skeptical, and one of the main aspects he points out about famous

historical utopias is the tendency to privilege the collective group over the individual. The

children of Plato’s Republic are raised communally, with no knowledge of their biological

parents, in the understanding that this system enhances social fairness. Swift has the

Lilliputians similarly raise their offspring collectively, but its results are not exactly utopian,

since Lilliput is torn by conspiracies, jealousies, and backstabbing.

The Houyhnhnms also practice strict family planning, dictating that the parents of two

females should exchange a child with a family of two males, so that the male-to-female ratio

is perfectly maintained. Indeed, they come closer to the utopian ideal than the Lilliputians in

their wisdom and rational simplicity. But there is something unsettling about the

Houyhnhnms’ indistinct personalities and about how they are the only social group that

Gulliver encounters who do not have proper names. Despite minor physical differences,

they are all so good and rational that they are more or less interchangeable, without

individual identities. In their absolute fusion with their society and lack of individuality, they

are in a sense the exact opposite of Gulliver, who has hardly any sense of belonging to his

native society and exists only as an individual eternally wandering the seas. Gulliver’s

intense grief when forced to leave the Houyhnhnms may have something to do with his

longing for union with a community in which he can lose his human identity. In any case,

such a union is impossible for him, since he is not a horse, and all the other societies he

visits make him feel alienated as well.

Gulliver’s Travels could in fact be described as one of the first novels of modern alienation,

focusing on an individual’s repeated failures to integrate into societies to which he does not

belong. England itself is not much of a homeland for Gulliver, and, with his surgeon’s

business unprofitable and his father’s estate insufficient to support him, he may be right to

feel alienated from it. He never speaks fondly or nostalgically about England, and every

time he returns home, he is quick to leave again. Gulliver never complains explicitly about

feeling lonely, but the embittered and antisocial misanthrope we see at the end of the novel

is clearly a profoundly isolated individual. Thus, if Swift’s satire mocks the excesses of

communal life, it may also mock the excesses of individualism in its portrait of a miserable

and lonely Gulliver talking to his horses at home in England.

The Limits of Human Understanding

The idea that humans are not meant to know everything and that all understanding has a

natural limit is important in Gulliver’s Travels. Swift singles out theoretical knowledge in

particular for attack: his portrait of the disagreeable and self-centered Laputans, who show

blatant contempt for those who are not sunk in private theorizing, is a clear satire against

those who pride themselves on knowledge above all else. Practical knowledge is also

satirized when it does not produce results, as in the academy of Balnibarbi, where the

experiments for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers amount to nothing. Swift insists that

there is a realm of understanding into which humans are simply not supposed to venture.

Thus his depictions of rational societies, like Brobdingnag and Houyhnhnmland, emphasize

not these people’s knowledge or understanding of abstract ideas but their ability to live their

lives in a wise and steady way.

The Brobdingnagian king knows shockingly little about the abstractions of political science,

yet his country seems prosperous and well governed. Similarly, the Houyhnhnms know little

about arcane subjects like astronomy, though they know how long a month is by observing

the moon, since that knowledge has a practical effect on their well-being. Aspiring to higher

fields of knowledge would be meaningless to them and would interfere with their happiness.

In such contexts, it appears that living a happy and well-ordered life seems to be the very

thing for which Swift thinks knowledge is useful.

Swift also emphasizes the importance of self-understanding. Gulliver is initially remarkably

lacking in self-reflection and self-awareness. He makes no mention of his emotions,

passions, dreams, or aspirations, and he shows no interest in describing his own

psychology to us. Accordingly, he may strike us as frustratingly hollow or empty, though it is

likely that his personal emptiness is part of the overall meaning of the novel. By the end, he

has come close to a kind of twisted self-knowledge in his deranged belief that he is a

Yahoo. His revulsion with the human condition, shown in his shabby treatment of the

generous Don Pedro, extends to himself as well, so that he ends the novel in a thinly

disguised state of self-hatred. Swift may thus be saying that self-knowledge has its

necessary limits just as theoretical knowledge does, and that if we look too closely at

ourselves we might not be able to carry on living happily.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and

inform the text’s major themes.

Excrement

While it may seem a trivial or laughable motif, the recurrent mention of excrement in

Gulliver’s Travels actually has a serious philosophical significance in the narrative. It

symbolizes everything that is crass and ignoble about the human body and about human

existence in general, and it obstructs any attempt to view humans as wholly spiritual or

mentally transcendent creatures. Since the Enlightenment culture of eighteenth-century

England tended to view humans optimistically as noble souls rather than vulgar bodies,

Swift’s emphasis on the common filth of life is a slap in the face of the philosophers of his

day. Thus, when Gulliver urinates to put out a fire in Lilliput, or when Brobdingnagian flies

defecate on his meals, or when the scientist in Lagado works to transform excrement back

into food, we are reminded how very little human reason has to do with everyday existence.

Swift suggests that the human condition in general is dirtier and lowlier than we might like to

believe it is.

Foreign Languages

Gulliver appears to be a gifted linguist, knowing at least the basics of several European

languages and even a fair amount of ancient Greek. This knowledge serves him well, as he

is able to disguise himself as a Dutchman in order to facilitate his entry into Japan, which at

the time only admitted the Dutch. But even more important, his linguistic gifts allow him to

learn the languages of the exotic lands he visits with a dazzling speed and, thus, gain

access to their culture quickly. He learns the languages of the Lilliputians, the

Brobdingnagians, and even the neighing tongue of the Houyhnhnms. He is meticulous in

recording the details of language in his narrative, often giving the original as well as the

translation. One would expect that such detail would indicate a cross-cultural sensitivity, a

kind of anthropologist’s awareness of how things vary from culture to culture. Yet

surprisingly, Gulliver’s mastery of foreign languages generally does not correspond to any

real interest in cultural differences. He compares any of the governments he visits to that of

his native England, and he rarely even speculates on how or why cultures are different at

all. Thus, his facility for translation does not indicate a culturally comparative mind, and we

are perhaps meant to yearn for a narrator who is a bit less able to remember the

Brobdingnagian word for “lark” and better able to offer a more illuminating kind of cultural

analysis.

Clothing

Critics have noted the extraordinary attention that Gulliver pays to clothes throughout his

journeys. Every time he gets a rip in his shirt or is forced to adopt some native garment to

replace one of his own, he recounts the clothing details with great precision. We are told

how his pants are falling apart in Lilliput, so that as the army marches between his legs they

get quite an eyeful. We are informed about the mouse skin he wears in Brobdingnag, and

how the finest silks of the land are as thick as blankets on him. In one sense, these

descriptions are obviously an easy narrative device with which Swift can chart his

protagonist’s progression from one culture to another: the more ragged his clothes become

and the stranger his new wardrobe, the farther he is from the comforts and conventions of

England. His journey to new lands is also thus a journey into new clothes. When he is

picked up by Don Pedro after his fourth voyage and offered a new suit of clothes, Gulliver

vehemently refuses, preferring his wild animal skins. We sense that Gulliver may well never

fully reintegrate into European society.

But the motif of clothing carries a deeper, more psychologically complex meaning as well.

Gulliver’s intense interest in the state of his clothes may signal a deep-seated anxiety about

his identity, or lack thereof. He does not seem to have much selfhood: one critic has called

him an “abyss,” a void where an individual character should be. If clothes make the man,

then perhaps Gulliver’s obsession with the state of his wardrobe may suggest that he

desperately needs to be fashioned as a personality. Significantly, the two moments when he

describes being naked in the novel are two deeply troubling or humiliating experiences: the

first when he is the boy toy of the Brobdingnagian maids who let him cavort nude on their

mountainous breasts, and the second when he is assaulted by an eleven-year-old Yahoo

girl as he bathes. Both incidents suggest more than mere prudery. Gulliver associates

nudity with extreme vulnerability, even when there is no real danger present—a pre-teen girl

is hardly a threat to a grown man, at least in physical terms. The state of nudity may remind

Gulliver of how nonexistent he feels without the reassuring cover of clothing.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or

concepts.

Lilliputians

The Lilliputians symbolize humankind’s wildly excessive pride in its own puny existence.

Swift fully intends the irony of representing the tiniest race visited by Gulliver as by far the

most vainglorious and smug, both collectively and individually. There is surely no character

more odious in all of Gulliver’s travels than the noxious Skyresh. There is more backbiting

and conspiracy in Lilliput than anywhere else, and more of the pettiness of small minds who

imagine themselves to be grand. Gulliver is a naïve consumer of the Lilliputians’ grandiose

imaginings: he is flattered by the attention of their royal family and cowed by their threats of

punishment, forgetting that they have no real physical power over him. Their formally

worded condemnation of Gulliver on grounds of treason is a model of pompous and self-

important verbiage, but it works quite effectively on the naïve Gulliver.

The Lilliputians show off not only to Gulliver but to themselves as well. There is no mention

of armies proudly marching in any of the other societies Gulliver visits—only in Lilliput and

neighboring Blefuscu are the six-inch inhabitants possessed of the need to show off their

patriotic glories with such displays. When the Lilliputian emperor requests that Gulliver

serve as a kind of makeshift Arch of Triumph for the troops to pass under, it is a pathetic

reminder that their grand parade—in full view of Gulliver’s nether regions—is supremely

silly, a basically absurd way to boost the collective ego of the nation. Indeed, the war with

Blefuscu is itself an absurdity springing from wounded vanity, since the cause is not a

material concern like disputed territory but, rather, the proper interpretation of scripture by

the emperor’s forebears and the hurt feelings resulting from the disagreement. All in all, the

Lilliputians symbolize misplaced human pride, and point out Gulliver’s inability to diagnose it

correctly.

Brobdingnagians

The Brobdingnagians symbolize the private, personal, and physical side of humans when

examined up close and in great detail. The philosophical era of the Enlightenment tended to

overlook the routines of everyday life and the sordid or tedious little facts of existence, but in

Brobdingnag such facts become very important for Gulliver, sometimes matters of life and

death. An eighteenth-century philosopher could afford to ignore the fly buzzing around his

head or the skin pores on his servant girl, but in his shrunken state Gulliver is forced to pay

great attention to such things. He is forced take the domestic sphere seriously as well. In

other lands it is difficult for Gulliver, being such an outsider, to get glimpses of family

relations or private affairs, but in Brobdingnag he is treated as a doll or a plaything, and thus

is made privy to the urination of housemaids and the sexual lives of women. The

Brobdingnagians do not symbolize a solely negative human characteristic, as the Laputans

do. They are not merely ridiculous—some aspects of them are disgusting, like their gigantic

stench and the excrement left by their insects, but others are noble, like the queen’s

goodwill toward Gulliver and the king’s commonsense views of politics. More than anything

else, the Brobdingnagians symbolize a dimension of human existence visible at close

range, under close scrutiny.

Laputans

The Laputans represent the folly of theoretical knowledge that has no relation to human life

and no use in the actual world. As a profound cultural conservative, Swift was a critic of the

newfangled ideas springing up around him at the dawn of the eighteenth-century

Enlightenment, a period of great intellectual experimentation and theorization. He much

preferred the traditional knowledge that had been tested over centuries. Laputa symbolizes

the absurdity of knowledge that has never been tested or applied, the ludicrous side of

Enlightenment intellectualism. Even down below in Balnibarbi, where the local academy is

more inclined to practical application, knowledge is not made socially useful as Swift

demands. Indeed, theoretical knowledge there has proven positively disastrous, resulting in

the ruin of agriculture and architecture and the impoverishment of the population. Even up

above, the pursuit of theoretical understanding has not improved the lot of the Laputans.

They have few material worries, dependent as they are upon the Balnibarbians below. But

they are tormented by worries about the trajectories of comets and other astronomical

speculations: their theories have not made them wise, but neurotic and disagreeable. The

Laputans do not symbolize reason itself but rather the pursuit of a form of knowledge that is

not directly related to the improvement of human life.

Houyhnhnms

The Houyhnhnms represent an ideal of rational existence, a life governed by sense and

moderation of which philosophers since Plato have long dreamed. Indeed, there are echoes

of Plato’s Republic in the Houyhnhnms’ rejection of light entertainment and vain displays of

luxury, their appeal to reason rather than any holy writings as the criterion for proper action,

and their communal approach to family planning. As in Plato’s ideal community, the

Houyhnhnms have no need to lie nor any word for lying. They do not use force but only

strong exhortation. Their subjugation of the Yahoos appears more necessary than cruel and

perhaps the best way to deal with an unfortunate blot on their otherwise ideal society. In

these ways and others, the Houyhnhnms seem like model citizens, and Gulliver’s intense

grief when he is forced to leave them suggests that they have made an impact on him

greater than that of any other society he has visited. His derangement on Don Pedro’s ship,

in which he snubs the generous man as a Yahoo-like creature, implies that he strongly

identifies with the Houyhnhnms.

But we may be less ready than Gulliver to take the Houyhnhnms as ideals of human

existence. They have no names in the narrative nor any need for names, since they are

virtually interchangeable, with little individual identity. Their lives seem harmonious and

happy, although quite lacking in vigor, challenge, and excitement. Indeed, this apparent

ease may be why Swift chooses to make them horses rather than human types like every

other group in the novel. He may be hinting, to those more insightful than Gulliver, that the

Houyhnhnms should not be considered human ideals at all. In any case, they symbolize a

standard of rational existence to be either espoused or rejected by both Gulliver and us.

England

As the site of his father’s disappointingly “small estate” and Gulliver’s failing business,

England seems to symbolize deficiency or insufficiency, at least in the financial sense that

matters most to Gulliver. England is passed over very quickly in the first paragraph of

Chapter I, as if to show that it is simply there as the starting point to be left quickly behind.

Gulliver seems to have very few nationalistic or patriotic feelings about England, and he

rarely mentions his homeland on his travels. In this sense, Gulliver’s Travels is quite unlike

other travel narratives like theOdyssey, in which Odysseus misses his homeland and

laments his wanderings. England is where Gulliver’s wife and family live, but they too are

hardly mentioned. Yet Swift chooses to have Gulliver return home after each of his four

journeys instead of having him continue on one long trip to four different places, so that

England is kept constantly in the picture and given a steady, unspoken importance. By the

end of the fourth journey, England is brought more explicitly into the fabric ofGulliver’s

Travels when Gulliver, in his neurotic state, starts confusing Houyhnhnmland with his

homeland, referring to Englishmen as Yahoos. The distinction between native and foreign

thus unravels—the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos are not just races populating a faraway land

but rather types that Gulliver projects upon those around him. The possibility thus arises

that all the races Gulliver encounters could be versions of the English and that his travels

merely allow him to see various aspects of human nature more clearly.