Gulliver's Travels
Discuss about the Master Houyhnhnm's critism of Gulliver and Gulliver's countrymen?
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Gulliver tells his master about the way horses are treated in England, and the master cannot believe it, just as the English would never believe that there was a place where humans are ruled by horses. Yet, in the country of the Houyhnhnms, this relationship makes perfect sense. (Compare Planet of the Apes.) Again perspective plays an important role in Gulliver's journeys. There has been a major change between the two places. Here the horses have intelligence and virtue while humans, according to the grey mare, are different from Yahoos only in appearance-their morality is the same. Gulliver does not disagree. Swift encourages us to consider what really does distinguish better and worse examples of humanity.
Swift creates an interesting parallel between the governments of the Houyhnhnms and of the English when the grey horse attends the great assembly-both exhibit similar senses of entitlement to rule on the basis of merit. The Houyhnhnms are discussing whether or not to exterminate the Yahoos, never pausing to discuss whether or not they have the right to subjugate and kill the morally weaker species. Similarly, the English colonists of Swift's time often felt moral superiority to the native peoples-but if they really were like Yahoos, they had little right to think so. And even if they were superior in various ways, the English needed to think carefully about the alternative ways of ordering life and society before deciding what to do about it-as Gulliver has learned.