Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 7
Summary
Impressed by the virtues of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver decides to tell, freely and truthfully, as much as he can about Man. Gulliver has come to venerate the Houyhnhnms and hopes to be able to stay among them for the rest of his life. But Gulliver cannot be absolutely truthful; he extenuates people's faults and over praises their virtues. The more Gulliver tells, however, the more thoroughly he convinces his master that there are genetic and psychological links between humans and Yahoos.
Analysis
Swift sets up a point-by-point comparison between the Houyhnhnms' Yahoos and the European Yahoos he described earlier. He makes the moral flaws of Europeans vivid, concrete, and personal in the Yahoos. Yahoos collect stones as Europeans collect money. Yahoos fight among themselves like Europeans; their motive, like the Europeans' motive, is greed. They even have tribal politicians. The Yahoos get drunk and "howl and grin, and chatter, and reel, and tumble, and then fall asleep in the dirt." They are subject to melancholy and the "spleen" — fashionable complaints of rich Englishmen. For all their faults, however, the Houyhnhnms' Yahoos are not as vicious as the European Yahoos. What flaws the Yahoos have by nature, the Europeans increase and intensify through a perversion of their reason.
Glossary
sordid animal a dirty, filthy, squalid animal; here, meaning a Yahoo.
by rapine or stealth rapine: the act of seizing and carrying off by force others' property.
malicious insinuation an indirect and, in this case, spiteful suggestion or implication.
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Part 4, Chapter 7
"The author's great love of his native country. His master's observations upon the constitution and administration of England, as described by the author, with parallel cases and comparisons. His master's observations upon human nature."
- Gulliver starts to hate the Yahoos and love the Houyhnhnms.
- In fact, he decides that he never wants to leave Houyhnhnm Land and return to humankind.
- The Master Horse gives Gulliver his conclusions: the European Yahoos have only enough reason to make their natural corruption worse.
- By clipping our nails, cutting our hair, and generally growing soft, we have also deprived ourselves of the natural protection the Yahoos in Houyhnhnm Land have.
- Even though there are outward differences between Gulliver and the Houyhnhnm Land Yahoos, their essential natures are the same: they hate each other more than other animals do, and will fight even without a reason.
- The Yahoos of Houyhnhnm Land also love shiny rocks, which none of the Houyhnhnms understand, but which sees to be a trait of the whole human species.
- Yahoos are the only animals in Houyhnhnm land who get sick, and they treat each other with medicine made from a mix of pee and poo (urgh).
- The Master Horse does admit that European Yahoos have a lot more art than their local Yahoos.
- Still, their natures seem essentially identical: for example, Houyhnhnm Land Yahoos also like to choose a leader, usually the weakest and ugliest of the group.
- As for women (what the Master Horse calls "she Yahoos" (4.7.15)), he observes that Yahoos are the only ones among animal kind that still have sex even when the woman is pregnant. (Swift's point here seems to be that sex is for procreation, so once a woman's pregnant, she shouldn't need sex – which, if we may editorialize, is kind of icky of him.)
- He also notes that Yahoos are unique in having both males and females fighting equally violently with one another.
- The Master Horse continues: Yahoos love filth more than most animals.
- Also, Yahoos sometimes fall into bad moods or think they are sick for no reason; the only cure for this hypochondria is hard work.
- Women Yahoos like to seduce men. Sometimes, if an unknown female comes up to a group of three or four women, those women will clearly judge and then reject her.
- Gulliver hears these words and realizes that "lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal" (4.7.19) all seem to be instinctive for human women. (For a discussion of Gulliver's views on women, check out our theme on "Gender.")
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Gulliver justifies his grim portrait of humankind to the reader, explaining that his time among the Houyhnhnms had opened his eyes to the evils of human nature and human society and that he had in fact been hoping to live permanently among the Houyhnhnms and never return to England.
Gulliver acknowledges outright the shift in his perspective that has only been implied earlier: he feels the Houyhnhnms have helped him see the dark “truth” about human society and made him realize he wants nothing to do with humans.
The master horse, having reflected on Gulliver’s portrait of humankind, concludes that the European Yahoos are “animals, to whose share…some small pittance of reason had fallen” of which they made no use than “to aggravate…natural corruptions and…acquire new ones.” Thus, they were in many ways worse off than the reason-less Yahoos, for they also lacked those Yahoos’ physical strength, swiftness, agility, and strong claws. As to the European state, the master horse points out that they are “plainly owing to our gross defects in reason, and by consequence in virtue; because reason alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature.”
From Gulliver’s accounts, the master horse deduces the “truth” about human society that so alters Gulliver’s perspective. According to this view, humans are completely lacking in moral power, are pathetically disabled physically, and have managed to organize a society that is simply the grotesque reflection of their unreasonable minds.
The master horse continues, saying that, apart from their physical inferiority, the European Yahoos Gulliver has described resemble the Yahoos of the Houyhnhnms in countless other respects. The Yahoos of the Houyhnhnms also loathe the sight of one another’s bodies (which the master horse assumes is the real reason for Europeans’ clothes); greedily hoard food; overeat; purge; suffer sickness from immoderation (which is cured by eating their own excrement); seek intoxication; live in filth; suck up to their leaders, then throw their excrement at that leader as soon as he is replaced; lust after and hoard jewels; suffer malaise when indolent (which can only be cured by physical exertion); and indulge the grotesque lust of their females.
Though, from the Europe’s perspective, European clothes, access to fancy foods/luxury goods, wealth, political savvy, and complex emotions indicate their society’s refinement and civility, the master horse’s Houyhnhmn perspective sees the same qualities as evidence of the opposite. He recognizes those qualities as evidence of savagery and brutality, linking the possessors of those qualities to the Yahoos and indicating their society’s degradation.