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Gulliver’s Travel
Swift applies satire in alternating strategies, which invites the reader to adapt to the author’s devices to maintain a comprehension of the text in its most complete form. In part IV, A Voyage to Houyhnhnms, Swift applies satire where he places Gulliver in interaction with horses that have human cognition. This depiction portrays humans as irrational and disgusting creatures that are converted to become servants to the horses. This satire is used to launch attacks on European society. For instance, when Gulliver encounters intelligent horses, Yahoos, he does not realize that they are human beings. He exclaims that never in his life has he met “So disagreeable an Animal, nor one against which [he] naturally conceived so strong of Antipathy” (190). Later upon the realization that the Yahoos are indeed human beings, Gulliver is surprised yet outraged, just like the reader whom Swift has annoyed with such a revelation. The Yahoo’s objection, as well as Gulliver’s abhorrent nature before he realized the horses are humans, represents Swift’s satire, which he applies strategically to attack the Europeans and all human beings exiting in the society.
Gulliver’s experience and enthrallment about the Houyhnhnms, which cause him to deny the humanness of the creatures, enhance the satire in human beliefs about rational and irrational things. Gulliver expresses his admiration for the intelligent horses saying that their behavior “was so orderly ad rational, so acute, and judicious, […] they must need to be Magicians, who had thus metamorphosed themselves upon some design” (191). At first, Gulliver fails to understand the rationality of the creatures instantly, which he attributes to the work of human beings behaving like magicians. He observes that the animals are behaving in some orderly manner, just like human beings. However, instead of conceptualizing and accepting the observations, Gulliver rubs his eyes in disbelief as if trying to awaken his thoughts from a dream. In this twisted satirical strategy, Swift manages to launch an attack on humankind and its doubts and disbelief to reality.