The Great Political Fictions: Gulliver’s Travels
Past Present Future
The Rationalizing Nature of Human Beings and Gulliver's Transformation
Human beings are rationalizing creatures who use reason to justify their instinctive responses, akin to lawyers putting a gloss on any case. Gulliver's realization of humans as 'yahoo's' - smelly, hairy, bestial creatures - deeply shocks him, causing him to no longer see his family as humans but as yahoo's. This recognition leads him to reject his wife and children, unable to bear their smell and finding solace in the stables, illustrating a profound transformation and the struggle in accepting the reality of human nature.
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