Gulliver's Travel

After reading Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, I would assume that he was a misanthrope.


Based on the first chapter A Voyage to Lilliput, Lemuel Gulliver, the main character, travelled to a country that its residences are only one-twelfth size of normal human begins. Although the author was aimed at satirising the court of George I in this chapter, I would propose that he was simultaneously larking at human beings’ self-importance and arrogance as the author illustrated the Lilliputians are smaller than so-called normal humans even thought they have a government that works for their country just like the Great Britain.

Yet, the second chapter A Voyage to Brobdingnag, Gulliver was abandoned and found by a famer who is 72 feet tall. In my viewpoint, I would suggest the author was depicting humans’ littleness and fragility since humans become Lilliputians in Brobdingnag. Moreover, Gulliver was put in a travelling box, which, I would recommend, is served as the cage that human beings build for their pets or beasts. As the story going on, we could tell the unimportance of that travelling box since it was carried by a monkey and in the epilogue of this chapter it was seized and dropped by a an eagle.

The last chapter A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Lemuel Gulliver travelled to land that is governed by Houyhnhnms, horses or “the perfection of nature.” How come horse will become the perfection of the nature? From this perspective of the author, I would suggest that he was tended to be a misanthrope. Moreover, when Gulliver saw the deformed creatures “Yahoos” which are human beings in their base form, he showed his disgust and antipathy to them. After being expelled from the country of the Houyhnhnms, people he met, in his eyes, are all Yahoos. In the end, he went back to England, becoming a recluse, avoiding getting touch with his family and spend much time talking to horses.

According to those behaviors, I would promote the author was convinced that human beings are animal rationis capax, an animal capable of reason, instead of Animal Rationale, a rational animal. Instead of being born with it, reason is something human beings will obtain after receiving education and social experience. Based on his theory, at the beginning of our lives, we are merely Yahoos. In his letter to Pope, he mentioned that he loves individuals but hate the animals called human beings. In my point of view, I would assume that the definition of individual is not only a human who is well-educated, but also is rational and has independent thinking and emotions.