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Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Decent Essays

In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver is washed up onto a foreign land where he encounters two species: Houyhnhnms, ruling intellectual horse-like species, and the Yahoos, brutish human-like animals. As a foreigner, Gulliver tries to integrate himself with Houyhnhnms community and through his attempts of communicating Gulliver ultimately fails due to his striking similarity to the brute Yahoos. Swifts juxtaposition of two different worlds, made extremely clear by both physical, physiological, linguistic aspects, reveals the futility of any successful integration. As with any interaction there must be some sort of communication between two parties for there to be any understanding. When Gulliver first encounters the Houyhnhnms, he makes an effort to mimic the language to demonstrate some sort of understanding, repeating the word Yahoo over and over again. This is the first example where Swift satirizes foreign interaction. Gulliver ignorance of the language leads him to repeat Yahoo, a word he later finds out is the insulting title of the brutish human-like beasts the Houyhnhnms enslaved, thus making his attempt look stupid. As the Houyhnhnms take him in, he quickly picks up the Houyhnhnm’s language and is able to give “the most tolerable answers,” (Swift 217). Even so, language is still a barrier between Gulliver and the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver tries to explain his voyage to the Houyhnhnms, “It was with some Difficulty, and by the help of many Signs, that I brought

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