Gulliver's Travels (Swift)/Part 4
from the Collection “Gulliver's Travels”
Short summary
In 1710 Lemuel Gulliver left his pregnant wife in England and sailed as captain of a merchant ship.
His crew mutinied and abandoned him on an unknown shore. There he was attacked by hairy, filthy, humanlike creatures called Yahoos, until a grey horse frightened them away.
The horse took Gulliver to his home. Its inhabitants were Houyhnhnms, rational horses who kept Yahoos as working animals. Gulliver learned their language, and his master saw him as a Yahoo with a little reason. Over three years Gulliver described Europe to him: its wars, lawyers, money, doctors, ministers and nobles. The master concluded that humans used their reason only to increase their vices. Gulliver came to admire the Houyhnhnms, who lived by friendship and reason, and began to hate humanity and even his own face.
The Houyhnhnms' assembly ruled that a Yahoo should not live like a Houyhnhnm and advised the master to send Gulliver away across the sea. When the master told him, Gulliver recalled:
I was struck with the utmost grief and despair at my master’s discourse; and being unable to support the agonies I was under, I fell into a swoon at his feet...
With the help of a sorrel servant, Gulliver built a canoe and sailed away in 1715. In New Holland local people wounded him with an arrow. A kind Portuguese captain took him aboard, though Gulliver could hardly bear human company. The captain persuaded him to go home to his family. There Gulliver fainted when his wife kissed him. He kept his family at a distance and talked for hours each day to two horses in his stable.
Detailed summary by chapters
Chapter titles are editorial.
Chapter 1. Mutiny, abandonment, and the first rational horses
After five happy months at home, Lemuel Gulliver left his pregnant wife and children to command the merchant ship Adventurer, sailing on 7 September 1710.
After fever killed several sailors, he recruited replacements in the Caribbean, unaware that most had been pirates. They seized the ship, chained him in his cabin and planned to sell the cargo before attacking Spanish vessels. On 9 May 1711 they abandoned him on an unknown coast, allowing him clothes and a sword but overlooking his pocket money. Inland, hairy creatures with claws surrounded him after he struck one with his sword's flat. He defended himself against a tree while they dropped excrement from above, until an approaching grey horse frightened them away.
The horse studied him and gently blocked his way. A brown companion joined it; they touched forehooves and exchanged speech-like sounds. Gulliver thought them magicians. They examined his clothes and taught him to repeat Yahoo and Houyhnhnm, then parted. The grey guided him inland, allowing him to rest when he grew tired.
Chapter 2. The Houyhnhnm household and Gulliver's resemblance to the Yahoos
The grey led Gulliver about three miles to a timber house, where horses sat neatly or performed household tasks. Gulliver expected human owners and prepared gifts, but heard only horses speaking. His guide brought him before a mare and two young horses. The mare examined him contemptuously and repeatedly called him a Yahoo.
In an outbuilding, three Yahoos were tied up and eating roots and meat. The horses compared Gulliver with one, and he recognised a human form beneath its hair and coarse features. His clothes hid much of their resemblance. He refused roots, foul meat, hay and oats, fearing starvation, until he indicated that he could drink milk. His host obtained a bowl for him.
At dinner, the horses ate oats and hay with milk. Puzzled by his gloves, the grey had him remove them and taught him words. Gulliver later ground oats between stones, mixed them with water and toasted the paste into cakes. With milk, herbs and occasional trapped birds or rabbits, these sustained him. He slept on straw in lodging separate from the Yahoos.
Chapter 3. Language lessons, Gulliver's clothes, and a world ruled by humans
The grey, whom Gulliver called his master, spent hours teaching him, helped by his family and a particularly willing sorrel servant.
Gulliver wrote words in his journal, although the horses knew nothing of books. His cleanliness and speech puzzled those who considered him a Yahoo. Within five months he could converse reasonably well. His master doubted that brutes could sail a wooden vessel across the sea, and had no word for a lie.
The servant found Gulliver asleep with his clothes displaced. Gulliver explained clothing and undressed, keeping his private parts covered. His master judged him a pale, unusually hairless Yahoo, but let him dress because he was cold. At Gulliver's request, he kept the clothing secret.
Gulliver then described his ship and abandonment. Asked why horses had let brutes command it, he explained that beings like himself built ships and governed his homeland. He admitted that English people would find rational horses as hard to believe as his host found human rulers.
Chapter 4. Lying, humanity's treatment of horses, and the vices of Gulliver's crew
His master could not understand lying. Speech, he reasoned, should convey knowledge; falsehood defeated that purpose and left the hearer less informed than before. Gulliver recalled his objection:
...if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated; because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving information, that he leaves me worse than in ignorance...
Asked about horses in England, Gulliver explained that people fed and groomed them, but also rode them, used whips and harnesses, and sold injured animals into hard labour. Horses were trained young and often castrated to make them obedient. His master was outraged and wondered how weak, poorly protected creatures could force stronger animals to serve them.
Gulliver described his English birth, medical training and voyages to support his family. His recruits had fled debt, lawsuits, prison or punishment. Explaining their crimes took days, since the language lacked terms for war, law and government. His master asked for more about Europe.
Chapter 5. War, weapons, and the corruption of law
During their long conversations, Gulliver estimated that recent European wars had killed a million people. Rulers fought from ambition, ministers to distract subjects from corruption, and nations over beliefs and ceremonies. He included attacks on weakened neighbours among their accepted excuses:
It is a very justifiable cause of a war to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves.
His master doubted that small teeth and weak claws could kill so many. Gulliver explained guns, cannon, sieges and naval battles, describing slaughter, rape and plunder. Horrified, his master stopped him. He concluded that human cleverness enlarged malice rather than providing true reason.
Turning to law, Gulliver described lawyers who argued for whoever paid them. If a neighbour claimed his cow, its owner needed an advocate who might defend justice badly because fraud was more familiar. Bribery could win; judges favoured corrupt precedents, while irrelevant arguments delayed cases for years. In state trials, they first learned what those in power wanted. His master thought lawyers should teach wisdom, but Gulliver called them ignorant outside their profession.
Chapter 6. Money, medicine, ministers, and noble birth
Money, Gulliver explained, bought land, houses and pleasures, and people sought it endlessly. He described how a small wealthy class lived on the labour of a much larger poor population:
That the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man’s labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the former. That the bulk of our people were forced to live miserably...
England produced more food than it needed, he said, but exported necessities for luxuries that encouraged vice and disease. Wine briefly removed fear and reason, then caused sickness. His master could not understand poverty in a land capable of feeding everyone.
He blamed disease on excess, sexual infection and inherited disorders. He accused doctors of giving disgusting remedies, treating imaginary illnesses and killing patients to confirm fatal predictions. They could thus help people remove unwanted relatives.
Ministers gained power through intrigue, bribed supporters and secured laws protecting their stolen wealth. When his master supposed he was nobly born, Gulliver described his ordinary parents and portrayed nobles as idle, sickly and foolish, despite their legislative power.
Chapter 7. Human reason and the evidence of Yahoo nature
Gulliver resolved within a year to remain among the Houyhnhnms. Their example had taught him to hate falsehood, though loyalty to England still softened his account. His master concluded that humans used limited reason to worsen their faults and multiply their needs:
That we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed, had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions.
He compared human greed with the Yahoos' passion for shining stones. When he secretly removed one animal's hoard, it howled and refused food or work until the stones returned. A third Yahoo sometimes stole a stone while two fought over it; Gulliver thought lawyers did worse by consuming both disputants' wealth.
He also described fights over food, theft, a root that caused drunkenness and leaders with hated favourites. Gulliver recognised human habits in these accounts. Some well-fed Yahoos withdrew and groaned until work cured them; he recognised the low spirits of the idle rich.
Chapter 8. Yahoo behavior and the virtues of Houyhnhnm society
Guarded by the sorrel, Gulliver studied the Yahoos. They imitated his exposed body but remained hostile. A young one scratched and bit him, then soiled his clothes. Later, while he bathed naked, a young female entered the river and embraced him. The sorrel drove her away, but Gulliver took her attraction as proof that he belonged to their species.
He increasingly admired the Houyhnhnms, who affirmed only what reason made certain and could scarcely understand opinion or disagreement. He described the friendship they extended to every member of their kind:
Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the Houyhnhnms; and these not confined to particular objects, but universal to the whole race.
Parents cared for children without special fondness for their own. Marriages were arranged for strength, colour and appearance, not love. Most couples stopped after one male and one female; servants could have six offspring. Couples lived without jealousy, and families sometimes exchanged children.
Both sexes learned temperance, work, cleanliness and demanding exercises. Districts held regular athletic contests. Every fourth spring, a national council redistributed supplies and arranged replacements for children who had died.
Chapter 9. The assembly's Yahoo debate and Houyhnhnm customs
About three months before Gulliver's departure, the assembly debated whether to exterminate the Yahoos. One member blamed them for theft, filth and damage, and repeated a tradition that two outsiders had multiplied until the horses hunted the adults and raised the young for labour. He proposed replacing them with donkeys, which were cleaner and easier to manage.
Gulliver's master believed the first Yahoos had arrived by sea. Citing Gulliver's account of castrated horses, he proposed castrating young Yahoos so their race would gradually disappear, while donkeys replaced them. He described Gulliver's limited reason but withheld an assembly decision affecting him personally.
The Houyhnhnms preserved knowledge without writing, composed poetry and used herbs for injuries. They built simple houses and worked with stone, wood and clay, using their forefeet skilfully. Usually living to seventy or seventy-five, they met old age calmly, buried their dead without mourning and took leave of friends before dying. Their language named faults by adding references to Yahoos.
Chapter 10. Contentment among the Houyhnhnms and the sentence of exile
Gulliver had settled happily in a room near his master's house, furnishing it with handmade bedding, mats and chairs. The sorrel helped with heavy work. As his clothes wore out, he replaced them with animal skins and used Yahoo skin for his shoes. He enjoyed health, simple food and freedom from the abuses he associated with human society. Listening to courteous Houyhnhnm conversations deepened his devotion to them.
He came to regard his wife, children and countrymen as speaking Yahoos who used reason to increase their vices. His own reflection disgusted him. He copied the horses' movements and speech and welcomed later remarks that he trotted like a horse. He expected to remain with his master for life.
His master then revealed the assembly's advice: Gulliver must either work like other Yahoos or leave the country. Keeping him almost as a Houyhnhnm offended their sense of reason and nature. Those who knew him feared that his intelligence might enable him to lead Yahoo attacks, so they rejected the first choice. Although his master wished to keep him, neighbours pressed him to obey. Gulliver fainted, then begged for time to build a boat. He feared death at sea less than a return to human corruption, but accepted the decision.
Given two months and the sorrel's help, he spotted an island through his telescope and chose it as his destination. In six weeks they built an oak-framed canoe covered with Yahoo skins, made a skin sail and sealed its seams with Yahoo fat. He loaded meat, milk and water, tested the boat and had it carried to shore. His master and several neighbours accompanied him. Weeping, Gulliver tried to kiss his master's hoof; the horse gently raised it to his mouth. When wind and tide favoured him, he pushed off into exile.
Chapter 11. Rescue by Pedro de Mendez and a painful homecoming
Leaving on 15 February 1714–15, Gulliver sought solitude rather than human company. He reached New Holland, where local people pursued him and wounded his knee with an arrow. He escaped by canoe but hid from a ship. Portuguese sailors found him and carried him aboard against his will.
The captain, Pedro de Mendez, offered food, wine and a clean cabin despite Gulliver's disgust at human company.
After Gulliver tried to jump overboard, he was confined. Mendez heard his story and gradually believed him, then obtained his promise not to harm himself. In Lisbon he housed and clothed Gulliver and persuaded him that duty required a return to his wife and children.
Gulliver reached home on 5 December 1715, but his family's welcome only increased his revulsion:
My wife and family received me with great surprise and joy, because they concluded me certainly dead; but I must freely confess the sight of them filled me only with hatred, disgust, and contempt...
He fainted when his wife kissed him. Even five years later, he avoided his family's touch and company. He bought two horses and spent several hours each day talking with them.
Chapter 12. A defense of truth, a rejection of conquest, and a warning against pride
Gulliver defended his account as truthful and intended to improve readers rather than entertain them. He wished travel writers had to swear to their accuracy, claimed to seek public benefit rather than fame, and urged readers to learn from foreign virtues. He maintained that he had avoided prejudice and deserved no criticism.
Asked why he had not claimed his discoveries for the Crown, he questioned conquest's usefulness and justice. The lands offered few easy gains, and their inhabitants could resist. He described Europeans killing and enslaving hospitable peoples while claiming to civilize them, then praised British colonial virtue. He wished the Houyhnhnms would teach Europe justice and truth.
At home, he planned to teach his family their virtues and study his reflection until a human face became tolerable. He let his wife dine at the far end of a long table, masking her smell with herbs or tobacco. He hoped eventually to endure a neighbour, but pride in such flawed creatures remained unbearable. He ended by asking proud people to stay away.