Paper - 2 Gulliver’s Travels as dystopia

Topic: Gulliver’s Travels as a dystopia
Name: Krishna K. Patel
Course: M.A. English
Semester: 1
Paper no.: 2 The Neo-Classical Literature
Batch: 2018 -2020
Roll no:- 20
Enrolment no.: 2069108420190035
Email id: krishnadobariya08@gmail.com
Paper no.: 2 The Neo-Classical Literature
Submitted to: Smt. Gardi Dept. of English MKBU






Introduction:

                When dealing with utopian literature one always comes across Thomas More who founded the neologism ‘Utopia’ in 1516. His Work De optimo rei publicae statue deque nova insula Utopia is about an island that is excluded from its surroundings and has a full self-supply. It is considered to be the pioneer of utopian literature as genre. The term ‘Utopia’ derived from Greek ou-topos and means “no place” or eu-topos “good place”. This genre generally offers an idealized state where harmony and entire satisfaction are omnipresent, which is considered to represent a counter- image of the historical reality of the author’s times. Utopia represents a moral land which can never exist in the real world. In this way utopian places reflect wishes of the authors which can never come true – or at least only years later. To name but a few are the realization of democracy and human rights, improved medical care or nature conversation.

         Unlike utopias, dystopias from Greek bad-place often refer to totalitarian societies and restricted personal freedom. They appeared in the nineteenth century and their number increased strongly during the last hundred years. Dystopias critically reflect social imbalance and the lack of essential and personal liberty.
         As an example of ideal concepts of a society, the paper will discuss utopian elements in Gulliver’s Travels, which will be compared with dystopian elements that refer to worse societies with social disparities and injustices. Hence, the question whether Gulliver’s Travels is more utopian or dystopian will be answered. The first part will have a focus on the country and the Houyhnhnms. The second part will analyze the other inhabitants – the yahoos and how they fit into the island.

Theme of Dystopian novel:

            Dystopian literature was rooted in a utopian vision that invests in our imagination that seeks to create an ideal and perfect world. Dystopian refers to a society that is dysfunctional and characterized by general sufferings of the people, an opposite of utopia. The dystopian stories are often stories of survival, their primary theme is oppression and rebellion. The environment plays an important role in dystopian depiction. Dystopian stories take place in the large cities devastated by pollution. In every dystopian story, there is a back story of war, revolutions, over population and other disasters.

• A hierarchical society where divisions between upper, middle and lower class are definitive and unbending.
• A nation – state ruled by an upper class with few democratic ideals.
• Propaganda controlling people’s minds.
• Either extreme poverty for everyone or a huge income gap between the richest and the poorest.
• Free thinking and independent thought is banned.

Dystopias are more popular with writers because they are, by their very nature, full of conflict, an integral part of any engaging story.

Many works combine utopias and dystopias. Typically, an observer from our world will travel to another place or time and see one society the author considers ideal, and another representing the worst possible outcome.
       Dystopia are frequently written as warnings or as satires, showing current trends extrapolated to a nightmarish conclusion.

Concept of Dystopia:

      Dystopia is just opposite of Utopia. The word Utopia was first used by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 work Utopia. In his book, More sets out a vision of an ideal society. As the title suggests the work presents an ambiguous and ironic projection of the ideal state.
      Lyman Sargent stands for the idea that destopia are jeremiads because they are often similar, in their approach to the early puritan sermons in New England resulting in loss of confidence of god. In the words of Keith M.Brooker, dystopian literature is used to provide fresh perspective on problematic social and political practices that might otherwise be taken for granted or considered natural and inevitable.
      Gregory Claesy described the three varients of dystopianism: the first variant perceives “the pursuits of the secular millennium” as “the greatest tragedy of modernity,” the second variant somehow perverts the idea of the first, as it aims to implicitly contradict the overhasty association of utopianism with totalitarianism and thus preserves some form of the concept of utopia for positive contemporary applications. The third variant may must be described as a function of the way it presents negative visions of humanity generally, and secular variation on the Apocalypse. As Claeys points out inspite of the diversity traditions encompassed by dystopianism – which prevents us from seeing it as a mere “mirror image of utopia” – there are a few constants which rely on an antithetical relationship “if utopia embodies ordered freedom, dystopia embodies unfreedom”, “just as the garden of Eden and Heaven remain prototypes of utopia, so hell performs the same role for dystopia”, “the democratic utopia” one makes “the right decisions and creates an ideal society”, in dystopia one is “deprived of these benefits” as is reflected in Guliver’s Travel.
     Krishan Kumar traces the genealogy of dystopia stressing the idea that it “emerged in the wake of utopia”. According to Kumar, “the earliest forms of utopia seem to have been satires on the rationalist and scientific utopias of More and Bacon.”
   Dystopian fiction borrows features from reality and discuss them, but it doesn’t depict contemporary society on general. Dystopian stories take place in the future, but they are about today and sometimes about yesterday.
The Houyhnhnms and their Land
  In chapter four Gulliver gets into a storm and reaches the heretofore unknown country of the Houyhnhnms. After the landing a detailed description begins.It is a land that “is divided by long Rows of trees not regularly planted, but naturally growing”. Gulliver has come to a country with an unspoiled countryside create an allegory to the Garden of Eden which is full of harmony and where no harm can be found. The garden of Eden hence functions as an idealized, unused place and is therefore often used as a utopian element in literature. Such a place can also be found in Morris’ News from Nowhere where an idyllic and harmonic place is created. Although the description of the countryside play a role in many utopian texts, there are more important aspects on the culture level of the peoples.
   The first people discussed here is that of the Houyhnhnms who look like horses. Gulliver describes them as noble and perfect. He has the highest consideration of them and says:
  As these noble Houyhnhnms were endowed by Nature with a general Disposition to all Virtues, and have no Conceptions or Ideas of what Evil in a Rational Creature, so their grand Maxim is, to cultivate Reason, and to be wholly governed by it.
  It becomes obvious that they do not know evil in the world and they even do not a word for it. The Houyhnhnms seem to represent a society without evil. There are neither lies, nor words for evil in their language or passions that would endanger their society. In their language “Houyhnhnms” itself means a horse that is perfect: “The word Houyhnhms, in their Tongue, signifies a Horse, and in its Etymology, the perfection of species in that country.
    The only possibility of living the idea of an ideal state where everyone lives peacefully can be reached through strict regulations. This is underlined by the motif of reason through which they justify their habits and their way of life: “he thought Nature and Reason were sufficient Guides or a reasonable  Animal, as we pretended to be, in shewing us what we ought to do, and what to avoid” and that “Reason alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature. However, this society has some strict rules that keep up a stable social coexistence – and the price for such a seemingly perfect state is high: for example, there is the aspect of birth control by which the birth rate is regulated to “prevent the country from being overburthened with Numbers”. Although, the danger of starving is prevented, too, such a regulation refers to the lack of individual freedom – and individuality – which is the necessary price for social freedom. Despite this there is no possibility. The difference within the social hierarchy are highly visible and can be illustrated by the example of the different hair colours of the horses: among the houyhnhnms, the white, the sorrel, and the Iron –grey, were not so exactly shaped as the Bay, the Dapple-grey, and the Black; nor born with equal Talents of the Mind, or a Capacity to improve them; and therefore continued always in the condition of servants, without ever aspiring to match out of their own Race.
  This passage demonstrates that the society the society and landscape of the Houyhnhnms can be understood as seemingly perfect. Moreover, there are certain habits that do into the picture of an ideal society, for example the social differences of masters servants. Their place in society is determined by their hair colour. The Houyhnhnms do not have the possibility of climbing the social ladder and so there depictd a predetermined way of life of every individual in this social structure controlled not only by birth control, but also by their mating behavior. Mating happens only within one class in order to breed a master race. Some aspects that refer to the positive features of that people can be seen particularly in their refusal of money or luxury goods; my master said, he could never discover the reason of this unnatural appetite.
     All these aspects show some reasons for their primary state in that country. It is all in rather an authoritarian socio political system which strongly influences the everyday life of the citizens or other creature living under their control. In this respect, it cannot be said that this society is ‘perfect’ or almost perfect. Therefore, this society is a negative utopia rather than a positive one.
The yahoos
  The yahoos are the counterpart of the Houyhnhnms. Thus, they are rather animal like than human. Although they look similar to humans, they significantly differ in their physical appearance and their habits. Gulliver is filled with disgust when seeing them the first time after his arrival in Houyhnhnms Land. He says: “I never beheld in all my Travels so disagreeable animal an “ugly Monster”, which underline his disgust. Their appearance is quite strange. They are animals which are covered with hair on their heads, breatsts and their backs. Their outward appearance can also be related to their traits. This means that they do not have the way of life as the Houyhnhnms as a rational and reasonable people do. Likewise, they often fight without any reason. They don’t need any reasons for fighting or killing. Moreover, they sometimes fight against their own species, for impatient to have all to itself. Here, a strong Houyhnhnms.

 Conclusion :-

    In Swift’s time, it was a popular notion that a reasonable man was a complete man. Here, swift shows us reason exalted. Houston suggests that Gulliver’s Travels represents a double edged satire which simultaneously shows humanity does not measure up to its own standard’ and moreover that this standard is not for man. All the societies experienced by Gulliver during his voyages has certain flaws and are not completely perfect. This novel shares some aspects of science fiction genre in its use of the estrangement technique and the use of utopia and dystopia in its context.

References

(http://www.academia.edu/31811384/GULLIVERS_TRAVEL_AS_A_DYSTOPIAN_NOVEL)
(https://www.grin.com/document/305220)