Gulliver’s Travels: “I never saw any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts”

One thing readers of Gulliver’s Travels must all notice is that the novel becomes darker and darker as the story progresses, especially in the final section. In Part 1, when Gulliver ends up at Lilliput and meets its tiny inhabitants, the book feels like an adventure story, a fairytale. Part 2 takes a dark turn when Gulliver gets to Brobdingnag, and becomes not only a money-making curiosity but also a sex toy by the giants of the island. 

This is Gulliver watching a nurse—a giant—breastfeeding:  

“I must confess no object ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous breast […]. This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying glass; where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and coarse, and ill-coloured.” (P.2, ch.1) 

Is that how Swift sees human beings? Gross like the nudes of Lucian Freud? 

In one chapter, Gulliver tells the King of Brobdingnag about his world—England in particular—and these are the words from the King that end the chapter: 

“‘… But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude 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.’” (P.2, ch.6) 

Jeez, take it easy. 

Part 3 could be read for amusement, as Gulliver travels to the Floating Island of Laputa and its kingdom Barnibarbi, and Jonathan Swifts satirises the pointless experiments of his day, but the sense of mockery and annoyance is there. The tone becomes darker when Gulliver learns about the existence of struldbrugs, people who live forever—how wonderful! Gulliver thinks, talking excitedly about all the things he would do, were he also immortal—only to realise with disappointment that his vision of immortal life supposes “a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigour”, which is not the case with the struldbrugs. They “pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it”. 

“‘If a struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.’” (P.3, ch.10) 

Isn’t that such a bitter view of life and marriage? 

(No, do not be mistaken—I love life but do not wish for immortality—even with youth, health, and vigour, a life forever is my idea of hell).

But Part 4 is where it gets especially dark—there is an overwhelming sense of disgust with humanity. Here Gulliver is in a utopia of the Houyhnhnms, intelligent horses ruled by reason. The island is also inhabited by Yahoos—brutes very much like human beings, but without clothes, culture, and civilisation—they are filthy, stinky, and repulsive savages, driven by greed, cruelty, and other vices. Gulliver tries to distinguish himself from the Yahoos, wearing clothes, keeping himself clean, learning the language of the Houyhnhnms and communicating with them, but the Houyhnhnms nevertheless see him as a Yahoo, just with “some rudiments of reason”, and it’s clear that Jonathan Swift—or at least Gulliver—feels a strong disgust with humanity and sees human beings as greedy, irrational, vicious brutes. Just look at how Gulliver talks about his countrymen: 

“I replied ‘that England (the dear place of my nativity) was computed to produce three times the quantity of food more than its inhabitants are able to consume […]. But, in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, whence, in return, we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity, that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, flattering, suborning, forswearing, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, freethinking, and the like occupations:’ every one of which terms I was at much pains to make him understand.” (P.4, ch.6) 

Not only so, Gulliver later says: 

“When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or the human race in general, I considered them, as they really were, Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift of speech; but making no other use of reason, than to improve and multiply those vices whereof their brethren in this country had only the share that nature allotted them. When I happened to behold the reflection of my own form in a lake or fountain, I turned away my face in horror and detestation of myself, and could better endure the sight of a common Yahoo than of my own person.” (P.4, ch.10) 

One can of course argue that the misanthropy is Gulliver’s, not Swift’s—Gulliver has clearly gone mad at the end, and Swift includes a kind man, Pedro de Mendez, who rescues and helps Gulliver after his expulsion from the land of the Houyhnhnms—but there is such harshness, such a strong sense of revulsion and repugnance, and so much mention of “gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics, tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtuosos; […] fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling whores…” and so on that I can’t help thinking that Swift partly shares the loathing for (much of) humanity, that he shares the horror for the human body and diseases. 

But do I think that Swift sees the land of Houyhnhnms as an ideal? Most likely not. As George Orwell points out in his essay “Politics v. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travels”, it is a dreary world, a backward country, a totalitarian society—but unlike Orwell, I don’t think that Swift doesn’t know it—he surely knows that the Houyhnhnms are not as lovely and virtuous as Gulliver keeps saying they are—the Houyhnhnms subjugate and later decide to castrate the Yahoos, and even among themselves, they have a caste system that is racial in character. Gulliver in Part 4 is unreliable. 

Gulliver’s Travels is a brilliant novel, inventive, and full of interesting ideas.