Gulliver and the Houyhnhnms

(Ok, this is very late.  Sorry about that.  The past two months have been so hectic that I've had trouble keeping on schedule.)

The fourth and final part of 'Gulliver's Travels' recounts his visit to the land of the Houyhnhnms, which from now on I will refer to as 'H.'.  This time he isn't shipwrecked but cast off the ship by some pirates.  He washes up on an unknown land and encounters some savage primate beasts.  He is rescued by some horses and we soon learn what the deal is with this voyage.
The land of the H. is one where the relationship between man and horse has been reversed.  The horses are sentient and in command.  The men are savage in the truest sense, in a way that we would regard as sub-human.  They are called Yahoos.
Gulliver is adopted by one of the H. and after some time he learns their language.  Swift tells us that the H. are noble and just.  In fact, they're so noble and just that Gulliver soon becomes ashamed that he is merely a man from a human civilization.  He's also horrified by the comparison to himself and the Yahoos. 
In time, Gulliver sadly tells the H. just how badly the horses back in Europe are treated.  When he tells them of the process of gelding them, it's enough to make you wince and fear for Gulliver's safety.  He is soon spirited out of the country though by his master/owner.  He returns to England and finds the presence of other people bothersome.  Instead, he prefers the company of his own horses.

This section is weaker than the first three.  The H. are put on a high pedestal that frankly sounds undeserved.  In fact, this section makes reflection on the previous voyages a little sad, especially that of Brobdingnag.  They too were nearly too good to be true.  Did they deserve that, or was that also a simple authorial trick?
Swift's contemporaries thought that the last section of Gulliver was proof that he was slipping mentally.  I don't care for that kind of explanation, because it allows the reader to simply dismiss arguments instead of meeting them head on.  But I think it's obvious that the fourth voyage isn't up to the standard of the first three. 
There are some interesting arguments to be made regarding the treatment of animals.  I don't know how much Swift had to do with popularizing such arguments but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that it was quite a bit.  We treat horses much differently than we do men, because, well, there are big differences.  We recognize men as sentient in a way that horses clearly aren't.  If we reverse those roles, then of course the men (Yahoos) would be treated differently.  And quite rightly.  

Gulliver in Laputa

Gulliver's third voyage out has him shipwrecked again.  This time he washes up on an uninhabited island.  He is alone, but not for long.  Soon another island glides down from the sky.  He catches their attention and is brought aboard.  He learns that the flying island is named Laputa.
Gulliver soon finds that "the people of their island had their ears adapted to hear"the music of the spheres, which always played at certain periods...".  They live a mental life, with their heads both literally and figuratively in the clouds.  In fact, they get so lost in thought that they employ a system of servants to flap their mouths and ears when it is time to speak or listen. 
Laputa is the capitol of a group of islands.  Swift has an interesting explanation for how the island floats, an embedded giant magnet like rock.  Whoever rules the island, rules their neighbors, since the airborne position is an enormous threat.  Interestingly, the women of Laputa are desperate to get down to the ground.
Gulliver gets down to solid ground as he is allowed to visit the island Balinbarbi.  This is a land that has prosperity and strange mixes of desolation.  He soon finds out that forty years prior, a group of men went up to Laputa.  After five months they returned with ideas on improving everything.  Unfortunately:

The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair; . . . 

Some resisted:

that some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same [stuck with the old ways], but were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art, ignorant and ill common-wealth's men, preferring their own ease and sloth before the general improvement of their country."

What a perfect description of the people who think they can simply theorize better ways without practical experience.  Also a great description of the way they think of those who are skeptical.  Gulliver then travels to the academy where he finds out all of the wonderful research that is going.  I highly recommend this section (book three, chapters five and six) as it is simply hilarious. 
After some time, Gulliver goes to another island, Luggnagg.  The interesting thing there is the occasional birth of an immortal, named a Struldbrug.  Gulliver thinks this would be a wonder, but instead it's a curse.  The Stuldbrugs grow old and senile and frankly the whole deal sounds awful.
Eventually Gulliver gets to Japan where he can catch passage on a Dutch ship.  He has to do some fancy footwork to avoid 'stamping on a cross', a custom the Japanese have enforced on the Dutch to try and keep Christians out.  He succeeds and finally gets back home.

Gulliver in Brobdingnag

After having been home for a few months, our narrator Gulliver goes to sea again.  This time he washes up in a land of giants, the land of Brobdingnag.  The contrast from Lilliput is clear and we get to experience both sides of the giant situation.  Swift is terribly clever here as he thinks through what it must be like to actually live with creatures that are so much bigger than yourself.  For instance, he finds all of them ugly because he can see every skin blemish clearly. 
Gulliver becomes something of a sideshow exhibit.  He is taken around to all the other towns even though he finds the travel exhausting.  His fortune changes when he is sold to the king and queen.  They keep him in one spot and try to learn what he is.  At first the kings advisers doubt that he is sentient but he finally convinces them that he can think and act with will and judgment.
Not that opinions of him are all that positive.  After explaining the various political parties of England to him, the Prince says:

"how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could mimicked by such diminutive insects as I: and yet," says he, "I dare engage these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honor; they contrive little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they live, they fight, the dispute, they cheat, they betray!"

The idea of an elected parliament also gets questioned:

He laughed at my "odd kind of arithmetic," as he was pleased to call it, "in reckoning the numbers of our people, by a computation drawn from several sects among us, in religion and politics." He said, "he knew no reason why those, who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public, should be obliged to change or should not be obliged to conceal them. And as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials."  

I wonder how sympathetic Swift was to these views?  As Milton pointed out, there is a huge difference between speech and poison.  Swift himself dealt with tyranny and censorship so it's hard for me to think that these thoughts represented his own.
Eventually Gulliver is picked up by an eagle and carried out to sea.  There he is rescued by a ship and eventually returns home to England.  This won't be his last voyage!

Gulliver in Lilliput

The whole story of Gulliver's Travels is set up with a small framing device in which another man vouches for Gulliver's honesty.  Gulliver then defends himself and tells the reader that various errors have crept in pertaining to spelling and chronology.  This works well as a literary device to suggest to the reader that the work really isn't fiction and shouldn't be read as such. 

The first voyage is to Lilliput.  The ship is wrecked and our hero is washed up on a beach.  He wakes to find that hundreds of tiny men have tied him to the ground.  This is one of the most famous images in all of literature and I'm sure there is a thesis in explaining how such an odd event is somehow so universal. 
Gulliver tries to move and the Lilliputians attack him with arrows.  They're very small but they can still damage him so he gives in.  They develop friendly relations but they still keep him in custody.  They provide him with food and shelter, even though it creates difficulties for them.  He comes to friendly terms with the king and learns much about Lilliput.
Swift uses the 'stranger in a strange land' set up to create fictitious customs and laws in each land that he visits.  This is often set in contrast to the ways of England that he left behind.  In Lilliput:

• They have a challenge system in their law.  If an accused person is found to be innocent then their accuser is put to death.  The wrongly accused is also given quadruple recompense for hardship and loss of time.
• They treat fraud as a worse crime than theft 'for the allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning'.  
• They have a reward system in which whenever someone can prove that they have strictly observed the laws for a period of 'seventy-three moons', they will enjoy special privileges and get a sum of money.  The Lilliputians were aghast that England only had laws that punished and none that rewarded.
• People of great morals were given more respect than those with ability.
• Only believers in 'Divine Providence' could hold public station because kings are given rights and privileges from Providence.  That belief must be in place or that authority cannot be respected.

There are other laws and customs regarding how children should be raised but they're too long to excerpt.

Gulliver gets into trouble when he tries to help out.  A fire starts in one wing of the palace and it soon grows out of control.  Gulliver, having drank quite a bit of wine, simply pees on the palace and puts the fire out.  Everything is saved, but in a very bad way.  This was seen as an allusion to some actions of the Tories when they were in power, having done good things in a bad way.  For myself, I was reminded most of Rabelais.
He then falls out of favor and flees, fearing for his life.  Gulliver goes to a neighboring kingdom and seeks asylum for a short period of time.  As luck would have it, he is able to find a boat from normal sized humans and he refits it and eventually finds his way back to England.

Biography of Swift

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin in 1667.  His father died shortly before he was born and his mother chose to return to England, where she was from.  He was given over to his uncle to be cared for.  He attended school in Dublin and received a B.A. from Trinity College.  While working on his master's degree, he was forced back to England during the 'Glorious Revolution'.  His mother got him a position with Sir William Temple, a diplomat of some importance.
Swift bounced back and forth a bit from Temple's employ to Ireland.  In 1694 he became an ordained priest and was assigned to a parish in a small remote part of County Antrim, Ireland.  While there he apparently had some sort of romantic encounter with a woman named Jane Waring.  This didn't go well and in 1696 he returned to Temple.  While there he wrote his famous 'Battle of the Books'.
Temple died in 1699 and Swift was at odds for some time.  He pursued various positions, including a secretary spot with then King William.  Nothing worked and he ended up with a very small congregation some twenty miles outside of Dublin.  While there he traveled back to London from time to time and published an anonymous political pamplet.  In the following years he published some other work, 'The Tale of the Tub' and the 'Battle of the Books'.
Swift's skill as a writer began to get attention and he became friends with Alexander Pope and others.  He also became more politically active.  He became a promiment Tory.  Swift also made enemies.  Of note, he angered Queen Anne by publicly noting which women of her bedchamber she could trust and whom she could not(!).
When the Whigs came back into power, Swift moved again to Ireland.  He continued to write, and in 1729 published the wonderful 'Modest Proposal'.  While there he tangled with the Irish judiciary.  He was obviously not a man who feared a fight, or at least he didn't know how to stay out of one.
Around this time he wrote 'Gulliver's Travels'.  It was published anonymously, but Swift was well known as the author.  It sold and sold and sold and was quickly translated into French and German.  It was even pirated back into Ireland.
Some time in the 1730's, it appears that Swift became insane.  His friends were worried that he would hurt himself.  He was declared not to be of 'sound mind and body' and in 1741 he had a guardian appointed.  In 1742 he suffered a stroke, causing great swelling to his left eye.  He didn't speak for a year.  He finally died in 1745.  Years before he had composed an epitaph in Latin.  W.B. Yeats translated it like this:

Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.

Reading for October

Just one, but it's a good one.


October
Swift: Gulliver's Travels link

Reading for October

Just one for next month:


October
Swift: Gulliver's Travels link