Discuss satire in Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels - Part IV.

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                                                                                                                                     Zaino

Jennifer Zaino

Eng 8/ Sec 1

Prof. Rosenblum

Researched Analysis Essay ~ First finished paper

         In Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels – Part IV (“A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms”, satire is one of the genres that is used. Swift uses satire to show the flaws of humanity, and the flaws of society. The ‘Yahoo’ that exists within each of us is demonstrated and is an attack on the essence of man and how man, in the form of the horse-like Houyhnhnms, could be elevated to reach his ultimate potential.

        While the man-like Yahoos desire “power and riches,” and suffer the “terrible effects of lust, intemperance, malice and envy” (Swift 249), the Houyhnhnms find these flaws so alien that Gulliver has great difficulty even making them understand the concepts. Man is not a reasonable creature because the want of power and money gets in the way of rational thinking, and of what is right and wrong.

        One of the many attacks that Swift directs at society is that man must lie and twist the truth to get what he wants. The “faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood, and so universally practiced among human creatures” (Swift 247) was totally foreign to the Houyhnhnms. Lying undermines the very purpose of speech—to make us understand one another. In his effort to explain European mankind to these noble creatures Gulliver is made by Swift to satirize his own society. Must men lie and twist the truth to get what they want? Another way Gulliver shows the flaws of society is by explaining the need for government and laws. Men cannot come to an agreement if there are no laws and government to rule them.

        Gulliver manages to rid himself of the “habit of lying, shuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, so deeply rooted in the very souls of all my species; especially the Europeans” (Swift 234) only because of the instruction and example of the Houyhnhnms. This attacks the ‘Yahoo’ in each of us. So man does have the ability to tell the truth, though we constantly deceive others to get what we want.  Is it something that is so deep inside of us that we cannot change even if we wanted to?

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        What did the Yahoos look like? “Their heads and breasts were covered in thick hair, some frizzled and others lank; they had beards like goats…” (Swift 237). Shave and clothe them and they look like Europeans. What, then, is the essence of man? How ironic it is that a human being could be so animal-like, not taking care of themselves and acting irrationally, while the horse-like Houyhnhnms were so superior.

        Before he understood the relationship of the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver was “amazed to see such actions and behavior in brute beasts; and concluded with myself that if ...

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