Gulliver’s Travels 1041including the estimate that “eleven thousand per-
sons have . . . suffered death rather than submit to
break their eggs at the smaller end.” The other side,
as prideful as the “Big Endians,” refuse to allow
them to “hold employments” and even refuse to read
their books.
The narrator’s pride reemerges following the
accusation that he, a normal-size man, behaved
improperly with the Lilliputian Treasurer’s wife, a
six-inch-tall woman. After declaring the accusa-
tion “a most infamous falsehood,” Gulliver’s pride
emerges as he boasts, “I . . . had the honor to be a
Nordac, which the Treasurer himself is not.”
Upon Gulliver’s visit to Brobdingnag, a land
of giants, Swift again injects pride. Here Gulliver
defends his native country and its inhabitants to the
king. Describing various aspects of England and its
government, Gulliver calls judges “venerable sages
and interpreters of the law” and describes “the pru-
dent management of [the] treasurer; the valour and
achievement of forces by sea and land.” This pride,
however, receives a vicious blow when the king calls
the English “the most pernicious race of little odious
vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the
surface of the earth.”
Gulliver’s pride suffers an additional blow after
he describes uses of guns and offers to teach the king
to make gunpowder. The king is “amazed at how
so impotent and groveling an insect as [Gulliver]
would entertain such inhuman ideas.” His declara-
tion soundly deflates Gulliver’s pride.
Next he meets the Houyhnhnms and loses most
of his pride. Although the Houyhnhnms are horses,
Gulliver learns to admire and respect—indeed,
almost idolize—them. This admiration advances so
far that, after he returns home, he prefers living in
a stable.
Evidence of Gulliver’s pride also appears dur-
ing this voyage whenever the king or any of the
Houyhnhnms refer to him as a Yahoo. Because
of the Houyhnhnms’ views of Yahoos, Gulliver
determines early to show himself different from
those miserable creatures. He is helped in this effort
because his clothing hides some of the physical
similarities between him and the Yahoos. However,
this effort almost comes to naught one morning
when a messenger, a “sorrel nag,” appears before
Gulliver has dressed for the day. Observing Gulliver,
with his “clothes fallen off on one side” and “his shirt
above [his] waist,” the sorrel immediately reports to
the king. Once Gulliver appears, the ruler demands
to know why he “was not the same thing when [he]
slept” as he “appeared to be at other times.” Trying
to retain some pride, Gulliver attempts to explain
the entire concept of clothes. The scene ends with
the king’s agreeing to keep Gulliver’s secret, and
Gulliver retains some pride.
Gulliver eventually believes that most human
beings contain some Yahoo characteristics. For
example, he describes the Yahoo females’ treat-
ment of “a female stranger” when members “of
her own sex would get about her, stare and chatter
and grin, . . . and then turn off with gestures that
seemed to express contempt and disdain.” He then
observes that these attitudes “have place by instinct
in womankind.” Of all whom Gulliver meets in his
voyages, he admires most the ruling horses, and
he cringes most to know that he bears similarities,
albeit primarily physical, to the detestable Yahoos.
Both influence his pride. He feels humbled in the
presence of the Houyhnhnms, and he feels ashamed
in the presence of the Yahoos. He—or perhaps Jona-
than Swift—actually seems to decide that humanity
consists of Yahoos.
Shirley ShumanScIence and tecHnoLoGy in
Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift lived during a time of scientific
and philosophic advancement commonly known
as the Enlightenment; however, he appears to have
disagreed with many goals and activities of those
involved in this period. In his narrator’s visit to
Laputa and later to Balnibarbi, Swift not-so-gently
satirizes man’s fascination with science and “higher
thinking.”
Gulliver’s first encounter with this fascination
comes upon his arrival in Laputa. Amid the many
somewhat irregular sights and events he observes,
one that quickly obtains his attention is the prac-
tice in which servants “carried in their hands . . . a
brown Bladder fastened like a Flail to the End of
a short Stick.” This sight in itself draws Gulliver’s
attention; however, he soon discovers that these