What You’ll Love about… Gulliver’s Travels Part IV: Voyage to the Land of the Houyhnhnms

Sawrey Gilpin, “Gulliver Taking His Final Leave of the Land of the Houyhnhnms.” Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Part IV of Gulliver’s Travels is based on an interesting inversion. Instead of humans being the dominant life form and subjugating animals, it is the opposite between the Houyhnhnms and their humanoid livestock, the Yahoos. As silly as it seems, it raises interesting questions about the natural order of things. What is it about humans that makes them different from other animals? What would humanity look like in its natural state, without the benefit of technology, culture, language, etc.? Humans have been patting themselves on the back for a long time now for being the dominant life form on the planet. First, that might not be true depending on how you look at it, and it might not be a good thing even if it’s true. Second, people might have misidentified the qualities that make humans dominant. Swift suggests that the qualities people have been pointing to that distinguish them from animals and make them superior (reason, intelligence, ingenuity, industry) are actually disastrous for them and the rest of the world.

Gordon Browne, Illustration from Gulliver’s Travels. Public Domain via The British Library.

Part IV of Gulliver’s Travels represents one of the most brilliant assaults on the idea of reason that you’re…