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Overview of the Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels

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Overview of the Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels
Fred Baxter
Prof. Bogart
English 215
2/15/14
Gulliver Travels

From reading the satire Gulliver Travels, some of the elements that made him feel like he experienced a utopia among the Houhynms were that he felt that they were more honest as society, everything was truthful. He felt as though they didn’t have many flaws as a society compared to where he came from which was full of war, disparity, and dishonesty. These elements of perfect utopia are what made Gulliver feel that this was ideal place to be and he wanted to model himself as Houhynms.
Gulliver began to imitate everything they did from there language to just about anything he saw Houhyhnms do. Inside he felt as though he was Houhynms but they saw him as yahoo, Because of the way he looked but Gulliver thought different. But to the Houhynms Gulliver is still a yahoo to them, even though he’s smarter than the average yahoo and doesn’t model exactly what yahoo look like.
There are definitely a lot of aspects from modern perspective he is missing due to fact that in the real world Houhynms do not model a utopia if they bash yahoos for not being like them. When in all reality Utopia means a society that would be perfect but when the Houyhnms are first described, it is stated from the text that they know no evil butt yet they bash yahoo for being different. Though the perfect view of a society amongst Houhynms thrived on Gulliver I believe he got caught up in what he thought was perfect but in the end made him look foolish by turning his back on his wife and children because he thought they were yahoos in sense that were brash just horrible creatures to be around but instead he got lost in his own society forgot where he essentially came from. Aspects of modern perspective where totally missed in this satire by Gulliver but also showed his unsociable feeling toward his own mankind.

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