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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … <\/p>\n