Travels Explores The Idea of Utopia-An Imaginary Model of The Ideal

Gullivers Travels as a Mock Utopia

The tendency to hanker after a utopia is a perfectly human desire. Like

many narratives about voyages to nonexistent lands, Gullivers
Travels explores the idea of utopiaan imaginary model of the ideal
community. The idea of a utopia is an ancient one, going back at least as far
as the description in Platos Republic of a city-state governed by the wise
and expressed most famously in English by Thomas Mores Utopia.
The literal meaning of Utopia is no place, nowhere. Thomas More gave this
term to his ideal commonwealth. Swift incorporates the key concepts
of Platos and Mores utopias into his own narrative, though his attitude
toward utopia is much more skeptical. One can see the different lands of
Gullivers travels as the parody of utopian literature. Hence Gulliver's
Travels can be regarded as a mock Utopia.
One of the main aspects about these famous historical utopias is the
tendency to privilege the collective group over the individual. The children
of Platos Republic are raised communally, with no knowledge of their
biological parents, in the understanding that this system enhances social
fairness.
Lilliputians similarly raise their offspring collectively but its results are not
exactly utopian, since Lilliputian are torn between conspiracies, jealousies,
and backstabbing. Nonetheless, they are prone to making official edicts
concerning the lives of the citizens and have well-established systems of
granting their law-abiding citizens: Whoever there can bring sufficient
proof that he hath strictly observed the laws of his country for
seventy-three moons hath a claim to certain privileges.
Brogdingnag forms more practical moral utopia than Lilliput. The
Brobdingnagians are the epitome of moral giants and their size shows that
their morality is also gigantic. Brobdingnagians, however, are not without
their flaws. Unlike Gulliver who always considered Lilliputians to be the
miniature men, Brobdingnagians cannot consider him a miniature
Brobdingnagian. Even the Brobdingnagian king treats him like a little tiny
fellow unaware of the grandiose ideas of the diminutive creature. The maids
of honour treat Gulliver as a plaything, undress themselves in front of him,
and titillate themselves with his naked body.
Swifts clinical dissection of the utopian ideal is at best in the description of

the Houyhnhnms. Swift tells us that the Houyhnhnms use nature and
reason as their distinctive features. It is supported by Gullivers assertion
that Houyhnhnm societys grand maxim, is to cultivate reason, and to
be wholly governed by it. They are in stark contrast with the loathsome
Yahoos, brutes in human shape.
Indeed the Houyhnhnms possess many laudable qualities. Gulliver finds an
ideal society organized entirely along rational lines. This emphasis on
rationality leads them to arrange all aspects of social life according to
logical patterns. They even brainwash Gulliver, erasing his human nature
insofar as they can and replacing it with a pure and abstract rationality like
their own. But Gulliver, owing to his unteachable Yahooish nature,
endeavours not to become a more rational human being, but to become a
Houyhnhnm itself. Thus it is clear that he has not learned the teachings of
the Houyhnhnms, for he does not behave rationally at all. Man, of
course, can never be a Houyhnhnm, nor was meant to be, but the
rational society of Houyhnhnmland nevertheless offers a goal of
moral perfection toward which he should strive says Beauchamp.
The utopian Houyhnhnms can be lauded as the manifestation of mans
rational nature, untainted by mans bestial traits while Yahoos
represent mans apish, stupid, unredeemed animal nature.
Significantly, Hobbes suggested that human nature is to be warlike in our
pursuit of desires, and so life will be, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short. Locke would later write a counter argument, that the nature of
humankind is inclined more toward cooperation, as opposed to Hobbes that
saw humankind in a never-ending state of war.
Wedel suggests middle path, Swift is clearly neither Hobbes nor
Locke. Gulliver is neither Yahoo nor Houyhnhnm. He cannot attain
to the rational felicity of the Houyhnhnms. Neither has he sunk to
the level of the Yahoos.
Swift ingeniously suggests that the Houyhnhnms do not stand for perfected
human nature but they manifest pre-fallen state of innocent human

nature. The Houyhnhnms cannot be admired or emulated because they are
just doing what they inherently do. The same reason is not inherent in
Yahoos. The Houyhnhnms are ice-cold reason while the Yahoos are fiery
sensuality. Swift places Gulliver somewhere in between Houyhnhnm and
Yahoo poles. To Swift, human nature is both sensual and rational. If the
reason is extracted man becomes a lump of hideous instincts. Similarly if
passion is extinct what remains is a tame animal.
Houyhnhnms society is entirely instrumental serving only to maintain itself
without any other consideration. Their rationality is focused on the
preservation of their static perfection and this instinct of self-preservation
overrules their every other impulse and consideration. Houyhnhnms cannot
see the world from any other perspective and all their perfection is
directed to this end.
Also, the dichotomy of Houyhnhnms morality highlights the self-validating
nature of their judgments. The Houyhnhnms preserve Yahoos because the
benefits of exterminating them do not clearly outweigh costs of keeping
them alive. This version of reason is coldly functional, almost Machiavellian,
in the way the end is seen to justify the means. The extermination of their
yahoo foils mean undermining their self-proclaimed status as
the Perfection of Nature. They even expel Gulliver their sole ardent
supporter from the Yahoo race. This is the state of their utopia, into which
Gulliver stumbles, an eternal, unchanging society built on some values that
are intrinsic to the nature of creatures that populate it.
Swift thus mocks the very concept of utopia and makes it clear that
nowhere an ideal state exists because evil exists in every society in one
form or the other. The world of Utopia is doomed to remain a dream in this
world because, "whether man is three inches or three miles high, he
remains a mana presumptuous zero.

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Gullivers Travels as a Mock Utopia

The tendency to hanker after a utopia is a perfectly human desire. Like

Swifts clinical dissection of the utopian ideal is at best in the description of

human nature but they manifest pre-fallen state of innocent human

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