Lemuel Gulliver and the Misuse of Reason

Gulliver's perception of his rationality, compared to four of the inhabitants he encounters on his journeys, seems the most misguided and misused, and thus he ultimately emerges out of his quest as the most irrational being, despite his unrelenting belief that his human race is more reasonable than those whom he encounters. Rationality, in Gulliver's life, seems governed by size in the first part of his voyages, and then, as he comes across beings both "perfect" and horrible within the same land, it morphs into a discrete hatred, even when he returns home from his voyages to the rather innocent beings of his wife and family.

On his first voyage, Gulliver finds himself stuck in a world where his perception, both mentally and physically, is changed because the Lilliputians are human creatures, but only six inches tall. Because of this, Gulliver is forced to change his view of this world, and also the ways in which he interacts with it. At first, the Lilliputians seem to Gulliver to be rational, reasoning beings, not realizing that the irony in their size is that he cannot see their faults, much like a lover of art is unable to see those aspects of the art which are not perfect. Gulliver, upon observing these creatures for the first time, is convinced that they are a "most ingenious people" (Swift 19). He marvels at their abilities to perform mathematical processes, a quality he undoubtedly assumed was possible only for his race.

Gulliver spends a significant amount of time with the Lilliputians, but is eventually asked by the Emperor to assist his people in capturing their enemy. Up until this point, Gulliver has been pleased with the demeanor of these people, but on account of the Emperor asking Gulliver to capture the Blefuscuians, Gulliver tells the Emperor that he will not be a part of "bringing a free and brave people into slavery" (Swift 42).

This moment is one of Gulliver's few rational ones, further validated by his own changed opinion that the Imperial Majesty is now scheming and concerned with his own agenda. This would not usually seem problematic, except that Gulliver sees this opinion of the Emperor as an attack on Gulliver personally, missing the more reasonable argument that the Emperor, being so diminutive, projects his pride upon Gulliver because of his size, thus connecting Gulliver to the enemy through that pride. Clearly, this is not a rational act by the Emperor, but Gulliver fails to see this as a plausible point as well.

He is also constantly confronted with practices by the Lilliputians that are so contrary to his own that any reasonable person would perhaps question them, but at no point does Gulliver do this. Instead, he listens to the explanation of the little people's ways of doing things, and seems to accept them as normal. As readers, we are left to judge whether or not these practices seem rational, and this is where the problem lies. Gulliver plainly (and painfully so) makes an account of how the Lilliputians bury their dead facing downward, trusting that in a certain amount of time, their world will simply orient itself so that they will be facing upwards in the manner conventional to Gulliver's reason.

Gulliver acknowledges that this practice is "in compliance to the vulgar," (Swift 46), but does nothing to side with those in the country whom he realizes are of the opinion that this practice has that tone. His simple acceptance of this practice is what, to the reader, makes his character so frustrating at this point. In hearing the customs of the judicial system of this land, Gulliver has nothing to say except that "different nations had different customs" (Swift 47).

He also simply observes that the Lilliputian children are not educated by their own parents, and instead are shuffled off to public nurseries, where they are educated in an extremely hierarchical manner, the vehicle of which is their social class. Again, the overarching fault of Gulliver is his unrelenting willingness to simply narrate what he sees, without providing some sort of comment upon its irrationality. Because of the absence of such opinion, Gulliver comes off as an ultimately unreasonable character, and therefore, unreliable.

Eventually Gulliver leaves Lilliput, and, after returning home for a time, journeys to the land of the Brobdingnagians. In complete opposition to the Lilliputians, Gulliver finds himself surrounded by giants, and, instead of the inhabitants being of Gulliver's interest, he himself is now the subject, thus creating a different sort of perception, both for readers but also for Gulliver as a character, and our eyes into this giant world.

With this new perception, Gulliver sees that he is stuck in a world that he views as being excessive, and, in his eyes, horribly so. At one point, Gulliver is thrust into the breast of one of the giant women, and, because the breast is so much larger than those of the "normal" women in England, Gulliver finds this particular breast revolting.

In a way, because this land is so much different than his own, or the land from which he has just come, Gulliver feels a distinct loss of power, both of his actions and words, but also of his perception. As a consequence of this loss, Gulliver feels that the only way to regain this power he has lost is to speak of his own homeland and people, perhaps to regain an illusion of power, if not the power itself.

However, upon speaking of his own people, Gulliver elicits an extreme reaction to his explanation that is the complete opposite of what he expected to receive. Instead of agreeing with Gulliver that his people are reasonable human beings, the Brobdingnagian ruler tells Gulliver that his people are "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth" (Swift 107).

This sudden and extreme statement by the Brobdingnagian king is a moment in which the notion of pride becomes two-fold, and shows how its being openly challenged can have disastrous consequences if the accused cannot see the reason behind its invocation. The Brobdingnagian king is actually perfectly rational in his indictment of Gulliver and his people at this moment, simply because what he says is true. It's just that Gulliver does not realize that it is.

As if Gulliver's ignorance is not problematic enough, he further complicates things by moving right past this moment and telling the Brobdignagian ruler about gunpowder, and how he could use it to his advantage upon another country to become the "absolute master of their lives" (Swift 109). Not only does this prove the Brobdingnagian's point about how narrow-minded Gulliver is, but it presents to us as readers the opportunity to see that Gulliver has indeed acknowledged the presence of gunpowder as a tool of power, but he does not realize that absolute power is not morally right.

From this point on, Gulliver's rationality is changed so that it is constantly conjoined to (and somewhat governed by) irrationality, but, as usual, Gulliver does not recognize this. The issue is that Gulliver lacks precisely the thing that would allow him to see that his lacking true reason is unreasonable, much like Adam and Eve did not realize that they lacked the Knowledge set out for them within the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Reason is presented time and time again with respect to the unreasonable culture of Gulliver's people, but each time Gulliver refuses to accept it.

To make matters worse, both for us as readers in determining the validity of Gulliver as a narrator, as he continues to the land of the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos-perhaps the one chance Gulliver has to recognize his own failings-that double perception only worsens.

The yahoos, as Gulliver notes upon first seeing them, cause him to be disturbed enough that he must "lay down behind a thicket to observe them better" (Swift 181), which implies that he is so caught up in his own misguided perception that to even see a creature different from him at a distance causes his mind to immediately think them unworthy of his acceptance. He continues to watch them, adding in narration that he had "never beheld...so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy" (Swift 181). This single moment is, I argue, the final major turning point in his march to the most extreme irrationality.

What's more interesting is Gulliver's interaction with a single yahoo after leaving the scene that he just observed. The yahoo comes up on Gulliver suddenly, and merely lifts its paw toward Gulliver. As he is narrating it, this should seem to us as readers as a particularly innocuous act by the yahoo, and I argue that it reads as such. But what does Gulliver do? While he did consider whether or not the yahoo had lifted its paw out of curiousity or mischief, Gulliver chose the latter as the yahoo's intention, and thus struck the animal. He narrates that he didn't strike the animal with the blade, for fear of provoking the other yahoos. I argue that this moment in Gulliver's thinking is incredibly irrational because he is more concerned about what would happen to him, rather than what he had done to the yahoo, not having considered the animal's intention. At the very least, he could have backed away from the yahoo that was supposedly about to strike him; but he didn't. Nor, I reiterate, does he give us any indication that he had considered doing so. What we as readers ultimately have are his actions alone, and not the considerations that a truly rational person (which he considers himself to be, ironically) would have taken. Yes, the Yahoos are admittedly a crude race, but this moment of Gulliver willingly acting upon this race with immediate malice (along with contempt and aversion), places Gulliver as the cruder creature.

A second critical point of Gulliver's narrative misuse of reason as it pertains to his stay with the Houyhnhnms comes when he talks about them as a race. He notes that "[T]he word Houyhnhnm, in their tongue, signifies a horse, and in its etymology, the perfection of nature" (Swift 190). This moment is particularly telling in that Gulliver does not (again) see the irony in what he has learned from the Houyhnhnms, as a more rational, understanding person might.

The Houyhnhnms are in control of their own language, and yet because they are so adept at masking certain vital parts of their irrationality (like projecting themselves as absolutely perfect), Gulliver's misguided reason prevents him from seeing those faults, believing the Houyhnhnms to actually be the perfection of nature. Gulliver learns this piece of information from the Houyhnhnms, and so I must consider that they would naturally perceive themselves as nature's perfect being, just as Gulliver constantly pushed the "perfection" of his people onto each new race he met. But the problem is that those in power (the Houyhnhnms and Gulliver's humans) have the ability to project themselves so as to their advantage, thus creating a kind of double veil, which each have proven to do so here.
Before Gulliver leaves, the Houyhnhnm master tells Gulliver that he feels that Gulliver had cured himself of "some bad habits and dispositions, by endeavouring, as far as my inferior nature was capable, to imitate the Houyhnhnms" (Swift 226).

This is a very important moment that Swift has presented because it seems to place, in Gulliver's eyes, the Houyhnhnms on a similar level as the power which Gulliver worships, whether that power be God, or another. By the Houyhnhnm master's message, Gulliver has somehow transformed into a more perfect being by following their gospel. Gulliver seems to articulate this by admitting that he is the "inferior" being, when in fact it is the manipulative nature of reason that has caused Gulliver to see himself in this way. Instead, Gulliver sees this as a reasonable, and almost natural, thing, thus failing to guard his spiritual self from encroaching pride through the Houyhnhnms.

The Houyhnhnm master tells Gulliver that "[T]hey have no fondness for their colts" (Swift 216) but instead use reason as an excuse to educate them purely on the basis of reason itself, thereby without the more human values of love, which I argue is a rather unreasonable quality to hold so highly. For the Houyhnhnms, reason is not simply a thing that they are certain they possess, but is also a tool for them, thereby making them just as unreliable as Gulliver.

Gulliver seems to hesitate in his appreciation for the Houyhnhnms toward the end of his time with them, and yet, one of the final images we get of Gulliver as his account ends is one in which he has purchased two horses, and seems convinced that he actually converses with them. He makes no attempt to inform us whether or not he realizes that they cannot truly understand him. He says they can, but at this point, I argue that we simply cannot rely on him as a proponent of rational thought, despite his undying belief that he is reasonable. That, I argue, is perhaps the most dangerous human quality of all.

Works Cited

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1960.