“I
hate and detest that animal called man…” This
is a portion of a sentence from a letter of the world famous satirist Jonathan
Swift to Alexander Pope. “The Gulliver’s Travels” is Swift’s
masterpiece, a universal satire satirizing the mankind as a whole. However,
Book I of this satire is actually directed to the political circumstances and
corruption of the then England. Yet, it is also applicable to general tendency
of the political leaders of other countries alike. Again, the Book II shows the
abuse of power. But Swift most violently attacks the human being and shows his
utter hatred towards the whole mankind in the Book IV. For this reason, Swift
is called a misanthrope, a hater of mankind. Now let us evaluate the point
giving references from the text and comments of different critics.
At the very first
travel, Gulliver, Swift’s mouthpiece, appears to such a land where lives an
unbelievable ‘human creature not more than
six inches high’ . Actually, Swift’s this presentation of an impossible
physical smallness of the human race is desired to show the possible mental
smallness.
At the second book of
the travels, Swift introduces us with a dangerous ‘rope-dance’ among the political competitors, which may cause their
serious physical injury, in performing their ‘dexterity and magnificence’ in front of the king to achieve his
favour. Even, “Flimnap would have
infallibly broke his neck if one of the King’s cushions that actually lay on
the ground had not weakened his fall.” This symbolical story
ironically means Walpol’s (Flimnap’s) keeping his power ok by using one of the
King’s mistresses (King’s cushions),
with whom he had an illegal relationship. Though it seems a personal attack, it
actually aims at the common human tendency to keep power by unfair means.
The human beings have
an instinct to make quarrel and war. The long war between the ‘Lilliputians’ and the ‘Blefuscus’ on a trivial issue for a
long time proves their love for war. They continue the war for many years on
the point that which end of an egg to break, larger or smaller end.
Swift’s mouthpiece of
misanthropy now is the king of Brobdingnags who having heard an account of
Gulliver’s native people throws a pungent attack on the whole mankind-
“I
can not 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.”
Swift’s most serious
attack on mankind lies in the fourth book, A Voyage to the Country of the
Houyhnhnms, where he introduces us with two sorts of inhabitants- Yahoos or
monkeys, representing mankind and Houyhnhnms, representing horses. But
the most objectionable thing is that Yahoos have been shown to be deformed,
ugly and inferior in both physical and mental make-up, while the Houyhnhnms are
‘endued with a proportionable degree of
reason’ and ‘orderly and rational,
acute and judicious’ . The Houyhnhnms are ‘the Perfection of Nature’ while “the yahoos … were observed to be the most unteachable of all brutes”
“Part
IV of Gulliver’s Travels describes man as ‘a lump of deformity and disease both
in body and mind, smitten with pride’.”
Swift has so much
hatred towards mankind that he makes Gulliver tell-
“I
expressed my uneasiness at his giving me so often the appellation of Yahoo, an
odious animal, for which a had so utter an hatred.”
Gulliver having
described to the master Houyhnhnm of how the human being or Yahoos of his
country travel upon the seas by ships, the master Houyhnhnm gets surprised to
hear such a thing. Gulliver says-
“He
asked me who made the ship, and how it was possible to that the Houyhnhnms of
my country would have it to the management of brutes.”
Can any human being bear such a pungent attack on the whole
human being as ‘brutes’?
Gulliver did not,
any time, want to disclose his body in front of the Houyhnhnms for he always
wanted to distinguish himself ‘as much as
possible from the cursed race of Yahoo’. But once the secret of his dress
is discovered and he is asked to put off his dresses in front of them. But he
feels ashamed ‘ to expose those parts
that nature taught us to conceal’. However , the master surprises in not
wanting to disclose the dress.
Hence, the use of
the phrase ‘the cursed race of Yahoo’
and the incident demand a religious interpretation:
According to the ‘Doctrine of Original Sin’ of St.
Augustine, who has a great influence on Christianity, human being is originally
of sinful nature sharing the sin of Adam and Eve who were ‘cursed’ and expelled
from the garden of Eden. Again Adam and Eve felt ashamed of their nakedness in
front of God after experience of having the forbidden fruit. Same is the case
of Gulliver in front of the Master Houyhnhnm after his ‘original’ state having
been discovered. But the Yahoos of the land actually represent the pre-fallen
or innocent state of mankind. So they do not have any shame of nakedness.
Therefore, from
the theological point of view, this can not have any satirical purpose, but
just a religious interpretation. But Swift’s misanthropy is expressed in his
own words in a letter to Pope (Sep. 29, 1728) after finishing the travels. Swift
says-
“I have ever hated all Nations
professions and Communitys and all my love is towards individuals …… I hate and
detest that animal called man , although I heartily love John, Peter , Thomas.”
That is, he hates the ‘cursed’
race of ‘man of original sin’,
but loves some individuals. But, don’t Peter, John and Thomas bear the original
sin? ... So Swift is here self-contradictory. Actually his “chief end … is to vex the world rather than
to divert it”. “Upon this great foundation of misanthropy the whole building of
my travels is erected”, Swift himself says.
Swift’s
misanthropy reaches the climax when Gulliver says,
“I
began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me…. Yet the smell of a
Yahoo continuing very offensive, I always keep my nose stopped with rue,
lavender, or tobacco leaves. “
He has no anti-climax of his misanthropy. Rather he speaks
against human pride,
“When
I behold a lump of deformity and disease both in body and mind, smitten with
pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience.”
But is Swift without pride? - ‘No’ can be the appropriate
answer according to Swift’s own letter to Charles ford (Jan 19th,
1724). In that letter, he feels proud of his ‘Abilityes’. Moreover, having corrected his sins by keeping company
with Houyhnhnms, now Gulliver tries to keep himself aloof from the ‘cursed’
race of Yahoos, i.e. from mankind. But as far as the Doctrine of Original Sin
is concerned, how can he, being a descendant of Adam and Eve, be apart from the
basic fallen nature of human being? … Therefore, Swift himself is the irony of
his treatment, and he is completely a misanthrope.
However from the
book I to the book IV of this travel story, we can draw a progress in the
religious perspective. In the book I, Gulliver discharged his urine to
extinguish the fire and left his stool without any shame. It became possible
for he was in the state of innocence. But in the book IV, he feels very much
ashamed to disclose his dresses for he is now in the experienced stage.
Gulliver in the first book was a superior man but now inferior. The first was
pre-fallen state of Adam and Eve while the fourth is post-fallen.
Swift so violently
‘vexed’ the world that different critics from his own time the 18th
century to the 20th century bitterly criticized him. Even his
defenders could not but consider the 4th book to be most
objectionable.
Among the 18th
century critics, there was Earl of Orrey, Swift’s earliest biographer, who
says,
“no
man [was] better acquainted [than Swift] with human nature, both in the
highest’ and in the lowest scenes of life.” (p.
338)*
Yet he considers Swift’s misanthropy in book IV ‘intolerable’ and says “voyage to the Houyhnhnms is a real insult
upon mankind” (p. 190)** Another
was Partrick Delany calling the book IV to be ‘moral deformity’, ‘defiled
imagination’. Thus, the 18th century critics, taking a high
moral line, considers that Swift’s misanthropy led him to write ‘a monostrous fiction’ which was actually
‘an artistic failure’.
Of the 19th
century commentators who were less harsh than the 18th century
commentators, Gosse was the harshest. He uses some phrases indicating Swift’s
tendency, Swift himself and his book-
‘the horrible satisfaction of disease’ , a brain ‘not wholly under control’ and ‘the
horrible foulness’. The softest critic of this century was W. E. H. Lecky
who tries to answer Gosse in a differet angel. He sees Swifts misanthropy as a
constitutional melancholy “mainly due to a
physical malady which had long acted upon his brain”. But this answer is
not suitable to us for Swift survived for a long time even after writing this
book. However, Thackeray advised us not to read the book. Walter Scott in his
edition of Swift’s Works (1814), says
“the nakedness with which Swift has
sketched this horrible outline of mankind degraded to a bestial state” (1883
ed., I, 315)
However, the 20th
century psychoanalysts have found an attractive subject for their study in
Swift as well as Gulliver and tried to explain in terms of neuroses and
complexes. The following quotation can be quoted from the ‘Psychoanalytic Review of 1842’ –
“It
furnishes abundant evidence of the neurotic makeup of the author and discloses
in him a number of perverse trends indicative of fixation at the anal sadistic
stage of libidinal development. Most conspicuous among those perverse trends is
that of coprophilia, although the work furnishes evidence of numerous other
related neurotic characteristics accompanying the general picture of
psychosexual infantilism and emotional immaturity.”
Now, from the
above discussion it must be said that Jonathan Swift is completely a
misanthrope for he has expressed his utter hatred towards the whole mankind in his
writing as well as in his letters to his acquaintances. However, he has been so
bitterly criticized that we sometimes feel pity for him
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