In this blog post, we’ll examine the subtle relationship between Gulliver and Swift in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, and explore how the madness and the appearance of the horse in Part IV create a satirical effect.
Much of this work conveys its message primarily through dialogue rather than description or narration. For example, in Book I, the dialogue between the high official and Gulliver plays a key role; in Book II, it is the dialogue between the King and Gulliver; in Book III, the dialogue between the high official of Balbivani and Gulliver; and in Book IV, the dialogue between the master of Huiyun and Gulliver. To highlight this aspect, this commentary is structured as a hypothetical dialogue between Person A and Person B. Person A is a reader who has read the novel once without any prior background knowledge, while Person B is a critic who has read it multiple times and has thoroughly studied collections of criticism and scholarly works.
Person A: The first question that comes to mind after reading this novel is what the relationship is between Captain Gulliver and the author Swift. It seems to me that the two are the same person—is this perspective valid?
B: For about 150 years after the novel’s publication—that is, until the early 20th century—the interpretation that Gulliver was Swift himself was predominant. The main evidence for this was Gulliver’s behavior upon his return to England in Part IV.
A: What specific parts are you referring to?
B: Upon returning to England, Gulliver behaves in ways that seem abnormal—such as shunning his wife and going to the stable to mingle with the horses. This madness was thought to resemble the mental state Swift exhibited around the time he wrote the novel (when he was 59 years old). Swift had suffered from vertigo and hearing loss since childhood and often worried that he might be mentally unstable. There are also records indicating that he suffered from severe depression, which made him irritable and prone to treating his servants harshly.
His vertigo was later identified in the 19th century by the French physician Menière as what is now known as Menière’s disease. It was determined to be a condition caused by a problem in the semicircular canals of the inner ear, leading to vertigo and vomiting, and not a mental illness. However, it is highly likely that Swift himself suspected he might be insane while writing the novel. Nevertheless, given that he was simultaneously writing an essay titled “Drepière’s Letters” during the same period, it can be inferred that he was not suffering from a severe mental disorder.
A: If it has been determined that it was not a mental illness, does that mean Gulliver and Swift are completely different people?
B: As the 20th century began, critics started viewing Gulliver and Swift as separate entities. In other words, the perspective is that Gulliver is the mad one, not Swift. This also means that Swift’s biographical facts should not be directly applied to the interpretation of the character Gulliver. However, it is not possible to think of the two as completely separate either. If one were to describe their relationship, it could be characterized as an ambiguous state—neither completely intertwined nor entirely separate.
B: The reason for this confusion is that, in his conversations with the Emperor of the Land of the Giants in Book II and with the Master of Houyhnhnm in Book IV, Gulliver makes very in-depth remarks about the British royal family, the cabinet, the constitution, and the political situation in Europe. Such insight is difficult to acquire for someone not directly involved in politics. On the other hand, the Gulliver in the novel is a graduate of the Leiden School of Medicine who practiced as a doctor before becoming a ship’s captain. The problem is that, given that background, it is difficult for him to demonstrate the political insight seen in Parts 2 and 4.
A: That is indeed a subtle issue. First, let me share my own observations. Parts 1–3 and the final Part 4 do not seem to form a cohesive whole. From a narrative perspective, Part 4 appears to be a completely different story from Parts 1–3. In Part 1, Gulliver strives to gain his freedom, and in Part 2 as well, he constantly yearns for freedom, demonstrating adaptability, a spirit of adventure, courage, and at times, a generous attitude even in difficult circumstances. In Part 3, he meets various strange people and observes the complexity of human nature. In particular, toward the end of Part 3, we see a Christian in Japan struggling not to step on a cross.
A: Gulliver stated that his total travel period was 16 years and 7 months, of which he spent 5 years in the land of the Houyhnhnms. The premise that a man with nearly 12 years of travel experience would identify himself with a Yahoo he saw in a single region, and then exhibit behavior bordering on insanity upon returning to the human world, feels somewhat far-fetched.
B: First, to summarize the story of the crucifix-trampling, this practice is called “ehumi” in Japanese. The Tokugawa Shogunate, having banned Christianity, introduced this system in the Nagasaki area starting in 1628; the practice was later expanded to northern Kyushu and continued until 1858. People suspected of being Christians were forced to step on copper plates (fumie) engraved with images of the Virgin Mary, the Baby Jesus, or Jesus himself to prove they were not Christians. There are also records indicating that some Christians had images of Buddha engraved on the plates and stepped on them to ease their conscience.
The section on Gulliver’s madness is a passage that has long puzzled many readers. Consequently, critics attempt to interpret Gulliver’s madness from a satirical perspective. Swift’s satire is explained in two ways: Horatian-style gentle satire and Juvenalian-style biting satire. For example, Horatian-style satire might gently mock someone’s lack of intelligence by saying, “Since you never use your head, you don’t have a single gray hair even in old age,” whereas Juvenalian-style satire would launch a scathing and aggressive attack, such as, “Do you really call that a head? You’d be better off cutting it off and using it as a soccer ball!”
Swift primarily used Horatian-style satire in Parts 1 and 2, but in Parts 3 and 4, he employs Juvenalian-style biting satire. Consider the issue of comparing horses and humans: if a “perfect human” had been established as a foil to Gulliver in Part 4, readers might identify with that perfect human, making it difficult to maintain Gulliver’s narrative perspective. To maintain the work’s satirical spirit, the utopian ideas had to be developed while keeping the protagonist, Gulliver, at the center—and that required a somewhat unconventional device. That is why he introduced horses instead of humans.
A: So you’re saying he deliberately introduced horses to enhance the satirical effect.
B: That’s correct. Introducing horses also served as a device that educated readers of the time could immediately grasp. The logic textbooks Swift studied in college were in Latin, and they contained the concept that humans are rational beings, while horses are irrational beings in contrast to them. When the work was first published, readers could discern Swift’s harsh satire—that while humans are said to be rational, they are in fact irrational beings inferior to horses—by observing the contrast between humans and horses.
The inconsistencies in Gulliver’s character that you mentioned earlier can be attributed to the author sacrificing some aspects of character development in order to convey the satirical message more forcefully. In other words, it was the result of prioritizing the effect of satire over the character’s psychological consistency.
A: The mockery of humans and the appearance of horses in Part IV must have been quite controversial even at the time.
B: It certainly was. The 19th-century British novelist William Thackeray was so outraged by the mockery of humans in Part IV that he even went so far as to say ladies should not read that section. He also leveled strong criticism at Swift. Furthermore, the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson left a review that somewhat disparaged Parts III and IV, remarking that once one had conceived of the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians, the rest was easy to write. These reactions demonstrate that Part IV deployed satire in a way that shocked readers.
In conclusion, it is difficult to assert that Gulliver and Swift are one and the same person. It is more reasonable to view them as distinct yet intertwined figures. Swift intentionally manipulated the perspective and character of the narrator, Gulliver, to serve his satirical purposes, thereby reinforcing the critical message of the entire work.
A: Does that mean this novel, unlike other novels, should be read solely as satirical literature?
B: Not exactly. The stories in Parts 1 and 2 are excellent narratives in their own right, even when read separately. There are quite a few readers who enjoy Parts 3 and 4 as stories as well; in particular, older readers often find the story of the Lagado Academy in Part 3 especially captivating. Furthermore, the 1720s, when this work was published, was not a time when the tradition of realism had been firmly established as it is today. At that time, novels were sometimes written like essays and sometimes like editorials, so they lacked a clear genre identity. Swift’s essay “A Tale of a Tub” is a good example of such a hybrid narrative, and Part 3 of ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ can also be read as a side story of that nature. From this perspective, it is natural to view Parts 1, 2, and 4 as the main thread of the narrative.
A: Among Parts 1, 2, and 4, should we consider the satire in Part 4 to be the core of this novel?
B: Yes. Swift gives the impression that he prepared Parts 1 through 3 specifically to write Part 4. However, upon closer reading, Parts 1 through 3 also contain many elements of satire. For example, in Part 1, there is a passage where the decision to impeach Gulliver and gouge out his eyes is presented as an act of the monarch’s generosity. This satirizes the monarch’s stinginess by praising it in exactly the opposite way. In Part 2, there is a scene where Gulliver boasts to the king that he knows how to make a cannonball capable of destroying an entire city, and the king mocks his arrogance, condemning it as a thought unworthy even of a worm. In Part 3, there is a depiction of Laputa colonizing the island of Balnibarbi, which is effectively a satire of Britain’s rule over Ireland. It appears that Swift intended to gradually increase the intensity of satire throughout Parts 1 through 3 to guide readers into naturally accepting the satire of Houyhnhnms in Part 4.
A: I felt that the sudden appearance of the horse actually diminished the sense of fantasy in Parts 1, 2, and 3.
B: That’s what’s known as a problem of representation. The author’s conception and the representation within the work do not fully align. You can easily understand this by thinking about dreams. In a dream, we can manipulate people and objects as we please, but a writer who is awake cannot depict reality in the same way as a dream. Swift introduced extreme representational devices like Huiyun to satirize the fact that humans are irrational and wicked. While one might question the validity of such devices, they clearly pinpoint the very target of the satire.
A: What exactly is that target?
B: It’s the question of whether humans are truly rational beings. As an Anglican priest, Swift believed—based on the Christian concept of original sin—that no matter how hard humans try, they cannot become fully rational beings; they merely exercise reason from time to time. What’s worse is that they use that limited reason not for good deeds, but for evil ones. This is precisely the central theme of Part IV.
A: Since you mentioned human nature, I’d like to say something. It seems to me that Swift only sees the bad and dark sides of humanity. For example, in Lilliput, Gulliver rejects the proposal to conquer the Empire of Blefuscu by force, and the King of the Land of the Giants says it would be better to lose half his kingdom than to kill people with a bomb comparable to a nuclear weapon. Also, just look at how devotedly the young girl Glumdalclitch in the Land of the Giants cares for and loves Gulliver. Why does Gulliver ignore all these good aspects of humanity and emphasize only the bad, going so far as to claim that humans are nothing but Yahoos?
B: That kind of pessimistic attitude is probably related to Swift’s depression. He was born an orphan and had a strained relationship with his mother; he suffered from vertigo and hearing loss throughout his life and even worried that he might be going mad. His relationships with three women did not end well, and although he collaborated with the Tory government in hopes of securing a bishopric, he was instead assigned to a post in Dublin that was effectively a form of exile—all of which likely contributed to his depression. However, we must distinguish between the author’s personal pessimistic disposition and the pessimistic ideology embodied in the work. If the situations presented in the work are enough to make Gulliver depressed, then of course he can be depressed.
A: Then what made Gulliver depressed?
B: Ultimately, it is lies. Gulliver detests and condemns the lies that are rampant in human society. A lie is the act of fabricating “something that does not exist” to make it seem real. Examples of this include rebranding cowardice as courage, cruelty as generosity, and violence as peace. Swift consistently criticizes the fact that politicians, in particular, engage in such lies to an even greater extent. The scene in Part IV, where judges, doctors, and politicians are all portrayed as frauds and vilified, is exhilarating and humorous—and at times even makes one wonder, “Isn’t this a bit too much?”
A: Where do the lies that are the targets of such satire originate?
B: Lies stem from the fact that humans are the only animals that use language. Language is inherently premised on absence or deficiency. In other words, language functions only when we can assume that something that does not exist is present. For example, the word “bread” refers to actual bread, but the word itself is not actual bread. If an actual piece of bread were required every time we referred to “bread,” our daily lives would be quite inconvenient. It is precisely because language can refer to things that do not exist that lying becomes possible. Similarly, in Part 4, Chapter 4 of the work, Master Hui-nyeom explains the purpose of conversation and argues that if someone speaks of “something that does not exist (a lie),” the very purpose of the conversation collapses. This is because the listener fails to properly understand the speaker and, far from accepting the information, interprets it exactly the opposite way, thereby falling into a state of ignorance. It is as if one were to believe that white is black, or that long is short.
Master Huiyun’s attitude toward lies aligns with the plan proposed in Part 3 by the members of the Lagado Academy to carry objects around instead of using language. On the other hand, the “function of lies—perfectly understood by everyone and universally used among humans,” as pointed out by Gulliver, is not entirely negative. The English novelist Somerset Maugham once remarked that if humans spoke solely out of necessity, language would have disappeared; he argued that language has a playful function, allowing one to tell the truth while lying, and to engage in the play of falsehood while speaking the truth.
Satire and humor often arise precisely at the boundary between lies and truth, by pointing out the discrepancy between words and reality.
A: You mentioned that satire and humor stem from the playful function of language. If so, are the two related?
B: Yes. Swift recognized that if satire were too scathing, it would overwhelm the reader, so he used humor to temper the tone. For example, the story in Part 1 where cabinet ministers take prime positions by passing a rope back and forth; the story in Part 2 where Gulliver, after showing off, falls into a pile of cow dung; the story in Part 3 where he tries to cure a dog’s illness by blowing air into its anus but ends up killing the dog instead; and the story in Part 4 where lawyers claim someone else’s cow belongs to their client—these are all humorous no matter when you read them. In fact, humor is another face of sadness. As the saying goes, “I laugh so I won’t cry,” humor exists to confront sadness. Furthermore, just as laughter often comes first when faced with a highly unreasonable situation, humor arises naturally because the targets of Swift’s satire are so absurd.
Person A: That’s absolutely true. In fact, Gulliver himself exhibits the irony of not being able to completely escape lies. Although he always claims to speak the truth, in reality, this is often not the case. For example, in Part I, he claimed that no one had secretly visited him, yet a high-ranking government official did come secretly to inform him of his impeachment; in Part II, while conversing with the King of the Land of the Giants, he concealed details unfavorable to his homeland; and in Part IV, during his conversation with the master of Houyhnhnm, he asked him to keep certain matters secret, thereby subtly corrupting his host.
Swift’s Satire and Gulliver’s True Nature
At the end of Part 2, Gulliver critiques other travel writers as follows: “They claim to speak the truth, yet they speak of their own vanity and interests and are preoccupied with the reader’s entertainment.” This naturally raises a question. Is Swift in Parts 3 and 4 really no different from other travel writers—that is, is he not revealing his own vanity (“man is a Yahoo”) and concerns (“man is an irrational being”) while claiming to speak the truth? Conversely, do Parts 1 and 2 not provide ample fictional entertainment to delight the reader?
The key to this question lies in the paradoxical nature of satire. The typical method of satire is to expose the truth while appearing to tell a lie. Beneath Gulliver’s portrait on the 12mo edition cover from 1735 was the caption, “Captain Lemuel Gulliver, Hon. Splendide Mendax.” This aligns with the claim that the truth is revealed through lies.
The name “Gulliver” itself reveals this duality. “Gull” has traditionally been interpreted as meaning “a gullible person” or “a fool,” while “ver” is a root meaning “truth.” Thus, Gulliver can be read as “a fool who speaks the truth” or “a satirist who speaks what appears to be a lie but is actually the truth.”
Furthermore, Swift’s goal was not simply to entertain the reader. He himself stated that he wrote this novel with the intention of provoking and angering readers, aiming to change society. Therefore, regarding Gulliver—this implausible (or “lying”) narrator—we must adopt the attitude of a creative reader who does not take his words at face value. In other words, rather than passively agreeing with the narrator’s words, we must reinterpret them from our own perspective.
The World of Houyhnhnm — Utopia or a Cold Seminary?
Questions arise as to whether the world of Houyhnhnm in Part IV truly serves as a utopian model capable of satirizing the human world.
Hui-nyun society appears to be one where there is no effort toward self-improvement, and where reason alone seems to reign, with elements such as emotion, impulse, irrationality, and will excluded. This portrayal feels as though it diminishes the joy of life that stems from dynamism and unpredictability.
It is clear that Swift intended Huinum to be a utopia; he drew general inspiration from Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’, the concept of a society governed by the wise from Plato’s ‘Republic’, and the depiction of childrearing shows the influence of Plutarch, who modeled his ideas on Spartan education. Ultimately, the concept of Huiyun was born out of an attempt to envision a society entirely free of human vice.
“This is because reason, as we know it, teaches us to affirm or deny only what we know with certainty, and to neither affirm nor deny what we do not know with certainty. Therefore, when a proposition is false or questionable, controversy, debate, and conflict arise; yet the Huiyun not only remain unaware of such things but also regard them all as evil.”
At this point, the distinction between pure reason and practical reason is crucial. Since pure reason seeks knowledge through logical inference, it confronts the limits of cognition and presupposes that all knowledge may be relative. In contrast, practical reason engages the will to believe in the reality of abstract concepts such as God, free will, and the immortality of the soul, and through this, the moral law is established. The moral law possesses universality not because of its empirical content but because of its practical principles.
The “arguments within the scope of certain knowledge” that Gulliver criticizes refer to pure reason, whereas the Master of Houyhnhnm’s argument reveals the perspective of practical reason. Consequently, Houyhnhnm society places extreme importance on the moral law—that is, the distinction between good and evil. However, if that reason excludes creative imagination or the ability to reason about things that do not yet exist, there would be no progress based on invention or literary fiction.
While Swift sharply criticizes the lies of human society, he seems to overlook the possibility that his own fictional work—the novel—could, paradoxically, serve as a wake-up call to society. For example, in Part III, the Laputans are described as having absolutely no capacity for imagination, fantasy, or invention, and the lives of the Houyhnhnms resemble this. If human society lacked imagination and invention, how bleak would the world be?
In Part IV, the scene where the Hui-nim General Assembly, after initially attempting to exterminate the Yahoos, steps back and concludes that “if male Yahoos are castrated, they will all disappear within a generation” evokes the totalitarian cruelty that would later emerge. While this passage can be read as a prescient foreshadowing of the Nazi genocide that occurred two centuries later, it simultaneously creates a significant tension with the utopian ideals the author sought to depict. This raises the question of whether such a system can truly be called a utopia or a moral society.
Furthermore, the other Houyhnhnms gathered at the Houyhnhnm Assembly criticize the Houyhnhnm who treats the Yahoo (Gulliver) like a master, insisting that Gulliver be treated like a Yahoo or sent back to his homeland. Although the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos are treated as completely different beings solely because of their physical differences, from the perspective of practical reason, the Houyhnhnms fail to acknowledge the possibility that a good Yahoo could act like a Houyhnhnm.
The fact that the Assembly’s “proclamation” is described here as a “recommendation” reveals only the formal reason of Houyhnhnm society. In other words, reason is capable of following the formal procedure of a proclamation but is incapable of substantive deliberation to judge whether a being is actually good or not. The General Assembly’s concern—namely, the fear that a good Yaho might infiltrate the ranks of the wicked Yaho and incite a rebellion—is closer to a reflection of animalistic fear than a rational judgment.
The Depiction of the Yahoos and the Symbolism of Excrement and Misogyny
In Part IV, the Yahoos are often depicted as resembling monkeys. The descriptions of them swinging from tree branches and scattering excrement appear to be drawn directly from depictions of monkeys. Because of this stylistic approach, a distaste for “shit” is repeatedly expressed throughout the novel. At the same time, misogynistic descriptions also appear on several occasions.
Stories involving feces and urine appear consistently from Part 1 through Part 4, and in Part 4, they are used as the primary imagery to represent the Yahoos. Fundamentally, this is a device intended to convey the message to the reader: “You are a physical being that produces foul-smelling excrement.” Because of these explicit representations, critics such as William Thackeray strongly condemned Swift.
However, excretion itself, like breathing, is a natural physiological phenomenon that humans cannot avoid. Swift’s unpleasant depiction of excretion stems not so much from the act itself as from a symbolic intent to link it to the “odor” emanating from that act—that is, the foul stench of the countless moral and ethical evils committed by humans.
This coprological narrative reaches its satirical peak in Chapter 7 of Part IV, in the following passage: “This ‘gluttony’ was cured by forcing a mixture of a Yahoo’s feces and urine down the Yahoo’s throat. I have witnessed this method yield results on numerous occasions. Here, I wish to openly recommend this method for the public good of my fellow countrymen.” Reading this sentence, we even get the impression that the satire is too vile and excessive. In short, it amounts to saying, “You are shit, so your illness must be cured with shit.”
This intense aversion to feces is also linked to misogyny through the association with foul odors. For example, in Part II, there is a description of the palace maids emitting a foul odor. However, the theme of misogyny does not stop at mere descriptions of odor; it becomes even more prominent in the depictions of unchaste women found in Chapter 6 of Part I and Chapter 2 of Part III.
As one example, it is interpreted that the image of the high-ranking official’s wife is modeled after Catherine Shorter, Robert Walpole’s first wife. This supports the interpretation that Swift attacked those in power by exposing domestic infidelity as a means of satirizing Walpole. In other words, it is a satire asking how someone who cannot even properly keep his own wife in check could possibly become the Prime Minister of a nation.
In Part III, Chapter 6, he makes a joke that if a tax were levied on women who preserve their chastity and purity, such women would be so rare that the tax collector’s wages alone would not be covered. Subsequently, in Part III, Chapter 8, he states that so-called distinguished families produce many villains, fools, and swindlers, attributing this to the influence of lower-class individuals who have infiltrated the household. Swift’s satire of the women of high society is extremely scathing and even chilling.
In Part IV, Chapter 7, a scene in which a female Yahoo seduces a man is described as follows: “The female Yahoo often stands by the riverbank or behind a thicket, watching for young males to pass by. She then reveals herself to the males only to hide again, endlessly displaying the most grotesque gestures and expressions. At that moment, an extremely foul odor emanates from the female. If even one male approaches, the female slowly retreats, frequently glancing back over her shoulder, and, feigning fear, runs to a spot where the male will undoubtedly find it easy to pursue her.” This description is a classic form of satire that links female seduction to repulsive physical attributes (odor and feces).
Looking at Swift’s actual relationships with women, it is notable that Esther and Vanessa were the ones who first developed feelings of affection for him and approached him. This raises suspicions that such personal background may be linked to his misogyny. Psychoanalytic critics explore the possibility that Swift’s misogyny stemmed from a strained relationship with his mother during his childhood.
In psychoanalysis, the process by which a child becomes independent from the mother and acquires voluntary will and self-control is called the anal stage; it is said that if this process is not successfully navigated, a sense of aversion to defecation arises. The interpretation is that this aversion begins as self-loathing but, when extended outward, can spread to misogyny and, furthermore, to a hatred of humanity as a whole.
Bowel dysfunction is also deeply linked to stress. For example, there are reported cases of husbands who experience severe psychological tension around their wives at home—they struggle to defecate at home but have no trouble doing so outside the home, such as in workplace restrooms. From a psychoanalytic perspective, “feces” carries such symbolic significance here that it can be interpreted as a substitute for semen.
However, George Orwell offered a different interpretation. He suggested that Swift might have been impotent. He argued that the more a person lacks sexual potency, the more they tend to loathe human excrement, and that this loathing arises from human psychology—specifically, the tendency to envy or hate what others possess but they lack. From a satirical perspective, it can also be read as a satirical device—much like the saying, “Behind every misdeed lies a woman”—that blames women for most of the foolish acts committed by men.
A: The decisive event that convinced Gulliver he was a Yahoo was when a female Yahoo made sexual advances toward him by the stream. Both Huiyun’s observation and this incident with the female Yahoo seem to indicate that Gulliver’s self-awareness was triggered by external events rather than internal enlightenment. This raises the question of whether there might be a problem with the structure of Gulliver’s inner character.
B: Regarding inner enlightenment, it is important to note that at the beginning of Chapter 7 of Part IV, it is described that Gulliver, moved by Huiyun’s virtues, completely changed his view of humanity and became a different person than before. Therefore, it is not the case that Gulliver came to think of himself as a Yahoo solely because of external factors. However, our concern is whether such a dramatic transformation is truly convincing, given Gulliver’s behavior up to that point.
We must take into account that character development is treated differently in general fiction and satirical fiction. For example, to create a plot where Gulliver falls out with the Emperor in Lilliput, Gulliver must first be presented as a generous character to provide a contrast. Furthermore, in the Land of the Giants, the story can only unfold if the protagonist is portrayed as brave and spirited so that he does not die. Once a character is endowed with such fictional virtues, it becomes difficult to suddenly transform him into the opposite personality. This is the principle of character development that general fiction adheres to.
In contrast, satirical fiction prioritizes the delivery of its message. Therefore, while the author may sacrifice a certain degree of narrative freedom, he seeks to convey the message to the reader through scene shifts or ingenious ideas. In Parts 1 and 2, Gulliver is presented as a brave, generous, and rational character, but in Part 3, he primarily observes and takes little action, leading some critics to suggest that Part 3 should be omitted entirely. Furthermore, in Part 4, he undergoes a drastic transformation, adopting an attitude completely opposite to the rational character of Parts 1 and 2—he becomes convinced that he is a Yahoo and views all of humanity as Yahoos. While such a 180-degree turnaround is difficult to accept in a conventional novel, it is sometimes permissible for satirical purposes.
A: In that case, what message did Swift truly intend to convey, even at the cost of sacrificing narrative consistency?
B: It is that human society must stop pretending to be rational on the surface while engaging in all sorts of irrational behavior behind the scenes. Swift viewed the reason humans act irrationally as a lack of freedom—in other words, a failure to strictly adhere to moral principles. At first glance, freedom and morality may seem to conflict, but for Swift, freedom was not mere license; rather, it was the act of putting into practice what one believes to be right—that is, it was consistent with moral practice.
In the epitaph he wrote for himself, Swift declared himself “a man who lived his whole life with a fierce indignation in his heart in order to gain freedom.” He also referred to people as “viators.” Combining these two concepts, he believed that what a viator should value above all else is freedom on earth, and that this freedom is granted by truth—that is, by faith. His career, spent in Ireland during the latter half of his life as a rector in the Church of England, is reflected in various allusions within ‘Gulliver’s Travels’.
Although his theological perspective is not directly revealed in the work, it is implied in several passages. Examples include the story of the temple in Book II, the observance of the Sabbath, Gulliver’s avoidance of the Houyhnhnms, and the statement regarding the longing for freedom in Chapter 2 of Book II. Chapter 7 of Book IV also contains the following passage:
“I was opened to the many virtues of that excellent quadruped, who stood at the exact opposite end of the spectrum from fallen humanity, and my understanding was broadened. Thus, I began to view human behavior and emotions from a very different perspective and came to believe that the honor of my fellow humans was not worth worrying about. Moreover, in the presence of my sharp-judged master, I had no choice but to do so. Every day, he pointed out my flaws and made me acknowledge them—things I had never once realized before. I was truly astonished that such flaws were not even considered flaws among us humans. Furthermore, having learned from my master’s example, I came to detest all falsehood and deceit thoroughly. Truth appeared very favorable to me, and so I resolved to sacrifice everything for the sake of truth.”
This quote brings to mind the New Testament saying, “The truth (faith) shall set you free,” leading to the conclusion that the nourishment a traveler should enjoy on earth, as Swift describes here, is truth and freedom. The belief that truth is expanded by people and that teachings are illuminated through writing connects to what Swift sought to put into practice through ‘Gulliver’s Travels’.
A: As a middle-aged reader, I have been the head of my household, facing the difficulties of family life and making a living. Gulliver is also consistently portrayed in Parts 1–3 as a family man who loves his family. Personally, I think it would have been better if, rather than suddenly becoming a pessimist, Gulliver had recognized the possibility of an ideal society, returned to his family’s embrace as a man of greater wisdom, and devoted himself to social reform.
B: From a reader’s perspective, it’s natural to have such hopes. However, we must take into account that this work takes the form of a travelogue across various countries and is a satirical novel. It is difficult to grasp the overall meaning of a classic work through a single interpretation, and ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ is no exception. Just as readers have offered diverse interpretations over the past 300 years, this work makes it difficult to reach a clear conclusion with each reading.
If we simply label Gulliver as a madman, we face the dilemma of having to accept the current world—which shares many “Yahoos”-like characteristics—as normal. Conversely, if we view the current world as corrupt, as Gulliver claims, we are left with the awkwardness of having to accept Gulliver’s behavior of conversing with horses in a stable. It is precisely this refusal to settle on any single, fixed interpretation that makes this work a challenging classic that continually invites rereading.
A: Thank you for thoughtfully answering the various questions that came to mind after my first reading. Thanks to your advice, I think I’ll reread this book and examine it more deeply in the future.
