張文瑄 Guilliver’s Travels

Jonathan Swift’s Guilliver’s Travels describes Guilliver’s voyages to four different destinations each meeting unusual kinds of people. In Liliput, Gulliver comes across minute people, whereas in contrast, Brobdingnag, is a land full of giants. Laputa has people devoted to music, arts, and mathematics, but are utterly useless. It is a perfect satire of the Royal Society of England with philosophers, mathematicians who do no good for society. Finally, Houyhnhnmland is filled with Yahoos who are filthy: "Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable and animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy" (Swift, 215), but as time goes on, Guillver slowly relates himself to them. He states: "my horror and astonishment are not to be described, when I observed, in this abdominal animal, a perfect human figure" (Swift, 220). These four destinations are four satirical themes that Jonathan Swift expresses as his view of humankind.

Through Gulliver’s Travels, Swift criticizes humankind through the characters in his book. He views humankind through negative dimensions depicting humans’ sinfulness, corruption, and pettiness. I agree with Swift’s view of humankind. Through Gulliver’s encounter with the Lilliputians, Swift aims to symbolize humanity’s conspiracies, pride, and pettiness. The people of Liliput fight over foolish things. Their enemies, the “Big Enders” believe that an egg should be cracked from the “big end”, while the Lilliputians believe that an egg should be cracked from the “little end.” And thus, this pettiness sparks a never-ending war. This also symbolizes humanity’s recklessness in resorting to violence and cruelty to solve problems. The politicians in Liliput kill as a form of solution, such as getting rid of the King’s mother. Many wars in today’s time and from the past were avoidable. Wars came into existence because of humanity’s greed, selfish ambitions, and decision to resort to violence.

In Houyhnhnmland, the society of horses portrays an ideal society that humans aim to obtain but never achieve. It is a contrasting realm that depicts the opposite of the negative aspects of human society. In this land, there are no vices, conflicts, and disagreements. Unlike humans, who resort to violence and unwise solutions to solve problems, the Houyhnhnms use reason to solve problems. They are very polite; always silent before speaking. On the contrary, humans lean toward the side of rudeness, and impulsiveness. In Houyhnhnmland, there is no existence of lies and they have no word for evil, government, war and power. In contrast, humans are well known for their capability to deceive, lie, cheat, and steal. Many of the governments all around the world are conceal money and power mongrels. I couldn’t help but to agree with Swift that humans, too, are a resemblance of the Yahoos. In essence, Houyhnhnmland is a perfection of nature used by Swift to contrast the tainted and distorted society of humankind.

In conclusion, Swift holds a cynical view of humankind, protrayed in each of the four destinations that Guillver travels to. All these criticisms are directed to England, but more specifically to the government, society, science, religion and man.