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Swift's Ideal Character

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Swift's Ideal Character
Gulliver’s Travel Essay In Gulliver’s Travel, by Jonathon Swift, the protagonist, Gulliver, meets and interacts with several different kinds of human-like creatures. These creatures greatly vary in stature, some of which are minuscule compared to Gulliver and others that tower over him. While these beings are human-like in appearance and in some of their characteristics, they also show animal-like qualities. Yahoos in the land of the Houyhnhnms are a perfect example of the uncivilized nature in humans. Yahoos are savage, greedy and dishonest hairy humans who are closer to being animals then they are to being humans. The Laputans are humans that show interest in science and mathematics. They show that humans have reason. The Laputans perform science experiments. These experiments require reason and intelligence to perform. The experiments are impractical and useless, but they show human’s reason nonetheless. Jonathon Swift conducts the idea that humans are animals and have reason through the various types of humans encountered throughout the novel.

Creatures that Gulliver meets show that humans are animals. One of these humans is a Yahoo. Yahoos are the most despicable kind of humans imaginable. “He said whoever understood the nature of Yahoos might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named” (257). The Yahoos were downright nasty creatures. They were “begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forswearing, flattering, suborning, forgoing, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libeling, freethinking” (262) humans that were as far from humaneness as a blade of grass. In fact, when Gulliver first stumbles across a Yahoo, he believes it to be an animal rather than a human. Another creature that shows their animal behavior is the Lilliputians. The Lilliputians have no sense of reason as well. They try to own Gulliver, a giant compared to them. The
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