CBR16 BINGO: Horses, because Gulliver spends several years with the Houyhnhnms, a highly rational race of talking horses
Take a nice, English surgeon and send him around the world, where he encounters all sorts of heretofore unknown races, and eventually he’ll come back absolutely hating on humanity.
Gulliver’s Travels is so ingrained in popular culture that everyone knows something about it. I can’t remember my first introduction to the story, but it was probably in the form of a children’s comic book or animated special. The trouble with modern retellings is that they usually treat the story like a children’s fable or a fairy tale, calling it quits after the first two voyages. At that point, you’ve hardly scratched the surface of Gulliver’s disgust with his fellow man.
I’ll start with a summary of the novel for those of us who have only seen the 1996 Ted Danson miniseries (I might be dating myself).
Part I, Voyage to Lilliput. A shipwreck lands surgeon Lemuel Gulliver in Lilliput, a country populated by people a mere 6 inches tall. Once the tiny folk realize Gulliver’s not out to smush them, he becomes friends with some key Lilliputians, including the Emperor. He learns about their politics and way of life, and boy are these guys silly. For one thing, the Emperor chooses his cabinet not based on who is the most capable, but in weird, random ways, like who can dance the limbo best. Additionally, the biggest political disagreement in this country, and the basis for war with their neighbors, revolves around which side of the egg is best to crack open (the wider or narrower end). Although Gulliver has nothing but the best intentions, he makes some enemies at court, including one cabinet member who thinks Gulliver might be having an affair with his wife (How would that even work???). Eventually the court charges him with various crimes, including urinating inside the palace. To be fair, Gulliver didn’t so much pee in the palace as on it, which was because the palace was on fire and he didn’t have a pitcher of water handy. At this point, Gulliver makes his escape and eventually finds his way home.
Part II, Voyage to Brobdingnag. After a brief respite at home, Gulliver heads out to sea again. A storm blows his ship off course, and he and several companions find themselves on an island. While Gulliver is wandering off on his own, his companions bolt–probably because they caught sight of the massive, 60-foot giants that live in this land. This country, Brobdingnag, is essentially the flip-side of Lilliput: Now Gulliver is the tiny man and the “normal” people are giants. Luckily the giants don’t squash our hero, but they do put him in a cage and treat him like a pet. A young girl named Glumdalclitch is his caregiver, and she’s a sweet child, but everyone kind of treats Gulliver like a dancing monkey. Gulliver describes England and English law to the Brobdingnag King, who is less than impressed. In short, he thinks the English sound like a bunch of damn punks. Gulliver tries to impress the king by giving him a recipe for gunpowder, and the king is super offended. Eventually, a freak occurrence involving a gull (talk about punks) lands Gulliver out to sea again, where he’s picked up by a passing ship and returned to England.
Part III, Voyage to Laputa (with optional side excursions). By now, you’d think Gulliver would be thinking twice about traveling by sea, but nope. He either really needs the money or he really doesn’t like his family (foreshadowing). This time, his ship is beset by pirates, and he ends up marooned on an island. While he sits around waiting for rescue, he sees a floating island passing overhead. He calls up for assistance, and they help him up by a rope. This floating island is called Laputa, and the people here are wild for mathematics and music, but they have no idea how practical application works. Everything they make (buildings, clothes, you name it) is crap. The Laputans are also so obsessed with their own thoughts that their heads are constantly tilted to one side, and they have servants to follow them around with sticks, slapping them on the mouth just to remind them to speak. Their great thinkers come up with “projects,” some of which include extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, mixing paint by smell, and my favorite–reducing “human excrement to its original food.” Fortunately, these people are too philosophical to want to kill Gulliver or make him a pet, so after some side trips where he talks to ghosts of historical figures and learns about a miserable race of immortals, he makes his way home once more.
Part IV, Voyage to the Land of the Houyhnhnms. At this point, Gulliver really should have stayed home, but he’s become bored with being a surgeon, and the chance to captain his own ship is too great a temptation to pass up. This time, his crew mutinies, because people just keep sucking more and more in this novel! They leave him on an island where he encounters horrible-looking, hairy, ape-like humanoids and beautiful horses. Guess which ones we like? Turns out the horrible, ape-like ones are called Yahoos, but they are essentially humans, which is a great blow to both Gulliver’s ego and his mental health. The horses are called Houyhnhnms (pronounced like whin-em, more or less, like a horse whinnying) and these are the most beautiful, intelligent, rational creatures ever. After learning the Houyhnhnm language and spending time with them, Gulliver realizes that people are most definitely the WORST. After several years with them, the Houyhnhnms decide they really can’t have a glorified Yahoo hanging out acting like he’s better than his hairy brethren, so they send him away. Gulliver is devastated, but agrees to leave in a small boat. When he gets back to England, he hates every human so much it takes five years before he can even stand to have his wife eat in the same room with him.
Ted Danson did not prepare me for this ending.
As you probably surmised, Gulliver’s Travels is a satire. Swift is continually poking fun at English government, the crown, and politics in general. “Which end of the egg is best to break” mocks the conflict between Catholics and the Church of England, for example. While this seems like a rather mild jab in our day and age, Swift was so concerned about being charged with treason that he initially published the novel under an alias.
The novel was wildly popular upon publication, though I wonder whether that had more to do with its bawdiness than with its biting satire. A giant Gulliver giving the palace a golden shower is just one of several risqué scenes in this book. In Lilliput, the Emperor directed his troops to walk under Gulliver’s legs as he stood “like a Colossus” and, while he directed the troops not to look up, some couldn’t help taking a peak. “And, to confess the truth, my breeches were at that time in such ill condition, that they afforded some opportunities for laughter and admiration.” Alright, penis jokes, 18th century style! Of course large isn’t always better, as Gulliver finds out when he visits Brobdingnag. There, he catches a glimpse of a woman nursing a baby, and he confesses he was quite disgusted by the sight of the giant breast. “It stood prominent six foot, and could not be less than sixteen in circumference. The nipple was about half the bigness of my head, and the hue both of that and the dug so rarified with spots, pimples, and freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous.” Some have pointed to this description as a sign of Swift’s mysogyny, but I can agree that I have no interest in seeing a nipple half the size of my head (nor Gulliver’s giant endowment, if I’m honest).
It’s easy to see why Gulliver’s Travels is a classic, even if the comedy is dated (scatological humor aside). You won’t be roaring with laughter at the way Swift skewers politicians, lawyers, philosophers, etc. etc. etc., but much of it is still relevant today. There’s plenty of room for debate–for example, was Swift a misogynist? The Houyhnhnms advocate for educating their daughters, yet there are also some alarming statements in the novel, such as questioning why a pregnant woman would have sex (yikes, baby maker alert!). Probably the most debated question of all is whether Swift thought so little of the human race as Gulliver does at the end of the story. It seems unlikely–one of the first humans Gulliver encounters after leaving the Houyhnhnms is a Portuguese captain, who appears to be kind and decent. Yet our last impression is of a man who can’t even sit at table with his wife without being revolted, and who spends 4 hours a day in the stables talking to his horses.
Gulliver’s Travels isn’t an easy read; there’s a lot of description, the language is old fashioned, and at times you are hit over the head with the “aren’t people ridiculous” message. But it’s an important work in English literature, and I’m glad I finally got around to reading all of it. I recommend this for a book club read, as it generates lots of interesting questions for discussion.