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Summary of Gulliver’s Travels Part 4 Chapter 12
Summary of Gulliver’s Travels Part 4 Chapter 12
The narrator explains his aim in publishing this book. He criticizes travellers who swerve from the truth. The narrator clears himself from any sinister aims in writing. The method of planting colonies is described. His native country is commended. The right of the crown to the countries described by the narrator is justified. The narrator takes his last leave of the reader, proposes his manner of living for the future, gives good advice, and concludes.
Gulliver claimed that absolutely everything he had written was absolutely true. In fact, he thought it was a disgrace that so many travellers embroidered or exaggerated their published accounts of their trips around the world. Gulliver’s motto was: ‘Though Fortune has made Sinon wretched, she has not made him untrue and a liar.’ In other words, though Gulliver was dejected about having left the land of the Houyhnhnms, he still refused to lie about any of his experiences. The purpose of writing his memoirs was not to gain fame, but to share the superior example of the Houyhnhnms with the world.
Gulliver was told that it was his duty, as a subject of England, to give an account of his voyages to the Secretary of State of England, upon his return. This would enable England to conquer the lands. But Gulliver feared that the conquest of the countries he had visited would not be easy or profitable. The Lilliputians were too small to be worth it, the Brobdingnagians, too large and dangerous, and the Laputians, literally out of reach. While the Houyhnhnms were totally inexperienced with war, the English shouldn’t invade them.
The Houyhnhnms were smart, strong, and loved their country. So they would figure out how to defend it quickly enough. In fact, Gulliver wished that the Houyhnhnms would come over and teach all of their virtues to the European Yahoos. A further reason why Gulliver didn’t want the Europeans to conquer the lands he had seen was that they didn’t seem to want to be conquered. Taking their lands against their will would be cruel.
At the end of his tale, Gulliver was sitting in his garden thinking; he was instructing his family as best he could. He was applying the lessons of the Houyhnhnms to instruct the Yahoos of his own family. He even forced himself to look in a mirror every day to get used to his human face and those of the people around him. He mourned the treatment of the Houyhnhnms in England. After five years at home, Gulliver was able to let his wife sit at dinner with him—at the far end of the table, though he still kept his nostrils stuffed with lavender or tobacco so as to not be bothered by the smell.
What he really hated was, not the bad qualities that Yahoos couldn’t seem to escape, but the pride they felt in themselves even though they were so disgusting, diseased, and detestable. The Houyhnhnms, who possessed good natures, were not proud, because they were born as good fellows and could not help but be good. They didn’t need to congratulate themselves. The only way that Gulliver would ever be able to sit in the company of an English Yahoo again was if they avoided at least this one sin: the sin of pride.