Choose a quotation from the section you are reading, post the quotation and discuss its relevance in two ways, either:
- historical-political references,
- the power of the language (imagery or poetic devices etc.),
- in terms of the ideals of Romanticism or the era,
- the quotation's symbolic meaning,
- its purpose such as a flashback or foreshadowing or character development.
- If you have another area you think is relevant, use that as a heading and go for it!
Your sixth reflection is due on Friday, December 4.
2 comments:
Since I had to do two more blogs, I decided to divide up the chapter of the Houyhnhnms, as I saw there were two distinct societies mentioned in this chapter. Gulliver was expelled from the Houyhnhnm society for being a "Yahoo" and a potential threat to their ideal society. After his explusion, he is taken back to a Yahoo land in England. There, he feels uncomfortable and he can't go back to living normally in his society of Yahoos. For example, he feels more alientated from his wife and family: "i began to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the farthers end of the table, and to answer (but with teh utmost brevity) the few questions I ask her"(318). He strongly dislikes the Yahoo society, and I think to a certain point he is ashamed to compare human beings to the Yahoos.
First of all, I think Swift uses the Yahoo society to symbolize everything bad and horrible in humans. For instance, the way they behave is low and bestial, or are "human nature...with animal presides"(319). The Yahoos are basically every bad behavior trait that nobody likes to be associated with. They are, I think the best way to put it, violent, self-destructing, greedy, dirty, or as Gulliver puts it, "odious animal"(312): basically everything the Houhymnms are not. Swift uses many parallels and comparisons of the Hounhyms to the Yahoos-I think to further emphasize everything he consideres ideal from everything he considers horrible and bad. He then uses these comparisons to discuss how human societies can be compared to them.
While the citizens of the Houhnyhnm and Yahoo societies don't have choices, humans do. In the Hoyhnynm society, everybody works for the best of others. it's like the Brave New World, they basically sacrificed their own happiness and truth and emotions for a perfectly-functioning society-they had no choice on how to act or what to do. The yahoos, on the other hand, still didn't have a choice, only that they didnt have a choice because they didn't have a sense of reason. Humans have reason, while Yahoos do not. I think Swift thinks that due to this, humans are much worse than the Yahoo society. Humans have the gift of reason and logic to be able to achieve an ideal, unselfish society. They can chose between good and bad, dysfunction and function, cooperation and uncooperation, and Yahoos do not. Since Yahoos cannot chose, or are unable to chose, even though they symbolize human society at its worse dysfunciton, they really cant do anything about their bad behavior. Humans CAN chose, and unfortunatley, they frequently chose bad over good. This makes them much worse than yahoos. Humans can try to achieve a good, ideal society, based on the Houynmhyms, but instead, they live a more similar life to the yahoos.
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