The growth of Gulliver's madness in Part IV of Gulliver's Travels - Essay Example

?The growth of Gulliver's madness in Part IV of Gulliver's Travels. Introduction In this novel, Gulliver experiences many things on his journeys and is afflicted with madness in the final segment of his adventure part IV of the novel. Gulliver’s madness is the result of the fact that he cannot accept himself for who he is. Gulliver wants to be like the Houyhnhnms, a species that he considers to be perfect. When the Houyhnhnms rejected him, Gulliver breaks down emotionally. Gulliver’s journey into madness started when he could longer control events. Over the course of his stay with the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver is filled with pride and when he is exiled from Houyhnhnm-land, he is distraught. He descends further into madness because he cannot (and does not want to) think clearly. Indeed, Gulliver’s madness is a result of pride that is founded in disception. Gulliver refuses to accept the truth about his race because it means accepting the truth about who he is. He would rather live a liar and in deception. Discussion Gulliver’s madness started when he becomes unable to control events. His madness started slowly and with his interaction with the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. In a sense, his madness is the result of his inability to accept and discern what he has encountered. He knows what is happening but he cannot make real sense of it other than wants he wants. Gulliver’s madness becomes evident when he begins to think of his own “kind” as less than acceptable. His interaction with the Houyhnhnms makes Gulliver to admire them greatly. He tells us that their ideas and viewpoints “opened my eyes and enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the actions and passions of man in a very different light” (250). He admires the Houyhnhnms and, as a result, begins to despise anything else, including those of his own race. The fact that Gulliver wants to be accepted as a Houyhnhnm is also an indication that he is slipping into insanity. Gulliver believes, “the Yahoos . . . were observed to be the most unteachable of all brutes” (227). Indeed, Gulliver belittles himself when he belittles the Yahoos. Gulliver knows what he is but believes that he can change because of the Yahoos repulsive nature. Gulliver is an example of what can happen to us when we allow our minds to become clouded and refuse to think for ourselves. Gulliver loves the Houyhnhnms and essentially begins to hero-worship them. For example, as he continues to stay with them, he begins to think of his friends, family, and the “human race in general” (272), as “Yahoos in shape and disposition” (272). It should come as no surprise then, when Gulliver’s master tells him that he is considered to be a Yahoo that his mind snaps. His master has no choice but to “employ” (273) Gulliver like the “rest of his species” (273) and orders him to “swim back” (273) to the place from which he came. Because Gulliver has already disassociated himself from the Yahoos and his own race, this news is unacceptable and too much to live with. Gulliver has already gone too far in his appreciation of the Houyhnhnms and cannot go back to the way things were. Gulliver thinks too much of himself to consider life as a Yahoo. Further evidence of Gulliver’s madness can be seen in his thoughts regarding Don Pedro of whom he considered “like an animal which had some little portion of reason” (281). Gulliver does not want to return home to those that he considered Yahoos. When he does return home, he brings himself to “tolerate the sight of yahoos” (284). Here we see how Gulliver’s has taken him over because he does not consider himself a Yahoo but better than them and the ultimate sign of his diseased mind is when he considered that fact that by mating with one of the Yahoos and fathering more of them causes him the “utmost shame, confusion, and horror” (284). He does want to touch the Yahoos and admits that he cannot “endure my wife or children in my presence; the very smell of them was intolerable” (284). To further illustrate his madness, he buys two horses and converses with them “at least four hours every day” (285). Gulliver could have returned to his life as it was with a finer appreciation for what he had learned. He could have used the situation to become a better person by accepting humanity’s imperfections. By accepting the people in his life as imperfect but lovable, he could have avoided madness. Roger Lund also sees Gulliver’s madness as a result of pride. He maintains that Gulliver learns the wrong lesson from his voyages. He states, “Instead of seeking to become a better man, he tries to become a horse, going so far as to reject the love of his own family in favor of equine companionship” (Lund). His pride has led him to believe that he “escaped the human condition” (Lund). Lund goes on to say, “With all the self-righteousness and zeal of a religious convert Gulliver seeks to cast out the mote from his brother’s eye while ignoring the beam in his own” (Lund). From Gulliver, we can see how not to act in regard to judging others. In addition, we can see how we should not behave in regard to judging ourselves. However, Gulliver chooses to take another route. Instead of seeing humans as creatures that are beautiful in their imperfections, he sees them as repulsive. John Ross asserts that, “Gulliver, “trying to be a rational animal, reveals that he is not wholly so, but only capable of reason, in a limited Houyhnhnm way” (Ross xiii). This point touches on the pivotal notion that breaks Gulliver’s sanity. His limitations are something he cannot accept since he so loved and appreciated the Houyhnhnms and their way of life. He could not bear the thought of being anything less than what they were and their rejection of him was too much to bear. Deep down, he knows that the Houyhnhnms are correct in their estimation of him, but he would rather turn a blind eye to this assessment and live the rest of his life thinking he is above human creatures because he is more enlightened. Through this interpretation, we see Swift’s motivation. Louis Landa maintains the novel is “concerned to set forth the miserable condition of man, his weakness, passions, and the corruption of his reason” (Landa xxii). This is demonstrated through Gulliver’s rejection of man and his imperfections. Raymond Bentman agrees with this notion, adding that the final part of the novel “shows how abominable man appears when viewed from a distance, how beastly man appears when viewed from perfection” (Bentman). The problem is not recognizing perfection, but realizing “how far such perfection is from the possibility of human attainment” (Bentman). In Gulliver’s case, ignorance is bliss. Gulliver’s madness in the last part of the novel occurs over time. Gulliver cannot reconcile the fact that he is of a species that is not Houyhnhnm but Yahoo. His travels are also valuable in that he saw how imperfect man is but he is unable to accept the fact that man can be imperfect and still wonderful. Man may not be perfect but that does mean that mankind is hopeless and doomed to live a wrecked experience. Gulliver wants a perfect world and since he believes he has seen perfection and knows that it exists, he will settle for nothing less. Despite the imperfect creatures he encounters, which embody positive characteristics, Gulliver sees them as inferior and turns from them. The fact that he considers himself part of the perfection illustrates how his pride has taken over. Gulliver goes mad when he must face the fact that he, and mankind, cannot and will not ever achieve perfection. After witnessing the perfection of the Houyhnhnms and believing that he is more like them than his own Yahoos, Gulliver is consumed with the very pride that he comes to detest. He cannot control what happens to him, he cannot accept it, and is too proud to admit it. His madness is the only way that he can escape the awful truth. Work Cited Bentman, Raymond. “Satiric Structure and Tone in the Conclusion of Gulliver's Travels.” JSTOR Resource Database. Site Accessed May 16, 2011. Landa, Louis. Introduction: Gulliver’s Travels and Other Writings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1960. Roger D. Lund. “Dictionary of Literary Biography.” GALE Resource Database. Site Accessed May 16, 2011. Ross, John. Introduction: Gulliver’s Travels. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1948. Swift, Jonathon. Gulliver’s Travels. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1948. Read More