Gulliver’s
Travels as an Allegory:
Allegory means a story based on two levels, “apparent level and deeper”. Swift’s
polemical tour de force ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ is a multi-genre text working
on many levels. It is at once a
folk-myth, a delightful children's story, a wonderful travelogue, a neurotic fantasy, and an unequivocal moral tale. Each of the four
books—recounting four voyages to fictional exotic lands—is the attempt to
deflate excessive human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on
the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.
The form and structure
of the whole work enhances Swift's purpose. By using outlandish humans such as midgets and giants, Swift
allows us to examine the fallacies of mankind without being overly frightened. As
Tuveson points out, "In Gulliver's
Travels there is a constant shuttling back and forth between real and
unreal, normal and absurd.”
From the start the Lilliputians arouse
our interest and win our liking. The pigmies of Lilliput ingeniously capture
the giant whom chance has cast on their shore. Gulliver
becomes an object of curiosity. He is instantly given the name “Man-Mountain”. The manner in which
several ladders are applied by the Lilliputians to feed Gulliver and the way Gulliver
cripples the fleet of Blefuscu by his hand is incredible and exciting.
Similarly the customs of Lilliputians, their dancing on the tight rope,
conflict between Big Endians and Little Endians, and between high heel and low
heel are also a great source of amusement to us. Moreover, Lilliputians “bury dead with their head directly downward
because they hold an opinion that in eleven thousand moons, they are all to
rise again” which looks ridiculous and grotesque to the reader.
Next,
Gulliver reaches the island of Brobdingnag whose inhabitants are giants with a
proportionately gigantic landscape. Here, Gulliver is exhibited as a curious
midget, and has a number of local dramas such as fighting giant rats. He is frightened
by a puppy, rendered ludicrous by the tricks of a mischievous monkey and
embarrassed by the lascivious antics of the Maids of Honour. Gulliver’s adventures
in Brobdingnag keep the interest of a young reader alive.
The
voyage to Laputa, Lagado and other islands is also full of interesting and
mysterious incidents. In Laputa, the Flying Island, every eatable thing e.g.
the mutton, the beef, or the pudding, is given geometrical shape or the shape
of musical instrument. The manner in which flappers are employed to draw the
attention of their master and the way tailor takes his measure by employing a
quadrant, rule and compasses is also very funny. The experiments which are in
progress at the academy of projector in Lagado are grotesque and fantastic.
In the fourth voyage, Gulliver’s adventure
touches the apex when we see him in the land of Houyhnhnms, the philosophical horses.
The horses can talk to one another and can even teach their language to a human
being. They so skilled
and ingenious that they can execute such improbable tasks as threading needles
or carrying trays, and so complacent in their belief that they are the “Perfection of Nature”.
So on the
apparent level, all the four voyages contain the situations and incidents full
of delightful adventures in a very funny and interesting manner and one can
hardly reckon that these funny episodes of adventure can bear in deep sense a
very lethal and poignant satire on the follies and absurdities of mankind.
The
first voyage in particular is a satirical romp in which Swift takes some
memorable shots at the political figures of his time. Flimnap’s dancing on the tight rope symbolizes Sir Robert
Walpole’s dexterity in parliamentary tactics and political intrigues. The
phrase “one of the king’s cushions”
refers to one of king George I’s mistresses who helped to restore Walpole after
his fall in 1717. High Admiral Skyresh
Bolgolam which turns out to be Gulliver’s ‘mortal
enemy’ represents Earl of Nottingham while Reldresal may stand for Lord
Townshend or Lord Carteret who was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by
Walpole.
Gulliver’s
extinguishing of the fire in the queen’s palace is an allegorical reference to Queen
Anne’s annoyance with Swift on writing “A
Tale of a Tub”. The queen misinterpreted the book and got annoyed. The
conflict between the Big-Endians and the Small-Endians in which “eleven thousand persons have, at several
times, suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller
end” is the satirical allusion to the bitter schism and theological disputes
between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Similarly Swift pokes fun at ‘Whigs’
and ‘Tories’ the two political parties in England by distinguishing from their
low heels and high heels.
In the second voyage of Gulliver,
there is a general satire on humanity and human physiognomy. Much of this voyage is made up of lampooning British
political history. After Gulliver tries to extol the virtues of his
country-men,
the king deduces that the history of Gulliver’s country “was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions,
murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments” etc. When Gulliver tries to
improve his condition by offering him the secret of gun-powder, the king is horrified and dismissively concludes that “the bulk of your natives to be the most
pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon
the surface of the earth”.
In the description Laputa, “Floating or Flying island”, there is satirical allusion to the
English constitution and British colonial policy. The revolt of Lindalino becomes
an allegory of Irish revolt against England and England’s violent foreign and
internal politics. Swift also takes shots on certain ‘high-minded’ intellectuals who literally have their heads in the
clouds. Among the sights Gulliver visits in his third voyage to Laputa, is the
grand academy of Lagado, full of ‘projectors’
whose job is to come up with new ideas and inventions. The scientists are here busy
trying “to extract sunbeams out of
cucumbers, to convert human excrement into its original food, to build houses
from the roof downwards to the foundation, to obtain silk from cobwebs”.
This description is the firm pointer to Swift’s cynical view of contemporary
science and Royal Society of England.
In his fourth and the last
voyage to the country of Houyhnhnmms, Gulliver faces yet another inversion and there
is a sharp-pointed satire on human moral shortcomings. Human
beings here are represented as Yahoos—filthy, mischievous,
gluttonous, ugly monsters that covet for some ‘shining stones’.
By contrast, the Houhnhnms
are noble and benevolent animals governed by pure reason and lead a life based
on rational grounds. So it is a lethal attack on the human race to be represented
inferior to horses mentally and morally. Gulliver tells his master-Houyhnhnm of
all the evils and vices that were prevailing in European countries. Gulliver
also tells about the numerous deadly weapons and the wars in western countries
which were fought sometimes due to the “ambitions
of princes” and sometimes due to “corruption
of the ministers.”
Thus we
conclude that “Gulliver’s Travels” is a great work of allegory. The book is one
of the bitterest and most scathing indictments of the human race in English
literature. The whole book is written in a fanciful manner, but beneath the
fiction and under the surface there lies a serious purpose “to vex the world rather than divert it”.
Swift’s
misanthropy in Gulliver's Travels:
Gulliver's Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a
sardonic looking-glass, often criticized for its apparent misanthropy. Gulliver's Travels was unique in its day; it was not written to woo or entertain. It was an
indictment, and it was most popular among those who were indicted.
On the
subject of misanthropy Swift famously said, “Principally I hate and detest that animal called man" Swift
called man not the "animal rationale"
but only the "rationis capax”, animal
capable of reason.
In a letter to Alexander Pope Swift wrote:
“I have ever hated
all Nations professions and Communities and all my love is towards individuals.
. .Upon this great foundation of misanthropy the whole building of my travels
is erected”
He admits that the chief end of all his labour is “to vex the world rather than divert it”. Swift so violently ‘vexed’ the world that different critics from his own time to this day have bitterly criticized him. Thackeray attacked his book claiming it to be “filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene.” Walter Scott condemns Swift’s attack on mankind as “severe, unjust and degrading.”
William Hazlitt however defends Swift against these
charges: “What a libel is this upon mankind! What a convincing proof
of misanthropy! What presumption and what malice prepense, to shew men what they are, and to teach them what they ought to be!”
Gulliver’s
Travel’s serves as a magnifying mirror to show us our faults so that we can see
how far we have strayed from reasonable behavior. Paul Turner writes
of Gulliver’s four voyages, “the four
pictures form a series, in which the view grows gradually darker; that is, they
represent stages in Gulliver's disillusionment.”
In the first part of the book, Swift takes us to the land of midgets, the “human creatures not more than six inches high”. Lilliput is a miniature empire with a little monarch who entitled himself as "delight and terror of the universe".
In Lilliput, which
is, quite literally, a microcosm, the vices and follies not merely of England
but of all mankind are epitomized. The
human race viewed in miniature, at first seems rather charming; but the tiny
creatures soon turn out to be cunning, malicious, treacherous and revengeful.
They are ready to sacrifice all humane feeling, whether towards Gulliver or the
Blefuscudians, to their own petty ambitions.
In Brobdingnag,
however, it is as if we are looking at humanity through a magnifying glass.
Gulliver is often repulsed by both the size and coarseness of the physical
bodies of the Brobdingnagians. But
Swift throws in a nice twist with the first two parts of Gulliver's
Travels. Though the Brobdingnagians are more repulsive physically because
of their size, they are categorized
by Gulliver as "the least
corrupted".
When Gulliver gives brief description of the political
and legal institutions of England to Brobdingnagian King, the King dismissively
concludes "the bulk of your natives
to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever
suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth."
Swift was certainly not one of the optimists
typical of his century. He did not believe that the ‘Age of Science’ was a
triumph. Science and reason needed limits, and they did not require absolute
devotion. In order to satirize
mankind in general and science in particular, Swift takes us to an imaginary
floating island where the inhabitants were wholly engrossed in their fruitless meditation."Their heads were all reclined either to
the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly
up to the zenith.” The various researches that were in
progress at the Academy of Projectors in Lagado were fantastic and
preposterous. Experiments were being made “to
extract sunbeams out of cucumbers, to convert human excrement into its original
food, to build houses from the roof downwards to the foundation, to obtain silk
from cobwebs”
Swift’s impeachment of human nature becomes
extremely cruel in the 4th voyage of Gulliver. As Gulliver reaches the land governed by
philosophical horses Houyhnhnms, he is instantly confronted with a pack of
Yahoos which give him such an obnoxious and disgusting treatment that he
develops an intense hatred for them, owing to their vile physical appearance
and their filthy and mischievous way of life. Gulliver highlights:
“Upon
the whole, I never behold in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, nor one
against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy.”
The Houyhnhnms, on the other hand, are “endued with a proportionable degree of
reason” and “orderly and rational, acute
and judicious”. They know neither love nor grief nor
lust nor ambition for they face each of these phenomena with stoical calm. Their cardinal virtues are “friendship and benevolence”. The
Houyhnhnms are “the Perfection of Nature”
while “the Yahoos … were observed to be
the most unteachable of all brutes”
Gulliver’s
misanthropy comes around full circle when he remarks: “When I happened to behold the
reflection of my own form in a lake or fountain, I turned away my face in
horror and detestation of myself.”
Upon the news of his expulsion Gulliver is
fainted and grief-stricken. Nonetheless he plans not to go home, but to find
some small uninhabited island so that he can, in solitude, “reflect with delight on the virtues of those imitable Houyhnhnms.”
Yet, fate would not allow it. He is discovered by Portuguese Captain and seamen
and is forcibly rescued and given passage to Lisbon. With the short-sightedness of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver
perceives only the Yahoo and is repelled by Captain Don Pedro de Mendez’s
clothes, food, and odour and remarks: “I
wondered to find such civilities from a Yahoo. However, I remained silent and
sullen; I was ready to faint at the very smell of him and his men.”
Gulliver’s
frenzy of his extreme misanthropy has driven him into madness as can no longer
bear his own wife and children:
“I began last week
to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the farthest end of a long table….
Yet the smell of a Yahoo continuing very offensive, I always keep my nose well
stopped with rue, lavender, or tobacco leaves. “
Gulliver concludes his travels on a misanthropic note:
“When I behold a
lump of deformity, and diseases both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it
immediately breaks all the measures of my patience.”
While the character of Gulliver eventually
reveals himself to be a misanthrope, the author Jonathan Swift does not. The
reader must be conscientious to see that Gulliver’s idealized glance of Houyhnhnms’
logical approach to life is not always consistent with Swift’s. A carful
denotation suggests that the author is just as satirical toward Gulliver and
the Houyhnhnms as he is toward the Yahoos. Gulliver remains true to his
gullible nature as he seems unable to discern the negative aspects of the
Houyhnhnms’ rational philosophy. Swift, on other hand, uses these quadrupeds to show how
reason untouched by love, compassion, and empathy is also inadequate to deal
with the myriad aspects of the human life.
Swift’s Satire in Gulliver’s
Travels:
A satire is a
literary device in which the author exposes to ridicule the follies absurdities
and incongruities of individual or society. Swift in his preface to ‘The Battle of the Books’ points out that
“Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do
generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief
reason…very few are offended with it.”
Swift was
a prolific writer, notable for his biting satires; Swift’s polemical tour de force, Gulliver's Travels satirizes
mankind on many levels. He
wrote the scathing satire on behalf of human dignity that is famous for being
full of reminders of human filth. The book is also a brilliant parody of
travel literature and a witty parody of science fiction.
Swift
employs both comic and corrosive satire in his allegorical narrative. The literary
devices used in the satire are irony, humour, invective exaggeration, mockery,
parody, allegory etc.
Swift’s masterpiece, Gulliver's
Travels, is a complicated, unblinking
criticism of humanity, written, Swift said,
“to vex the world rather than divert it.” “I wrote
for their(men’s) amendment and not their approbation”, says
Gulliver in his prefatory letter to cousin
Sympson. Within the framework of his travels, very little of human
social behavior, pretensions, or societal institutions escape the deflating
punctures of Swift's arrows.
In the first voyage, Swift
mounts a dark and violent assault on the
political institutions and the politicians of his time. The juxtaposition of physical delicacy and mental
brutality of Lilliputians is all the base of satire and irony in the story of
Lilliput. The six inches high midgets constitute
the ‘moral midgets’ in the Court and
Parliament of Swift’s day. Swift portrays them as being only six inches tall
because it is an excellent way to trivialize the significance of their wars,
the political jousting, their endless infighting and their sycophancy over
honours and rewards.
The first voyage in particular is a satirical romp
in which Swift takes some memorable shots at English political parties and
their antics. Flimnap’s dancing on the tight rope
symbolizes Sir Robert Walpole’s dexterity in parliamentary tactics and
political intrigues. The phrase “one of
the king’s cushions” refers to one of King George’s mistresses who helped
to restore Walpole after his fall in 1717. High
Admiral Skyresh Bolgolam which turns out to be Gulliver’s ‘mortal enemy’ represents earl of Nottingham while Reldresal may
symbolize Lord Carteret who was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by
Walpole.
Gulliver’s extinguishing the fire of queen’s palace is a
reference to Queen Anne’s annoyance with him on writing “A Tale of a Tub”. In highlighting the conflict between the
Big-Endians and the small-Endians; “It
is computed that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death
rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end”, Swift is actually
ridiculing the theological disputes between Roman Catholics and the Protestants.
Swift also pokes fun at the differences between ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’
the rival political parties in England, by distinguishing them by their low
heels and high heels respectively. Lilliput stands for England and the ’potent
enemy’ Blefuscu represents England’s arch-rival France.
Also when the King of Blefuscu offers Gulliver his "gracious Protection" if he
will serve him, Gulliver becomes the mouthpiece of Swift’s satire and comments:
"I resolved never more to put any
confidence in Princes or Ministers, where I could possibly avoid it."
In
the second voyage of Gulliver, there is the satire of more general
kind. At times it seems a satire on human physiognomy and at times through the
king of Brobdingnag, Swift ridicules the running of British parliament:
"My little friend Grildrig; you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country. You have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator. That laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.”
"My little friend Grildrig; you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country. You have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator. That laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.”
When Gulliver gives an account of the life in his own
country, the trade, the wars, the conflict in religion and the rift between the
political the political parties in the last century, the king remarks that
the history of Gulliver’s country “was only
a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions and
banishments” etc. The king mocks and
observes how contemptible is human grandeur which is being mimicked by such
diminutive insect as Gulliver and dismissively concludes that “the bulk of your natives to be the most
pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon
the surface of the earth.”
In the third part of Gulliver’s
travels, Swift takes us to an imaginary floating island of
Laputa, and there is a comic satire on human
intellect, misuse of his sagacity in science, philosophy and mathematics. Gulliver
observes that the inhabitants are wholly engrossed in their fruitless
meditation:
"Their
heads were all reclined either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes
turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith.”
Here Swift mocks at the
diverted intellect of scientists, academics, planners and all those who often
get lost in theoretical abstractions and exclude the more pragmatic aspects of
life. The various
researches that are in progress at the Academy of Projectors in Lagado are
fantastic and preposterous. Experiments are being made “to extract sunbeams out of cucumbers, to convert human excrement into
its original food, to build houses from the roof downwards to the foundation,
to obtain silk from cobwebs.”
And, finally, there is the grim and poignant satire on the human
longing for immortality which is symbolized by the Struldbrugs.
Gulliver
describes himself as “struck with inexpressible
delight” when he hears about the Struldbruggs, while Swift silently mocks
his naivety. When he hears how they must live and sees for himself their condition
he describes them as “the most
mortifying sight (he) ever beheld”
In the Fourth voyage to the country of Houyhnhnmms there is a
sharp pointed satire on human moral shortcomings. This voyage contains the most
corrosive and offensive satire on mankind. The sheer intensity
and violent rhetoric are simply overwhelming. Swift’s clinical dissection of
the utopian ideal is at best in the description of Houyhnhnms. At
first, these improbable horse-like creatures seem to be the embodiment of pure
reason. They know neither love nor grief nor lust nor ambition. These are
in sharp contrast with the loathsome Yahoos, brutes in human shape. Swift’s
impeachment of human nature becomes extremely cruel when he says:
“Upon
the whole, I never behold in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, nor one
against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy.”
Gulliver maintains:
“I
had hitherto concealed the secret of my dress, in order to distinguish myself
,as much as possible, from the cursed race of Yahoos.”
Houyhnhnmsland virtually constitutes Swift’s
utopia as it is governed by rational Houyhnhnms:
“Here was neither
physician to destroy my body, nor lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to
watch my words and actions…here
were no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, house-breakers…gamesters,
politicians,
wits…ravishers,
murderers, robbers …”
Swift ingeniously cracks the smug
self-confidence of the contemporary society and makes it clear that his chief
adversary is man's pride:
“When I behold a lump of deformity, and diseases
both of body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the
measures of my patience.”
Every satirist is at heart a reformist. Swift, also, wanted to reform the society by pinpointing the vices and shortcoming in it. "I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind…I write without any view to profit or praise", he concludes his travels on a philanthropic note.
Gulliver’s Travels as a Mock Utopia:
The tendency to hanker after a utopia
is a perfectly human desire. 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’s Republic of a city-state governed by the wise
and expressed most famously in English by Thomas
More’s Utopia.
The literal
meaning of Utopia is no place, nowhere. Thomas
More gave this term to his ideal commonwealth. Swift incorporates the key concepts of
Plato’s and More’s utopias into his own narrative, though his attitude toward
utopia is much more skeptical. One can see the different lands of Gulliver’s
travels as the parody of utopian literature. Hence Gulliver's Travels can be regarded as a mock Utopia.
One of the main
aspects about these 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.
Lilliputians similarly raise their offspring
collectively but its results are not exactly utopian, since Lilliputian are
torn between conspiracies, jealousies, and backstabbing. Nonetheless, they are
prone to making ‘official’ edicts concerning the lives of the citizens
and have well-established systems of granting their law-abiding citizens:
“Whoever there can bring sufficient
proof that he hath strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy-three moons,
hath a claim to certain privileges.”
Brogdingnag forms more
practical moral utopia than Lilliput. The Bobdingnagians are the epitome of
moral giants and their size shows that their morality is also gigantic. Brobdignagians,
however, are not without their flaws. Unlike Gulliver who always considered
Lilliputians to be the miniature men, Brobdingnagians cannot consider him a
miniature Brobdingnagian. Even the Brobdingnagian king treats him like a little
tiny fellow unaware of the grandiose ideas of the diminutive creature. The
maids of honour treat Gulliver as a plaything, undress themselves in front of
him, and titillate themselves with his naked body.
Swift’s clinical
dissection of the utopian ideal is at best in the description of the Houyhnhnms.
Swift tells us that the Houyhnhnms use
‘nature’ and ‘reason’ as their distinctive features. It is supported
by Gulliver’s assertion that Houyhnhnm society’s “grand maxim, is to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it.”
They
are in stark contrast with the loathsome Yahoos, brutes in human shape.
Indeed the
Houyhnhnms possess many laudable qualities. Gulliver finds an ideal society
organized entirely along rational lines. This emphasis on rationality leads
them to arrange all aspects of social life according to logical patterns. They
even brainwash Gulliver, erasing his human nature insofar as they can and
replacing it with a pure and abstract rationality like their own. But Gulliver, owing to his ‘unteachable’ Yahooish
nature, endeavours not to become a more rational human being, but to become a
Houyhnhnm itself. Thus it is clear that he has not learned the teachings of the
Houyhnhnms, for he does not behave rationally at all. “Man, of course, can never be a Houyhnhnm,
nor was meant to be, but the rational society of Houyhnhnmland nevertheless
offers a goal of moral perfection toward which he should strive” says
Beauchamp.
The utopian Houyhnhnms can be lauded as the manifestatation
of ‘man’s rational nature, untainted by
man’s bestial traits’ while Yahoos represent ‘man’s apish, stupid, unredeemed animal nature.’
Significantly,
Hobbes suggested that human nature is to be warlike in our pursuit of desires,
and so life will be, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. Locke would
later write a counter argument, that the nature of humankind is inclined more
toward cooperation, as opposed to Hobbes that saw humankind in a never-ending
state of war.
Wedel
suggests middle path, “… Swift is
clearly neither Hobbes nor Locke. Gulliver is neither Yahoo nor Houyhnhnm. He
cannot attain to the rational felicity of the Houyhnhnms. Neither has he sunk
to the level of the Yahoos.”
Swift
ingeniously suggests that the Houyhnhnms do not stand for perfected human
nature but they manifest pre- fallen state of innocent human
nature. The Houyhnhnms cannot be admired
or emulated because they are just doing what they inherently do. The same
reason is not inherent in Yahoos. The Houyhnhnms are ice-cold reason while the
Yahoos are fiery sensuality. Swift places Gulliver somewhere in between
Houyhnhnm and Yahoo poles. To Swift, human nature is both sensual and rational.
If the reason is extracted man becomes a lump of hideous instincts. Similarly
if passion is extinct what remains is a tame animal.
Houyhnhnms society is entirely instrumental serving only to
maintain itself without any other consideration. Their rationality is focused on the
preservation of their static ‘perfection’ and this instinct of
self-preservation overrules their every other impulse and consideration.
Houyhnhnms cannot see the world from any other perspective and all their
‘perfection’ is directed to this end.
Also,
the dichotomy of Houyhnhnms’ morality highlights the self validating nature of
their judgments. The Houyhnhnms preserve Yahoos because the benefits of
exterminating them do not clearly outweigh costs of keeping them alive. This
version of reason is coldly functional, almost Machiavellian, in the way the
end is seen to justify the means. The extermination of their yahoo foils mean
undermining their self-proclaimed status as the “Perfection of Nature.” They
even expel Gulliver their sole ardent supporter from the Yahoo race. This is
the state of their utopia, into which Gulliver stumbles, an eternal, unchanging
society built on some values that are intrinsic to the nature of creatures that
populate it.
Swift thus mocks
the very concept of utopia and makes it clear that nowhere an ideal state
exists because evil exists in every society in one form or the other. The world
of Utopia is doomed to remain a dream in this world because, "whether man is three inches or three
miles high, he remains a man—a
presumptuous zero.”