“Swift’s Misanthropy in
Gulliver's Travels”
Introduction:
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 "rations cap ax”,
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 labor
is “to vex the world rather than divert it”.
Critic:
1. Thackeray attacked his book claiming it to be “filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, and obscene.”
Critic:
1. Thackeray attacked his book claiming it to be “filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, and obscene.”
2. Walter Scott condemns Swift’s
attack on mankind as “severe, unjust and degrading.”
3. 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 pretenses, to show men what they are, and to teach them
what they ought to be!”
Magnifying Mirror:
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.”
Lilliput:
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.
Brobdingnag:
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."
Laputa:
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”
Houyhnhnms:
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 proportional 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.”
In short:
Gulliver perceives only the
Yahoo and is repelled by Captain Don Pedro de Mendez’s clothes, food, and odor
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 misanthropic views:
“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.”
In nut the shell:
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.
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