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 alleged misanthropy reaches its
crescendo in the fourth 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 epiphany occurs he identifies
himself with the detestable Yahoos:
“My horror and astonishment are not to be
described, when I observed in this abominable animal, a perfect human figure.”
The theme of Gulliver’s hatred of mankind is
climaxed when he told he must leave Houyhnhnmland. He exclaims “that the certain prospect of an unnatural
death was the least of my evils, for…how could I think with temper of passing
my days among Yahoos”. Thus Gulliver would rather die than live among his
own race of Yahoos. Nonetheless, he must leave. But 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 as he 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.