Gulliver, throughout his adventures in the land of the Lilliputians and in the land of the Houyhnhnms, has over and over again returned to a topic one wouldn’t necessarily find to be important to this documentation of his travels. Gulliver always seems to make reference back to the state of his own body, and the dissatisfaction he feels when he remembers how he looks. For example, in the country of the Lilliputians, he feels ashamed of his need to pass excrement (even though this is a natural occurrence). He makes a big deal out of describing how he only did this out of complete necessity, and how thereafter he always made sure to do it in a more cleanly way. In the country of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver became disgusted with his body because he associated it with the bodies of the Yahoos. It got to the point where Gulliver even began to act like a horse – he would hold himself as a horse, “trot” like a horse, and even imitate their speech. Gulliver’s discomfort with his own body always came as a result of examining the majority beings’ bodies. Gulliver felt out of place in his own skin. This phenomenon reminded me of the way that black bodies were treated. When black Africans were uprooted from Africa and brought to the Americas, the justifications given for this were that black bodies were inferior to white bodies. As time went on, this idea was drilled into the minds of Africana people, to the point where very few of them could feel comfortable in their own skin. Gulliver’s examination of his own body could perhaps be taken as a gesturing to these experiences, as the slave trade had been going on for centuries at that time.
Reflections on Death and Rationality
In his voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver describes the horses’ experience with death saying, “If they can avoid casualties, they die only of old age, and are buried in the obscurest places that can be found, their friends and relations expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure; nor does the dying person discover the least regret that he is leaving the world, any more than if he were upon returning home from a visit to one of his neighbors (Swift, 162).” The horses’ approach to death is, pardon the irony, inhumane. In one instance, a Houyhnhnm is late to Gulliver’s place of residence because her husband died that morning and she had to bury him. The lack of emotion associated with death is chilling. Yet, to Gulliver, this approach is part of the peak of civilization.
In comparing the country of the Houyhnhnms to Europe, he finds Europe lacking. Yet, at least regarding death, Europe, and specifically the English, are similar to the Houyhnhnms. Just as the horses approach death without emotion, the English approach the death of peoples in their colonies with a similar lack of emotion. An uncountable number of African slaves died in the Atlantic Ocean and on inhumane plantations. Similarly, as ironically reflected in Swift’s A Modest Proposal, the English allowed the Irish to starve to the point that the only solution seemed to be “eating Irish babies.” In this case, the English could have and should have acted with more emotion. In fact, in many situations, indifference perpetuates injustice. Rather than universal rationality serving as the peak of human experience, a positive emotion, that of empathy, better serves humanity.
Slave Imagery in Gulliver’s Travels
One thing I noticed while reading Gulliver’s Travels is the focus on the body, specifically the focus on using the body for labor. In both Lilliput and the country of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver is made an other by the natives and forced to live in a separate space. In Lilliput specifically, Gulliver is exploited for his human capital as he is made an instrument of war. In the country of the Houyhnhnms his body is not used for labor, but he is compared to a Yahoo on multiple occasions and is eventually banished from the Island due to the Houyhnhnms’ fear that he will lead a Yahoo uprising. When looking at the treatment of Gulliver in both of these lands, one cannot help but think of slavery in the United States. The Lilliputians’ disgust of Gulliver’s body, especially his defecation, reflects the attitude of disgust slave owners had for their own human capital. The Lilliputians use Gulliver’s body as a weapon and promote him to a Nardac, yet he is still banned from participating in the courts due to the “meanness of his condition.” The Articles created to punish Gulliver are a result of the fear that he would attempt to have sex with the Lilliputian Queen, thus invading the space of the priviliged. The fear of Gulliver’s invasion of the privileged space and his physical strength is a parallel to the fear slave owners expressed towards their slaves, who were typically stronger than the slave owner and designated to their own separate space.
This fear of brute strength and the invasion of the privileged space is expressed by the Houyhnhnms as well, but to a lesser extent. They are only able to tolerate Gulliver, a Yahoo in their minds, when he is wearing clothes. Otherwise, they are disgusted by the image of his brutish body. They allow him in their homes, but also deny him the right of participating in the local councils due to his similarity in appearance to the Yahoos. The reason for his banishment is the fear that he will start a Yahoo rebellion, similar to how white landowners feared that slaves would start rebellions on their plantations. I am aware that this novel is mainly an Irish text, but the similarities between the relationships Gulliver has with the natives of the lands he travels to and the relationships slaves had with their owners are evident throughout the book, especially during the passages that focus on Gulliver’s body.
Belonging in Gulliver’s Travels
In our discussion of Gulliver’s Travels this week, we touched on Gulliver and his sense of belonging in the world. I found Gulliver to be a peculiar character, as I cannot tell whether he hates the idea of belonging altogether or only belonging when connected to England and the Yahoos. In support of the former, Gulliver is always traveling and never stays in one place for too long (if he can help it). He is of English birth but has no true home; he transfers his “home” to wherever he is. Gulliver seems like he is the most comfortable when he is in the states of in-between found in his often aimless traveling. To most people, being in between two states is often an uncomfortable position. Gulliver, however, always seeks to set himself out into the unknown, leaving behind all sense of belonging in the process.
On the other hand, Gulliver seems as though he is always ready to jump into a new culture, as long as it is not English. During his travels, he readily abandons the ways of life that he learned from his English origins in order to conform and belong with the peoples that he encounters. He adopts the customs of both the Lilliputians and the Houyhnhnms, learning their languages and contributing to their societies. Gulliver even sees the Houyhnhnms’ way of life as far superior to any of the peoples he’s seen before, including the English. Gulliver is a product of English society but, as a result of his travels, comes to completely reject his national origin and even his identity as a Yahoo. He does not reject all sense of identity and belonging, however, as he comes to express his wishes to find a place of belonging among the Houyhnhnms. So, is it just England (and the Yahoos that inhabit it) that Gulliver wants to abandon or is it all sense of belonging as well? What does the answer mean for us as the reader?
Modern Day Gulliver
In my initial reaction to part 1 of Gulliver’s Travel, I wasn’t shocked to see the exaggerated depiction of Gulliver and his encounter with the Lilliputian people. Right away we see how
Guliver is presented as a well-educated, distinguished, and adventurous individual. In class we entertained the idea of Gulliver being representative of English culture during that time, and I think that approach is fairly accurate through the obvious symbolism in part 1. Gulliver is illustrated as a giant in comparison to the Lilliputians. He is also considered to be far more intelligent and superior than them. I would imagine that during this time period, England viewed themselves as one of the leading powers in the world that couldn’t be touched, and had this “giant” mentality.
In addition, I mentioned in class how the fact that gullivers accounts are very generous in reference to himself but far fetched when concerning the Lilliputians. This is a great representation of how a country like England would view themselves compared to the rest of the world. A country that, even with its flaws, is more sophisticated, modernized, and appealing than anyone else. I think there is a clear sense of power and dominance through the beginning of Gulliver’s journey, however, there is also a side of compassion and humanity which allows the reader to relate.
With that being said, if this approach is accurate, and this is a clear depiction of English culture from a position of power, I am curious to see what a current story of Gulliver’s Travel would look like. When I think about how countries employ propaganda and insert themselves at the center of the world, I think this story could be told from the perspective of any one of today’s world powers and the story wouldn’t be too far off from the original. Who today would take the place of Gulliver, and who would be the Lilliputian people?
The Irish as “Almost White”
After reading Lloyd’s piece, the similarities between the treatment of the Irish and Africans and African Americans by the English during the period of colonialism become much more clear. The arguments for Irish colonization used in many of the citations in Lloyd’s writing reflect staple claims of the British civilizing mission, the argument for colonization based on the “improvement” of “less evolved” societies through English teaching. The attitudes of the British writers cited by Lloyd are almost exactly the same to those promoting the African civilizing mission, which shows that the English viewed the black world and the Irish world as two very similar entities.
The language used to describe the Irish by the English is similarly racist to the language used to describe blacks and makes very similar arguments to those describing the colonization of the African continent. Lloyd’s citation of Thomas Carlyle reads, “The time has come when the Irish population must either be improved a little, or else exterminated… In a state of perennial ultra-savage famine, in the midst of civilization, they cannot continue,” (9). This statement is a disturbing, yet accurate depiction of what the civilizing mission philosophy entails; one either conforms to the English way of life or must be eliminated by that way of life. Civilizations that are not in line with English ideas of modernity are all viewed as inferior under this philosophy, and the African and Irish civilizations are viewed as similar under this philosophy due to their similar apparent lack of modernity. Another quote from Carlyle says, “Crowds of miserable Irish darken all our towns… In his rags and laughing savagery, he is there to undertake all the work that can be done by mere strength of hand and back,” (9). Carlyle describes the Irish as savages in a manner similar to the racist descriptions of black individuals. But he also says the Irish will physically “darken” the towns of the British, implying that the Irish are viewed as “black” individuals. Carlyle goes on further to describe the Irish as “white negroes” and claims that the emancipation of the West Indies would turn the nation into a “Black Ireland, ‘free’ indeed, but an Ireland, and Black!” (10). This racist dialogue implies that the English believed there was an inherent similarity between blacks and the Irish due to the two groups’ lack of modernity, and it is this very lack of modernity that caused the English to see these two peoples as a plague to cultured society.
Heterogeneity and Origin Points
Gilroy’s theory that there is no individual race due to the great levels of cultural mixing that occurred during the period of Circum-Atlantic trade emphasizes the necessity to look at individuals as beings of multiple influences, but fails to look at those influences as singular entities in and of themselves. I think Gilroy highlights this idea well when he describes Delany’s tour of Africa, saying that the tour “confirmed the dissimilarities between African-American ideologues and the Africans with whom they treated,” (24). The idea that race is an objectively improper descriptor of a human being is justified by this emotional distance from one’s “homeland” and the lack of emotional response that occurs upon “homecoming” after exile. But I believe Gilroy’s argument that all human beings in the Circum-Atlantic area maintain some form of cultural unity with one another is flawed due to the strength of an origin point’s influence over an individual.
Gilroy describes a difficulty with thinking in black and white terms as “the overintegrated conceptions of pure and homogeneous culture which mean that black political struggles are construed as somehow automatically expressive of the national or ethnic differences with which they are associated,” (31). Essentially, he is saying that black political concerns will always be construed with racial implications if homogeneous thinking continues in society. But, I do not believe that the racial implications of political arguments regarding any race of people can be ignored. I agree that the rationality to think in terms of race is utterly flawed when describing human beings, but I do not believe we realistically have the ability to live in a post-racial world. As much as one can argue that the characters of people are a result of a heterogeneous cultural mixing, it cannot be ignored that there are origin points that led to the mixing in the first place. Origin points are the beginnings of the cultural mixing that Gilroy describes, so this mixing could not exist without them. I think his plea to focus on the heterogeneous rather than homogeneous is a noble one, but to dispel with the notion of origins would completely eliminate the presence of a heterogeneous culture. Without origins, people would be left without cultural definers.
The Versatility of Performance
When reading the Roach piece, I felt very confused by the multiple contexts which he used the word “performance” in. Roach used “performance” to describe cultures, practices, and holidays. He uses the word as a verb, noun, and adjective. The most distinct context of “performance” I found while reading was on page 13: “the materials of the present study are thematized under categories of those restored behaviors that function as vehicles of cultural transmission. Each category pairs a form of collective memory with enactments that embody it through performance: death and burials, violence and sacrifices, laws and (dis)obedience, origins and segregation.” This quote stood out to me because laws, segregation, burials… these do not seem like performances to me. But, Roach’s article shows that performances are intertwined with and necessary to process and understand shared memory. When a death is experienced, disobedience is seen in society or people come from different backgrounds, our natural reaction as a society is to find a way to deal with this. Roach’s quote suggests and brings to light that burials help the living cope, laws help normalize society (in negative and positive ways) and segregation results from a society that creates differences that do not exist. These performances are ways that society forgets and attempts to erase and recreate.
United Irishmen and Jefferson?
As we look at the migration of the Irish into the U.S, their presence greatly influenced the dynamics of american law and politics. I found it quite interesting learning about their impact on American politics and their commitment to President Thomas Jefferson. According to Whelan, the Irish were “a driving force in the creation of the Republican party cohering around Thomas Jefferson”. It is important to note that the Irish, during this period, are making a transition into “whiteness”. Not only is the concept of whiteness problematic, but their odd attraction with Jefferson is also questionable. For example, Whelan notes that the Irish viewed Jefferson as “the first man of purity of character, talents, and amiable manners in the Republican world”. There is no doubt that Jefferson, during this time, was the most logical choice for leadership in the country, however, I wouldn’t give him that much credit. Thomas Jefferson is viewed as one of America’s “great” founding fathers, along with being a founder of American enlightenment. Yet, in my opinion, his controversial view on slavery only makes him the greater of two evils. While the Irish never participated in the traditional form of slavery, in some sense, they were still affected by it.
Jefferson frowned upon the idea of slavery, and even viewed it as inhuman, still he continued to hold human beings as property his entire life. In addition, although he made some legislative attempts against slavery, he also profited directly from the institution on slavery. With that being said, I would agree that Jefferson’s intent to question the status quo did spark a civil movement, however, for a man who thought that “all men [were] created equal” it seems bizarre that the Irish put so much support behind him. Did they not see how blacks were treated? They must’ve been aware of their hierarchical position in American. So why would they support a man of “false promises”. It is interesting to see how the Irish were able to get more traction in regards to freedom and opportunity than blacks, especially since the two were once viewed equally by the majority. I begin to question, with their many similarities, why African-Americans and Irish-Americans weren’t able to form their own union.
Oppression of Those “Not Yet Ready”
As we move into more of the parallel histories of black people in America and the Irish, I have found the most interesting theme of each group’s struggles to escape the oppression and prejudices of the majority of their respective times, with the whites in America and the English colonizers in Ireland. Each dominating majority used the notion of “not yet ready” to describe its downcast group in order to maintain their own positions of power and status. Not only does this phrase create and rapidly proliferate explicitly racist sentiment among the mostly white majority, but its sense of superiority also allows for economic and political exploitation of each group of “others.” In America, whites used these attitudes to pass sweeping legislation, especially in the South, to prevent any sort of racial uplift for blacks. Jim Crow laws prohibited voting for blacks in the South and excluded them from virtually every area of society, essentially limiting them to sharecropping and still fulfilling similar roles to their slavehood for decades. The concept of “not yet ready” pushed writers such as Washington and DuBois to push in a variety of ways for social uplift, especially through education, but this practice only yielded middling success. As DuBois illustrates in “The Souls of Black Folk,” this cultural divide within the same ethnic community created great tensions between the educated and uneducated blacks, which neutralized the effectiveness of Washington and DuBois’s hopes. By facing more obstacles and true social progress, blacks in America were trapped in a harsh social space, unable to reach their reasonable goals while still being grossly mistreated by the white majorities.
Likewise, the Irish experienced similar slander to their culture and representation at the hands of the English majority, who took advantage of their crops to the point of near extinction when the potato famine hit. The introduction of the plantation system echoed its use in the Americas, in which the apparently ethnically inferior group is forced into work and after the abolition of each system, is still held in a form of indentured servitude. This continued colonial practice allowed for Britain to keep its hold over the Irish and profit off of their labor, while the Irish struggled without money for their work and extremely limited food supplies. Also, in the public eye, the Irish, as well as black people in America, were ridiculed constantly, mostly through caricatures which displayed each group as sub-human and apelike. However, one of the key differences between the blacks in America and the whites in Ireland was the Irish’s eventual acceptance into “whiteness” after generations of immigration into America, although this prohibition from full acceptance into modernity remains intact even to this day in several respects for African Americans. Whereas the Irish have been eventually welcomed into the sense of modernity brought about in the 19th century, black people must deal with the oppression of being deemed “never ready,” constantly trying to prove their similarity to the cultural majority to receive a fair chance.