Little Odious Vermin

That is not a very flattering thing to say about humans. The evidence?

He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.”

And, that is not the worst thing said about humanity in Gulliver’s Travels.

In the popular imagination, Gulliver’s Travels is a kid’s story about a man who stumbles upon a land of really small people, the Lilliputians. It’s a tale of many charming moments watching little people tie Gulliver down with a zillion little ropes or Gulliver eating whole miniature sheep in a single bite. There is even a cartoon version from 1939 with a benevolent Gulliver and endless little people acting in ways that would make a 4 year old laugh. That cutesy version of the story is surely why my 5^th grade teacher told me I should read the book. It is safe to say that I had absolutely no idea what was going on when I tried to read it, though I was surprised to find out the tiny people are only the first part of the book. In the second part, Gulliver ends up in a place with Giant people. I don’t think I got to the crazy scientists of the third part or the horses in the fourth.

Far from a book for children, Gulliver’s Travels is one of the most vicious attacks on humanity ever penned. It gets called a satire a lot, but that raises an interesting question about satire. Is satire amusing? Parts 1 through 3 of this book have some amusing bits, but by part 4, it is just plain vicious. Is that still “satire”?

The book ends with Gulliver unable to stand even the sight and smell of people. Gulliver is rescued and brought home by one of the nicest people you will find in literature, Don Pedro, a truly benevolent Good Samaritan. Gulliver cannot tolerate being in his presence. Gulliver gets home after years of exile and cannot bear to be near his wife and finds it revolting that he actually fathered children. Gulliver is not the misanthrope with a heart of gold or with some amusing peccadillos. By the end of the novel, Gulliver has learned to hate people, all people. If you buy the argument of the book, you might just hate them too.

It is a brilliantly seductive argument. The book does not start out in total misanthropic rantings. In the first episode, we look at all the antics of the little people, running around fighting about how high heels should be or which end of the eggs should be cracked. So silly, these little people and their pathetic little attempts to feel important. If the book ended there, it would have been a pleasant enough tale, letting us bask in the glory of knowing that while others worry about silly little things like whether it is bread or flesh, we are enlightened enough to know that much of what passes for human strife is over small things. It is fun to look down on the rest of humanity as being a bit silly and misguided.

Then we get to book two, and we lose our comfortable condescension. Now Gulliver, and by extension all of us, are the little people, and everything we do, not just those debates about eggs or bread, is awful and full of vile passions and motives. That is the source of the quotations that opened these reflections. It is hard to argue that history is not “a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.”

But it is not all bad, obviously. We have done some good, right? Look at science! It is amazing what we have accomplished through science. And then we get to Book 3, and we meet the society of scientists, both physical scientists and social scientists.

Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill I was clad, ordered a tailor to come next morning, and take measure for a suit of clothes. This operator did his office after a different manner from those of his trade in Europe. He first took my altitude by a quadrant, and then, with a rule and compasses, described the dimensions and outlines of my whole body, all which he entered upon paper; and in six days brought my clothes very ill made, and quite out of shape, by happening to mistake a figure in the calculation. But my comfort was, that I observed such accidents very frequent, and little regarded.

The social scientists are no better in their attempts at designing the perfect society. It is all just a heap of absurdities.

Had the book ended there, Gulliver’s Travels would have been a remarkably thought-provoking book. Book 4 is where it turns into a work of pure genius. Gulliver finds himself in a land where horses are the enlightened, cultured beings. The humans, called Yahoos, are truly the most revolting animals you can imagine. There is no redeeming quality in the Yahoos; even the wise and benevolent horses start wondering if it would not be better to just exterminate the Yahoos. Gulliver, speaking up in defense of these creatures who are biologically akin to him, suggests that killing all the Yahoos is unnecessary since the same end result could be achieved by castrating all of them. Yep. That is Gulliver rising to the defense of humanity.

As Gulliver’s host observes, the human society from which Gulliver came is comprised of “a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us…”

There is no cheerful ending to the travels, no moment of heart-warming reconciliation and a desire to do better. Just pure unadulterated misanthropy.

Is this book true? Therein lies the first challenge. Reading through the book is one long exercise of thinking that while humans are bad, they could be worse, only to get a few pages further along and realize they are in fact worse. It’s almost like humans bear the unbearable stamp of original sin.

The bigger challenge is what to do if you accept that this portrait of humanity is even reasonably accurate. Gulliver becomes a raving misanthrope. Is that the only option? Is it even possible to look humanity square in the face and say “Even though you are vile, I will love you anyway”? Let’s hope so.