Gulliver Four: Here We Go Again

GULLIVER FOUR: HERE WE GO AGAIN S. J. Sackett Gulliver Four is multi-leveled and contains a layer of meaning which has hitherto remained recalcitrant to the ingenuity and sensitivity which have been lavished on it.1 Thus, while there are other readings of Gulliver Four which are covalent with that which I am about to present—and others which are not—the coherence of the argument advanced here provides a strong reason for approving some and discarding other previous interpretations of the book, depending on the degree to which they are compatible with it. For example, Wedel's finding of Hobbes and Locke in the Yahoos and Houyhnhnms is congruent with this interpretation and thus acceptable.2 One of the most controversial points about Gulliver's last voyage is whether the Yahoos are human beings. Frye, Landa, and Tuveson have all provided excellent statements of the affirmative position, and it is difficult not to feel that the weight of the evidence lies on their side. But there are objections to be overcome. First, it is true that Gulliver consistently considers the Yahoos as animals. One of the most telling effects in the book is that, although Gulliver first describes them in Chapter I (p. 223),3 it is not until Chapter II that he even notices they are human in form (pp. 229-230). Second, he uses 1E. g., by Alexander W. Allison, "Concerning Holyhnhnm Reason," Sewanee Review, LXXVI (Summer 1968), 480-492; W. B. Camochan, Lemuel Gulliver's Mirror for Man (Berkeley, 1968); R. S. Crane, "The Houyhnhnm, the Yahoo, and the History of Ideas," in Reason and the Imagination, ed. R. S. Mazzeo (New York, 1962), pp. 243-253; Lrvin Ehrenpreis, "The Meaning of Gulliver's Last Voyage," REL, III (July 1962), 18-38; Roland M. Frye, "Swift's Yahoo and the Christian Symbols for Sin," JHI, XV (April 1954), 201-217; James E. Gill, "Beast over Man: Theriophilic Paradox in Gulliver's Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms,' " SP, LXVII (October 197O1), 532-549; M. M. Kelsall, "Iterum Houyhnhnm: Swift's Sextumvirate and the Horses," EIC. XLX (January 1969), 35-45; Steward Lacasce, "The Fall of Gulliver's Master," EIC, XX (July 1970), 327-330; Louis A. Landa, "Jonathan Swift," English Institute Essays, 1946, pp. 20-40; Jon S. Lawry, "Dr. Lemuel Gulliver and 'the Thing Which Was Not,' " JEGP, LXVII (1968), 212-234; Samuel H. Monk, "The Pride of Lemuel Gulliver," Sewanee Review, LXIII (Winter 1955), 48-71; Martin Price, Site's Rhetorical Art (Yale University Studies in English, No. 123; New Haven, 1953); Ricardo Quintana, Swift: An Introduction (London, 1962), pp. 142-165; John F. Reichert, "Plato, Swift and the Houyhnhnms," PQ, XLVII (April 1968), 179-192; John F. Ross, "The Final Comedy of Lemuel Gulliver," University of California Publications in English, VIII (1941), 175-196; Henry W. Sams, "Swift's Satire of the Second Person," ELH, XXVI (March 1959), 36-44; Anselm Schlösser, "Gulliver in Houyhnhnmland," Dublin Magazine, VI, iii (1967), 27-36; George Sherburn, "Errors Concerning the Houyhnhnms," MP, LVI (November 1958), 92-97; Ernest L. Tuveson, "Swift: The Dean as Satirist," UTQ, ??? (1953), 368-375; and Curt A. Zimansky, "Gulliver, Yahoos, and Critícs," CE, XXVTI (October 1965), 45-49. 2T. O. Wedel, "On the Philosophical Background of Gullivers Travels," SP, XXIII (1926), 434-450. *Page numbers in parentheses refer to the edition of Gulliver in the Prose WorL·, ed. Herbert Davis, Vol. XI. 212 Gulliver Four213 them as animals—evidently even to the point of killing them. For his shoes he uses Yahoo skins (p. 276); for his canoe he uses not only the skins but also the tallow (pp. 281-282).4 Yet Gulliver's testimony that the Yahoos are animals can be explained wholly in terms of his detestation of the Yahoos and his unwillingness, indeed refusal, to accept the fact of his kinship with them. Whether they were human or not, Gulliver would still react to them in the same way. While his apparent slaughter of them—or murder, if you prefer—cannot be condoned or justified, it can at least be explained by saying that Gulliver would not himself have considered that he was...