Great Books: Gullivers Travels (19 of 22)

Great Books: Gullivers Travels

"My Master told me... in some perplexity... that, in the last general Assembly, when the affair of the Yahoos was entered upon, the Representatives had taken offence at his keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his family more like a Houyhnhnm than a brute animal."
"When all was ready, and the day came for my departure, I took leave of my master and lady... my heart quite sunk with grief..."
"...as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honor to raise it gently to my mouth."
"I paid my respects to the rest of the Houyhnhnms in his honor's company; then getting into my canoe, I pushed off from shore."
"During the first year I could not endure my wife or children in my presence, the very smell of them was intolerable."

"My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day... they live in great amity with me, and friendship to each other."
The most relevant thing for me is in book four where Gulliver sees the Yahoos and says, "Oh, my God, these are the most disgusting, the vilest creatures on the face of the earth you know, and completely they're abominable", and he curses them out and, you know rushes away from them.
And then within three pages he looks into the face of the Yahoo and sees himself, you know, and sees this, you know a perfect human shape.
The question that that poses, is what does it mean to look in the mirror ...
- and see reflecting back at us what we most fear and revile, and what we least want to acknowledge kinship with, and that's...
that's a very heavy question and a disturbing question...
...because really whatever it is we're throwing out at others is really a part of ourselves...
What Swift is saying is there lurks this monster in us all which has to be kept under control.
I think Swift was getting at the depths to which human nature could sink in absolute depravity.
He didn't believe, I think, that human nature was totally depraved, but he felt that it could become totally depraved, it could sink to great depths of depravity, it could do the most dreadful, cruel, terrible things.
And of course that has been shown to be so in the history of the world.