Gulliver’s Travels: the skins of Yahoos

I’m currently reading Robinson Crusoe, but still thinking about Gulliver’s Travels, especially Part 4. 

Here’s something I’ve noticed. 

“I had hitherto concealed the secret of my dress, in order to distinguish myself, as much as possible, from that cursed race of Yahoos; but now I found it in vain to do so any longer. Besides, I considered that my clothes and shoes would soon wear out, which already were in a declining condition, and must be supplied by some contrivance from the hides of Yahoos, or other brutes; whereby the whole secret would be known.” (P.4, ch.3) 

(emphasis mine) 

Gulliver speaks of using “the hides of Yahoos”, but at this point, he doesn’t see the Yahoos as humans and doesn’t see himself as a Yahoo—all he knows is that the Houyhnhnms think he may be a Yahoo—and he must do all he can to identify himself as a human, different from the Yahoos, because “Upon the whole, I never beheld, in all my travels, so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy.” (P.4, ch.1)

But things gradually change. 

“My master had ordered a room to be made for me, after their manner, about six yards from the house: the sides and floors of which I plastered with clay, and covered with rush-mats of my own contriving. I had beaten hemp, which there grows wild, and made of it a sort of ticking; this I filled with the feathers of several birds I had taken with springes made of Yahoos’ hairs, and were excellent food. […] I soled my shoes with wood, which I cut from a tree, and fitted to the upper-leather; and when this was worn out, I supplied it with the skins of Yahoos dried in the sun.” (P.4, ch.10) 

Now it’s different—Gulliver uses the hairs and skins of Yahoos in order to be like the Houyhnhnms, the same way he trots and sounds like a horse—at this point, he sees human beings as “Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilised, and qualified with the gift of speech.” But the Houyhnhnms see him as an outsider, the same way the Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians have done in the past, and expel him. 

“… in six weeks time with the help of the sorrel nag, who performed the parts that required most labour, I finished a sort of Indian canoe, but much larger, covering it with the skins of Yahoos, well stitched together with hempen threads of my own making. My sail was likewise composed of the skins of the same animal; but I made use of the youngest I could get, the older being too tough and thick; and I likewise provided myself with four paddles. […] 

I tried my canoe in a large pond, near my master’s house, and then corrected in it what was amiss; stopping all the chinks with Yahoos’ tallow, till I found it staunch, and able to bear me and my freight; and, when it was as complete as I could possibly make it, I had it drawn on a carriage very gently by Yahoos to the sea-side, under the conduct of the sorrel nag and another servant.” (ibid.) 

Is that not disturbing? The Yahoos are not quite humans—Gulliver doesn’t think of them as humans in his first encounter with them, before the influence of the Houyhnhnms—but they are similar, too similar for comfort, and even Gulliver himself sees human beings including his own family as Yahoos—then why does he happily use the skins of Yahoos?

Is it simply misanthropy and madness? Or is it more about Gulliver absorbing the Houyhnhnms’ hatred of the Yahoos, submitting to their totalitarian society, and internalising all that repugnance and aversion?

It is unsettling. As Jonathan Swift himself wrote in a 1725 letter to Alexander Pope, he wrote in order to “vex the world rather than divert it.”