The Opposition between Savagery and Civilisation as Concepts, as Presented in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Book 4 Introduction

Savagery and civilization are compared side by side on the island of the Houyhnhnms—horses who have the intellect of rational human beings and rule over humanoids—the Yahoos—who look like humans but have the intellect of irrational beasts. In Part 4 of Gulliver’s Travels, Swift inverts the traditional mores of Enlightenment ideology to display humankind as deeply flawed and irrational. The Enlightenment Era had prided itself on its use of and devotion to Reason. It placed logic and naturalism at its core—and yet Swift saw fit to take aim at the Enlightened ones of his own era and skewer them with ironic juxtapositions and satirical barbs. Humans are presented as savages on the island of the Houyhnhnms and beasts are presented as wise demi-god like creatures. Swift’s point is that man is neither wholly beast nor wholly rational (like an angelic being) but rather a combination of the two—a thing with two natures as it were: a rational, spiritual nature and a primal, physical nature. Leaning too far on one or the other would push one either towards the horses (out of rejection of the animal nature of one’s own humankind) or into bestiality (out of rejection for the mental and spiritual nature of humankind). In other words, on the one hand was savagery and on the other hand was civilization—and navigating the way is not easy, even for Gulliver who travels widely and sees much only to end up despising his own kind and preferring the stalls and stables at the end of his journeys. This paper will show how Gulliver in this sense represents Swift’s own rejection of the so-called Enlightened ones—the civilized society who treated the so-called savages abominably wherever the English sought to set up colonies abroad.

The Yahoos and Houyhnhnms

Gulliver finds himself on the island of the Houyhnhnms following an unfortunate incident at sea when his crew mutinies against his command and sets him adrift that they might go on to be pirates. The incident is helpful in framing the argument that arises in the same book—that humans are irrational and corrupt and ought to be avoided. The Yahoos—the humanoid creates on the island of the horses (the Houyhnhnms)—represent this irrationality on the part of the humans, who act like savages in Gulliver’s eyes. He prefers the sobriety, intellect, courtesy and grace of the horses, who communicate with him in their own language, which Gulliver gradually learns. The savage sailors who treated Gulliver so beastly foreshadow the beastly Yahoos who serve as the emblems of savagery. The horses represent civilization. The Houyhnhnms are described humorously and ironically by Swift:

Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the Houyhnhnms; and these not confined to particular objects, but universal to the whole race; for a stranger from the remotest part is equally treated with the nearest neighbour, and wherever he goes, looks upon himself as at home. They preserve decency and civility in the highest degrees, but are altogether ignorant of ceremony. They have no fondness for their colts or foals, but the care they take in educating them proceeds entirely from the dictates of reason.[footnoteRef:2] [2: Jonathan Swiift, Gulliver’s Travels, chapter 8.]

The fact that Gulliver identifies their two main virtues as being friendship and benevolence, when the horses are immediately thereafter described as having virtually no fondness for their children but rather take up the duty of their education from a cold and detached application of Reason shows that “friendship” is inaccurately applied by Gulliver as a term that aptly describes the “civilized” horses’ character. The Yahoos meanwhile are described as “the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animals which...

The Houyhnhnms’ inhumane characteristics (no fondness for children; all actions proceeding from Pure Reason—which of course would be a starting point for the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution by the end of the 18th century) are emphasized by Swift and completely missed by Gulliver, who wishes to be part of the ruling class of “civilized” horses—beasts, it should be noted—rather than part of the low class of Yahoos, who represent humanity—only represented as savages incapable of possessing civilized manners. This depiction is not wholly appropriate either, for when Gulliver is set to leave the island, he is driven to his canoe upon a carriage led by a Yahoo. [3: Swift, chapter 9.]
Satire of the So-Called Civilized

Of course, it is an ironic juxtaposition that Swift is using to invert the Enlightenment doctrines of the day—i.e., that humankind is rational and civilized. Swift took exception to this doctrine and the imperialism of the British in the 18th century—particularly the tyrannical way in which the English ruled over the Irish, which Swift satirized sharply in Part III of the novel.[footnoteRef:4] However, there is an ironic inversion within the inversion—for while Swift appears to reduce the Enlightenment notion of man as rational to ashes by presenting man as a Yahoo, he recognizes that readers will still think that civilized man is represented by the Houyhnhnms, and lest any reader should think that civilized man is so much more rational than the Yahoo, who could simply be viewed as a savage and therefore not really a man like that British (who were supposedly civilized), Swift shows that the Houyhnhnms are just as inhuman as the savages—the Yahoos—and that they merely dress up their savagery in refined discourse and language that actually only puts a gloss on their own ignoble thoughts, ideas and ways. For example, at one point the horses discuss whether or not they should exterminate the humans—indeed it is the subject of chapter 9 in Part IV: “The Question to be debated was, Whether the Yahoos should be exterminated from the Face of the Earth.”[footnoteRef:5] This was essentially the question the British constantly asked about the Irish and that they did to some extent practically carry out during the Potato Famine, which the English in no way attempted to alleviate. The British, in other words—the so-called civilized society that had Empire—were inhumane, like the Yahoos, like the mutinous sailors who threw Gulliver overboard, and even like the Houyhnhnms, who openly discussed eradicating the Yahoos from the face of the earth because of their inherent savagery. [4: Rawson, Claude. "Gulliver, Travel, and Empire." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14, no. 5 (2012), 13.] [5: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, chapter 9.]

This line of thought was evident in the American colonies established by the British as well. The colonists had no strong liking for the Native Americans and wished to take possession of their land and country, push them out of Virginia, and essentially run them into the ground. The wars against the natives were justified by the British colonists by their argument that the natives were savages who were cruel and who attacked at random and could not be trusted. Yet the natives were still human beings and many of them would go on to be integrated into American society…