Satire in Part III

Swift’s satires in the third book shift focus from ethic and political aspects to academic field,
since most part of this section contributes to description of impractical scientific
experiments and workings of certain things. For instance, descriptions Gulliver makes about
the technique used to move the island are convoluted. Also, “The method of assigning
letters to parts of a mechanism and then describing the movement of these parts from one
point to another resembles the mechanistic philosophical and scientific descriptions of
Swift’s time.” From these, Swift again successfully satirizes specialized language in academic
field.

Laputa is more complex than Lilliput or Brobdingnag because its strangeness is not based on
differences of size but instead on the primacy of abstract theoretical concerns over concrete
practical concerns in Laputan culture. However, physical power is still an important factor in
Laputa. Here, power is exercised not through physical size but through technology. The
government floats over the rest of the kingdom, using technology to control its subjects.
The floating island represents the distance between the government and the people it
governs. The king is oblivious to the real concerns of the people below. He has never even
been there. The noble men and scientists of the island are also far removed from the people
and their concerns. Abstract theory dominates all aspects of Laputan life, from language to
architecture to geography. Find out more

Swift continues his mockery of academics by describing the projects carried out in the cities
below Laputa. The academy serves to create entirely useless projects while the people stare
outside its walls. Each project described, such as the extraction of sunbeams from a
cucumber, is not only false but also purposeless. Even if its scientific foundation were
correct, it would still serve no real purpose for the people meant to gain from it. The result
is a society in which science is promoted for no real reason and time is wasted as a matter of
course. This again is the use of dramatic irony where the reader knows certainly that those
scientific projects are a waste of time while the scientists in the story are striving for success
of the experiments.

Satire in Part IV

In the fourth part, disgust for human is expressed to such an extreme that readers often feel
uncomfortable reading this section. Swift deflates humankind very straightforwardly by
portraying the Yahoos humanlike and associating humankind with Yahoos. Gulliver tells the
horse that in his country, the Yahoos are the governing creatures. Moreover, after he
introduces Europe to his horse-like master, he admits that Gulliver’s humans have different
systems of learning, law, government, and art but says that their natures are not different
from those of the Yahoos.

Situational irony occurs when there are conflicts between characters and situation, or
contradiction between readers’ expectation and actual outcomes of an event, or deviation
between personal endeavors and objective facts. The plot development in Gulliver’s Travels
is often the opposite of what readers expect. For example, in this part, Gulliver’s
crewmembers mutiny when they are near Leeward Islands and he is abandoned in an
unknown land–the country of the Houyhnhnms. The Houyhnhnms are horse-like, physically
strong and virtuous beings. Gulliver is regarded as likable as a yahoo by them. He tries to
prove to the Houyhnhnms that he is not a Yahoo in nature although he looks like one. He
talks at length about wars fought for “religious reasons”, England’s legal system, and his
great love of his native country. However, the more he tries to cover up human flaws, the
more they are known when he is questioned by the Houyhnhnms. The readers’ expectation
may be Gulliver’s stay in the country of the Houyhnhnms for his feverish passion for the
Houyhnhnms. However, at last, they conclude that Gulliver is a yahoo in disguise because he
has all traits a yahoo possesses and refuse his request to live there.

Find out more

Gulliver undergoes a stage of transform in book four, where he develops a love for the
Houyhnhnms to the point that he does not want to return to humankind. He has an identity
crisis although he is not aware of it. He thinks of his friends and family as Yahoolike, but
forgets that he comes from “English Yahoos”. The Houyhnhnms think that Gulliver is some
kind of Yahoo, though superior to the rest of his species. He asks them to stop using that
word to refer to him, and they consent. This once again expresses disgust for human.

A Critical appraisal of Book IV Or how is reason presented in Book IV.

In an often quoted letter to Pope Swift wrote: “I have got materials toward a treatise proving the
falsity of that definition [of Man as] animal rationale, and to show it should be only rationis capax.
Upon this great foundation of misanthropy . . . the whole building of my Travels is erected”. When
Gulliver first encounters the Houyhnhnms he regards them as “brute beasts” and “animals”, but this
perspective is soon changed when the Houyhnhnms in turn think of Gulliver as “a brute animal” and
wonder about the “marks of a rational creature” they discover in him, namely his ability to speak.
The stage is set up for Gulliver’s humiliating experience that there are beings far more rational than
he is who view him as a Yahoo, the most detestable animal they know, that “seemed in his words
and actions to discover some glimmerings of Reason”. This situation finally leads to Gulliver’s
conversion to the Houyhnhnm view of the world. “At first”, he confesses, “I did not feel that natural
awe which the Yahoos and all other animals bear towards them [the Houyhnhnms], but it grew upon
me by degrees”.

When Gulliver starts to inform his master about politics and society in his native country everything
that might count as the invention of a rational creature and therefore demonstrate the reason of
Man is dismissed and exposed as the product of passion, desire, lust and malice. The little reason
Man might possess is not strong enough to work against these powerful drives. Instead, it is
perverted and abused by them to serve their goals. This leads to the even more humiliating
judgement that reason does not make Man better than Yahoos but worse, since it only increases the
ability to satisfy desires and act out malice. Reason in such a creature is no improvement at all.

Gulliver’s account of human civilization does not cause a re-evaluation of the Houyhnhnms’ opinion
of his nature but a confirmation of their view of him as a Yahoo. Instead of distinguishing him from
Yahoos they use his information to explain the mysteries of Yahoo nature. Gulliver’s host is
convinced “that the dissensions of those brutes in his country were owing to the same cause with
ours, as I [Gulliver] had described them.” Like the people in Gulliver’s country they display greed, a
passion for war and fighting, an unhealthy desire for alcohol and all kinds and especially huge
quantities of food, a very similar system of “government” based on mischievous passion, even a
similar disposition for depression (“spleen”). Yahoo and Man also share strong sexual desires but
differ from each other in what Gulliver calls “unnatural appetites” which leads him again to the
humiliating conclusion that reason does not make Man better than Yahoos but worse: “these politer
pleasures”, he observes, “are entirely the productions of art and reason”.

Houyhnhnms, in contrast, are completely different from Yahoos and Man. Because they do not know
the human amount of passion and desire, they do not develop any form of personal attachment to
fellow beings or objects. Their marriages are based on rational motives, sex is confined to
procreation and not connected with lust and all goods are distributed equally among the population.
Since the Houyhnhnms are governed by reason they have no need for an institutionalized
government that rules over them except a “Representative Council” that meets every fourth year
and is concerned with the application of reason to current problems.

In her article ‘If Houyhnhnms Were Horses’ Sahra Wintle observes a strong resemblance between
Houyhnhnms and humans. She notes for example that during the first encounter between Gulliver
and the Houyhnhnms “the houyhnhnm’s behaviour . . . is . . . that of a man inspecting a horse”.5 The
Houyhnhnm looks at Gulliver’s hands and feet, walks around the human and finally takes him home,
exactly in the manner of Man buying a horse.

Picture of 18th Century British Society as depicted in Book III and Book IV of
Gulliver’s Travels.
By compiling some of Swift’s satires, we can understand why it ought to be considered a novel for
adults and eager readers instead of a comic fable for children. Even though it may pass unperceived
by most of the readers, mainly for those who the culture is based in the English tradition, there are
severe criticisms on English values, people and institutions in Gullivers Travels. Furthermore, by
means of Swift’s satires, we can grasp some of the tensions, issues and discussions perpetrated in
the 18th -century England.

In the third part of the book – A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnag, Glubbdubdrib, and Kapan,
Lemuel finds himself on a floating island, named Laputa. According to Kabak, in this dystopian satire,
Swift highlights his skepticism regarding the Enlightenment thinkers through the Laputans, as we can
perceive in the following fragment: “It seems, the Minds of these People are so taken up with
intense Speculations, that they neither can speak, or attend to Discourses of other, without being
roused by some external Taction upon the Organs of Speech and Hearing” (SWIFT, 1996, p. 114).
This is Swift’s first criticism on science and on English institutions, describing that the Laputans minds
and bodies do not work together. In order to Laputans connect mind and body, they have to be
stimulated by “flappers”, instruments to call physical attention, as their minds are heavily concerned
with thinking.

In order to weave Gulliver a garment, the tailor takes his “altitude by a Quadrant, and then with a
Rule and Compasses, described the Dimensions and Out-Lines of my whole Body; […] and in six Days
brought my Cloth very ill made, and quite out of shape” due to a miscalculations. This passion to
reason is a mockery made by Swift (1996) to the rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries in which Locke’s theories on natural religion were popular as well as Descartes’ theories on
the use of reason. When Lemuel leaves Laputa, he goes to Balnibarbi where he is permitted to visit
the Grand Academy of Lagado, where he meets different scholars who are trying, for example, to
extract the sunlight from cucumbers or to make food out of human excrement. As it is possible to
perceive, the scholars met by Gulliver have their studies based on meticulous calculations and yet in
practice they have no use, and this may be taken as a mockery to the eighteenth-century science.

Tired of Lagado and Balnibarbi, Gulliver goes to the island of Glubbdubdrib, a land of magicians who
have the power to summon up de dead that usually try to correct the misinformation spread by
History over the years. According to Lund, in this episode, “Gulliver draws attention to the size,
strength and virtue of the Ancients in contrast to the corruption that has afflicted the Moderns”.
Swift keeps on introducing more literary heroes and, by meeting them, Lemuel discovers how much
the world has declined and how much of what passes for history is actually a group of lies, as the
heroes start to correct the modern History.

In the fourth part of the book – A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms – Gulliver meets the
Houyhnhnms – horses with super rational souls and high moral standards – and compared them
with the dirty and depraved Yahoos that are in fact human beings when his hate at the mankind
reaches its climax. With regard to the horses, Gulliver points out that “upon the whole, the
Behaviour of these Animals was so orderly and rational, so acute and judicious”. During his first
meeting with the Houyhnhnms, he states: “while He and I were thus employed, another Horse came
up; who applying himself to the first in a very formal Manner, they gently struck each other Right
Hoof before, neighing several times by Turns, and varying the Sound, which seemed to be almost
articulate. Gulliver moves on saying: “the two Creatures stood silent while I spoke, seeming to listen
with great Attention; and when I had ended, they neighed frequently towards each other, as if they
were engaged in serious Conversation”.

On the other hand, the very first creatures Gulliver had actually met in this land were the Yahoos. As
Lemuel describes, “their Heads and Breasts were covered with a thick Hair, some frizzled and others
lank, they had Beards like Goats, and long Ridge of Hair down their Backs, and fore Parts of their
Legs and Feet; but the rest of their bodies were bare”. So far, Gulliver thought he would not be
compared to the Yahoos, as they were so savage and rude, until the day he was confused with one
of them. Then, After some experience in the land of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver confesses: “all the
Knowledge I have of any Value, was acquired by the Lectures I received from my Master, and from
hearing the Discourses of him and his Friends; to which I should be prouder to listen than to dictate
to the greatest and wisest Assembly in Europe”. Put in a simple way, the Houyhnhnms are animals/
horses, hence, they are not humans. These physical difference parallels the abstract differences, as
they are completely rational, innocent, and undepraved. Men, on the other hand, are capable of
reasoning, but are also passionate, proud, and depraved.