Savagery vs. Civilization in Gulliver's Travels Book 4
This paper examines Jonathan Swift's treatment of savagery and civilization in Book 4 of Gulliver's Travels, focusing on the allegorical opposition between the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms. Swift inverts Enlightenment assumptions about reason and human progress, presenting humanity as both brutish and arrogantly over-rationalized. The paper argues that Gulliver himself embodies both extremes, and that Swift's satirical targets include British imperialism in Ireland, the Americas, and India. Through ironic juxtaposition, Swift demonstrates that the so-called civilized — the British ruling class — were no less savage than those they colonized, condemned, or enslaved. The paper ultimately contends that Swift's conclusion is that civilization, stripped of charity and humility, is indistinguishable from the savagery it claims to oppose.
- Introduction: Swift inverts Enlightenment ideals through satirical allegory
- The Yahoos and Houyhnhnms: Textual analysis of savagery and civilization figures
- Satire of the So-Called Civilized: Houyhnhnms mirror British imperial arrogance and inhumanity
- British Imperialism and the Logic of Extermination: Colonial violence justified by labeling others as savages
- Conclusion: Swift concludes the English were the real savages
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What makes this paper effective
- It grounds its literary analysis in historical context, connecting Swift's allegorical figures directly to British colonial practices in Ireland, the Americas, and India, giving the argument real-world weight.
- It identifies a double irony in Swift's satire — not only are the Yahoos savage, but the supposedly civilized Houyhnhnms are equally inhumane — which demonstrates close, nuanced reading of the text.
- It uses direct quotation from Gulliver's Travels effectively, allowing Swift's own language to support the argument rather than relying solely on paraphrase.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates sustained allegorical reading: it consistently maps the fictional Yahoos and Houyhnhnms onto real historical groups — the colonized and the British colonizers — and traces that mapping across multiple historical examples. This technique, sometimes called historicist literary analysis, shows how a fictional text encodes a political critique of its own moment.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an introduction establishing Swift's satirical inversion of Enlightenment ideology. It then analyzes the Yahoos and Houyhnhnms as textual figures before broadening outward to connect Swift's satire to British imperialism, the slave trade, and colonial violence. A concluding section draws these threads together with Swift's implicit judgment that the English were the true savages. The argument moves logically from close reading to historical application to thematic conclusion.
Introduction
Savagery and civilization are compared side by side on the island of the Houyhnhnms — horses who possess the intellect of rational human beings and rule over humanoids called Yahoos, who look like humans but have the intellect of irrational beasts. In Part 4 of Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift inverts the traditional norms 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, placing 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, while beasts are presented as wise, demi-god-like creatures. Swift's point is that man is neither wholly beast nor wholly rational but rather a combination of the two — a thing with two natures: a rational, spiritual nature and a primal, physical nature. Leaning too far toward one or the other pushes one either toward the horses, through rejection of the animal nature of one's own humanity, or into bestiality, through rejection of the mental and spiritual nature of humankind. On one hand was savagery; on the other, civilization — and navigating the way between them 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 argues that Gulliver, in this sense, represents Swift's own rejection of the so-called Enlightened ones — the civilized society that treated so-called savages abominably wherever the English sought to establish colonies abroad.
The Yahoos and Houyhnhnms
Gulliver finds himself on the island of the Houyhnhnms following an unfortunate incident at sea in which his crew mutinies against his command and sets him adrift so that they might go on to become pirates. This 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 creatures on the island of the horses, represent this irrationality. They act like savages in Gulliver's eyes, and he comes to prefer 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 brutally foreshadow the beastly Yahoos who serve as emblems of savagery. The horses, by contrast, 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."1
The fact that Gulliver identifies their two main virtues as friendship and benevolence, while the horses are immediately thereafter described as having virtually no fondness for their children and raising them through a cold and detached application of Reason, shows that "friendship" is an inaccurate term for what Gulliver takes to be the "civilized" horses' character. The Yahoos, meanwhile, are described as "the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animals which nature ever produced, so they were the most restive and indocible, mischievous and malicious; they would privately suck the teats of the Houyhnhnms' cows, kill and devour their cats, trample down their oats and grass, if they were not continually watched, and commit a thousand other extravagancies."2
The Yahoos' less civilized traits — which are merely aspects of what the Old World would have considered a fallen human nature — are thus emphasized by the Houyhnhnms as justification for why the Yahoos should be exterminated. The Houyhnhnms' own inhumane characteristics (no fondness for children; all actions proceeding from Pure Reason — a disposition that would later provide the philosophical starting point for the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution) are emphasized by Swift and completely missed by Gulliver. Gulliver 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 rendered as savages incapable of civilized manners. This depiction is not entirely apt either, for when Gulliver is set to leave the island, he is conveyed to his canoe on a carriage led by a Yahoo.
Satire of the So-Called Civilized
It is, of course, an ironic juxtaposition that Swift uses to invert the Enlightenment doctrines of the day — that humankind is rational and civilized. Swift took exception to this doctrine and to the imperialism of the British in the eighteenth century, particularly the tyrannical way in which the English ruled over the Irish, which he satirized sharply in Part III of the novel.3 However, there is an ironic inversion within the inversion: while Swift appears to reduce the Enlightenment notion of man as rational to ashes by presenting man as a Yahoo, he recognizes that readers may still view civilized man as represented by the Houyhnhnms. Lest any reader conclude that civilized man is so much more rational than the Yahoo — who could simply be dismissed as a savage and therefore not really a man like the British, who were supposedly civilized — Swift shows that the Houyhnhnms are just as inhumane as the Yahoos. They merely dress up their savagery in refined discourse and language, putting a gloss on their own ignoble thoughts, ideas, and ways.
For example, at one point the horses debate 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."4 This was essentially the question the British constantly raised regarding the Irish, and one they did, to some extent, practically carry out during the Potato Famine, which the English made no meaningful attempt to alleviate. The British — the so-called civilized society that commanded an Empire — were inhumane: like the Yahoos, like the mutinous sailors who cast Gulliver overboard, and even like the Houyhnhnms, who openly discussed eradicating the Yahoos from the face of the earth because of their inherent savagery.
This line of thought was evident in the American colonies established by the British as well. The colonists had little regard for the Native Americans and wished to take possession of their land, push them out of Virginia, and essentially destroy them. Wars against the natives were justified by the argument that they were savages — cruel, unpredictable, and untrustworthy. Yet the natives were human beings, and many of them would eventually be integrated into American society over time. The real motivation was that the Empire wanted the land and was willing to manufacture any pretext for taking it. By labeling the natives as savages who had to be exterminated, an intellectual justification for fighting them was supplied.
Conclusion
Swift's Gulliver's Travels demonstrates in Part IV that the British view of the world was that of the Houyhnhnms. Whoever was not a Houyhnhnm was a Yahoo. Houyhnhnms had culture and learning: they were civilized. They alone could rule the world. They alone had use of Reason. And yet, oddly, they had no capacity to love or to demonstrate real friendship that was not predicated on racist or classist assumptions. In other words, the Houyhnhnms — that is, the British — lacked a core component of the Christianity they claimed to espouse: charity.
Swift thus depicted humanity as Yahoo-like, but also as very much like the Houyhnhnms, who demonstrated their great gift of reason in the inappropriate pursuit of power and discrimination. Whereas the Old World Catholics had seen in the natives of America a people who could be educated and taught the faith, the English Protestants viewed those same natives as savages who ought to be removed from the land and exterminated entirely so as not to pose a threat to English civility. Swift's conclusion was unambiguous: the English were the savages.
Notes
1 Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, chapter 8.
2 Swift, chapter 9.
3 Claude Rawson, "Gulliver, Travel, and Empire," CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14, no. 5 (2012): 13.
4 Swift, chapter 9.
5 Swift, chapter 10.
6 Swift, chapter 10.
Bibliography
Rawson, Claude. "Gulliver, Travel, and Empire." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14, no. 5 (2012): 7.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels.
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