Gulliver's Travels:

Swift's Version of Identity Formation

BERNIE SELINGER

I have considered, our whole life is like a

Play, wherein everyman, forgetfull of him
selfe, is in travaile with expression of another.
Nay, wee so insist in imitating others, as
wee cannot (when it is necessary) returne
to ourselves: like Children, that imitate the
vices of Stammerers so long, till at last they
become such ; and make the habit to another
nature, as it is never forgotten.
(Ben Jonson, Timber)

Ever eating, never cloying,

All devouring, all destroying,
Never finding full Repast,
Till I eat the World at last.
(Jonathan Swift, "Untitled")

Gulliver's Travels, one of the most vexing texts in English literature, has
necessarily prompted several psychoanalytic readings.1 Unfortunately, while
these readings are, for the most part, useful, they all suffer from an attempt
to apply deductive generalizations that lead in one direction while the work

Mosaic XVII/3
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2 Bernie Seiinger

appears to move in another. As Frank Brady contends, "any deductions about

Gulliver which start from Swift's Christianity or fragmented personality or
anal retentiveness (or expulsiveness) or whatever must be extremely modest
in their claims, since they are inherently suspect."2 They are suspect, first,
because they disregard the rules of critical evidence. Here is a statement by
Donald Roberts, author of one of the psychoanalytic pieces on Swift: "It is
hardly necessary to point out the similarities between Gulliver's story—his
discovery, guilt, submission, and projection—and the early traumatic experi
ence of Swift that has been outlined."3 Roberts does not find it necessary to
point out the similarities, largely because he assumes that enough material
has been amassed from Swift's life and from his other writings to render a
close reading of the Travels unnecessary. This assumption discloses a second
suspect area of psychoanalytic criticism: it is an example of what William
Kinsley calls the "habit" we have of using "other texts to solve difficulties in
the Travels, on the assumption that our auxiliary text is straightforward and
clear to everybody."4 If psychoanalysis is to help us understand the work and
mind of Swift, as it has helped with many other artists, then it seems reason
able to suggest that it concentrate on one piece of writing at a time. After
that, perhaps, each piece of the puzzle can be fitted to form a just portrait of
the man and his work.
A close reading of the Travels reveals that Swift's coprophilia or his anal
fixation is not as dominant as the psychoanalytic critics have led us to believe.
While unquestionably many images of dirt, stink and excrement—and some
preoccupation with cleanliness, secretiveness, time and ambition—in the
Travels do correlate to the anal stage, and are important to Swift's satire
(partly to point out the physical basis upon which the human ego rests), these
images are nowhere near as prevalent as images relating to the oral stage of
human development: eating, biting, sucking, talking, swallowing, devouring
and the like—or their correlatives, food and words, particularly curses and
threats, words which bite. Since repetition is the most common form of literary
underscoring, we have to pay heed to the number of times that Swift tosses
food in our path.5
It is of course impossible to deny the existence and importance of the
anal stage in childhood development, or that vestiges of anality survive in
later periods of life. And it is not the purpose of this paper to argue that
Swift is an oral as opposed to an anal writer, even though there is evidence in
Swift's canon to propose as much. Leslie Mechanic, for example, notes that
food imagery "provides a point of entry into the structure and thematic import
of a work noted for its impenetrability."6 "A Modest Proposal," of course,
gains its power from the horror and revulsion we are made to feel (when we
are not smiling) at the idea of eating babies. Swift's peculiar, strident, "A PRO
POSAL For Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the ENGLISH TONGUE,"
reveals more than a purely linguistic obsession. The popular phrase "Sweet
ness and Light" comes to us from Swift's The Battle of the Books, where
he summarizes the argument relating to the superiority of ancient over

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 Swift and Identity 3

modern authors in these words: "instead of Dirt and Poison, we have rather
chosen to fill our Hives with Honey and Wax, thus furnishing Mankind with
the two Noblest of Things, which are Sweetness and Light."7 And finally,
Phyllis Greenacre spends a paragraph on the oral stage :

Swift always played with words, with clang and pun, which concealed and revealed
simultaneously. The original Journal to Stella (1710-1713), which has suffered too
much later editing, reveals Swift's language in its most infantile oral qualities, in terms
of endearment in which "you" is "oo," "dearest" is "dealist"; r's and l's get strangely
mixed up, and the effect is of a lisping child saying good night....Swift himself said
"When I am writing in our language, I make up my mouth just as if I were speaking
it.".. .It is possible that the names Yahoo and Houyhnhnm are nonsense words, pecu
liarly condensing in function, having profoundly to do with Gulliver's efforts to find
himself, that is, to achieve some integration of his own identity, and that "Yahoo"
signifies "Who are you?"; and "Houyhnhnm," the sound of which is so close to
"human," contains also suggestions of the pronouns you, him, and who, in a jumbled
hog-Latin fashion.8

My concern is not to further this specific type of approach, however, but

rather simply to demonstrate that the psychological underpinning of the
Travels is the first stage of childhood development. Whether we use the
classical Freudian models or the revised ones given us by Erik Erikson, it is
important to remember that "the experience of the anal stage is essentially
conditioned by what happens in the oral period before it."9 An oral fear of
being engulfed or devoured essentially conditions a fear of being overwhelmed
by that which is foul or dirty. Consequently, the memorable tree scene where
Gulliver encounters the Yahoos and is "almost stifled with the Filth, which
fell about [him] on every Side,"10 encompasses at least two levels of infantile
experience, with the basis being an oral one. The psychoanalytic critics of
Swift hint at the oral basis of anal behavior in such phrases as Swift's "anxious
habit of carrying his watch in his hand and his exactitude in punctuality
betray his anxiety to control time, the devourer,"11 and "In his great pieces
Swift usually aims to overwhelm his opponent with disgust."'2 Critics often
speak of Swift's satire as biting. Moreover, Brady writes of "Swift's entrapment
of the reader in his satiric attack."13 This accommodation of overwhelming
or entrapping (oral preoccupations) with satire is a significant quality of
Swift's writing. It is directly related to the most crucial task of the oral phase—
which is to begin to establish a sense of identity: the infant has trouble dis
tinguishing "out there" from "in here"—particularly if we accept Peter Briggs's
definition of satire as "a militant and ironic mode of definition and self
definition."14
Swift's satire, with its dependence on personas and its obsession with
naming (especially noticeable in the Travels), is undoubtedly concerned with
identity.15 That identity is a major concern of the Travels should come as no
surprise because the problem of personal identity was very much in the air
while Swift was writing. In a recent article Christopher Fox quotes a passage
from the Spectator in 1714 which reads, "There has been very great Reason

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 4 Bernie Seiinger

on several Accounts for the learned World to endeavour at settling what it

was that might be said to compose,personal Identity." That same year Swift
and friends "point in the Memoirs of Scriblerus to the 'great noise' made
'about this Individuality: how a man is conscious to himself that he is the
same Individual he was twenty years ago.'"16 Whether Swift would "define
the individual person" in the same way that Locke did is unclear (and prob
ably unlikely) but he did take a strong interest in the controversy over Locke's
Essay Concerning Human Understanding. While discussing the Scriblerians'
"comic exploration of the problem of personal identity," Fox alludes to a
specific parody of Locke which, significantly, is a "ridiculous dispute over
the 'Individuality' of a mutton chop" (pp. 21, 16). This alignment of orality
and self-definition (the problems of which, for Swift, are often comical) that
seems to be necessary to Swift's satire is clearly evidenced by the Travels.
Identity has been most closely scrutinized in our time by Erik Erikson.
While the autonomy that comes with successfully passing through and
assimilating the anal stage is necessary to a sense of identity, this is still
dependent on the sense of trust that the child may or may not have developed
in the first stage. Like Freud and others, Erikson locates the origins of trust
in infancy when a child is dependent on the nurturing person for its oral needs,
and he demonstrates how that trust leads to identity. "Basic trust in mutuality
is that original 'optimism,' that assumption that 'somebody is there' without
which we cannot live."11 Identity begins with that nurturing other because
the child does not conceive of himself as a separate being until he can trust
and await his mothering person as a separate being. Only when he accepts
her as separate has he realized that he is separate. The term identity, then,
will be used largely to denote the awareness of one's self as an entity separate
and distinct from one's environment, specifically, earliest environment.
Norman Holland tells us that in literature the earliest phase "appears as
fantasies of losing the boundaries of self, of being engulfed, overwhelmed,
drowned, or devoured.. .of being buried alive. But these fantasies can also be
of a benevolent merger or fusion."18 These fantasies occur in varying degrees
of intensity in each of the four voyages; however, they are most obvious in
their extremes—being devoured in Brobdingnag or merging in Houyhnhnm
land. The fantasies of engulfing or enclosing also manifest themselves in
more subtle ways, as in Gulliver's movement from confinement to freedom
(e.g., confined and chained in a temple in Lilliput; carried about in a house
in Brobdingnag; being overwhelmed by ideas in Laputa; freed in Houyhn
hnmland) and the role of clothing—a different set in each voyage gives a
sense of identity and serves to distinguish inside from outside.
The proposition that the first stage of life is the psychological foundation
of the Travels is given further credence when we realize that each voyage
opens in the same fashion, with Gulliver symbolically born into a new society.19
Awakening on the beach in Lilliput, having "slept sounder than ever I
remember to have done in my Life," Gulliver finds he is unable to move to
any extent ; but when his senses come alive to a "confused Noise" and his eyes

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 Swift and Identity 5

focus on an unrecognizable creature, he "roar[s] so loud" that he frightens

his new family ("roaring," incidentally, is a common eighteenth-century
term for a baby's cries). Lying in the cornfield after his re-birth in Brobdingnag
he sees a huge creature stumbling about and he tells us, "I screamed as loud
as Fear could make me" (p. 87). When discovering life in Laputa: "I called
and shouted with the utmost Strength of my Voice" (p. 157). And after being
found by the Houyhnhnms he "was forced to roar" (p. 226). Back in Lilliput,
"I could not forbear shewing my Impatience... by putting my Finger frequently
on my Mouth, to signify that I wanted Food" (p. 23); and in Brobdingnag,
"All I ventured was to raise mine Eyes towards the Sun, and place my Hands
together in a supplicating Posture, and to speak some Words in an humble
melancholy Tone" (pp. 87-88). In Laputa, "I then put my self into the most
supplicating Postures, and spoke in the humblest Accent" (p. 157); and in
Houyhnhnmland, "I shook my Head, to signify, that neither of these were
Food for me.... I observed a Cow passing by ; whereupon I pointed to her, and
expressed a Desire to let me go and milk her" (pp. 230-31).
These scenes take place between a child and the nurturing Other. The
first regulator of the child's self-esteem is the supply of nourishment, and the
child begins to develop his sense of reality when he learns that he "can over
come disappointments by cries and gestures."*1 Also important to Gulliver
is this "first experience of friendly otherness"21 that enables him to establish
an initial bond of trust with his new family. Much of the book's humor derives
from this: after the establishment of the bond of trust, we witness Gulliver's
consistently urgent, comical climb, in each voyage, to the top of every local
hierarchy.
After each symbolic birth, then, we observe Gulliver attempting to deal
with all the problems that any child-ego must deal with in the first year of life :
establishing a basic sense of trust or mistrust; developing a sense of self
esteem, and a sense of reality; reversing the tendency to form an identification
with others rather than relating to them as others; forming an ego-identity
in a society which has meaning for that child.22 Most critical works on the
Travels inevitably deal with at least one of these themes. However, the termin
ology used by critics for three of these themes is slightly different, though
synonymous : read misanthropy for mistrust, pride for self-esteem, and imita
tion for identification. Nonetheless, no critic that I am aware of, particularly
the anal-ist, has been able to link all of these themes around a central unifying
idea and show how consistent the oral imagery is in punctuating these ideas.
In fact, the major themes and images in the Travels are rooted in the first stage
of childhood development. We shall see that the different voyages illustrate
Gulliver's—and our—gradual gain or loss of self-esteem, his coming to grips
with reality, and his search for identity.
It is not difficult to picture Gulliver as a child in Lilliput even though he is
the Great Man Mountain. "Trusting" himself to the mercy of the waves on
the fifth of November,23 Gulliver is reborn24 into a new society. After having
made the cries and gestures necessary to receive food from the other, words

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6 Bernie Seiinger

and speech become important—to communicate wants and needs and to

become a part of society. After a detailed passage in which he devours count
less shoulders, legs and loins of mutton, and throws back several hogsheads
of wine, he tells us: "When I had performed these Wonders, they shouted for
Joy, and danced upon my Breast, repeating several times as they did at first,
Hekinah Degul.... I now considered myself as bound by the Laws of Hospitality
to a People who had treated me with so much Expence and Magnificence"
(p. 24). This passage has connotations of a bond of trust as well as of a potential
binding or enclosing. What is most noteworthy is that this bonding/binding
comes about by means of what he is able to put into his mouth. This bond is
strengthened when he tells us that they "trust[ed] their Persons in my Hands"
(p. 34); the bind is also strengthened, however, when Gue, most mighty
emperor of Lilliput, delight and terror of the universe, draws up a social
contract detailing what Gulliver can do and what he cannot do: for compli
ance with all of these terms he is rewarded with food, enough for the support
of 1,728 Lilliputians (p. 45).
As Gulliver lives up to the demands of fhe social contract and as he makes
"Great progress in Learning their Language" (p. 33), he is on his way to achieve
ing a sense of self-esteem and, in the process, an identity. This process begins
when he receives his name Quinbus Flestrin and ends when he is shorn of the
title of Nardac. In between he is able to build himself up in the eyes of the
people (so to speak) and consequently in his own estimation by performing
various feats. In a display of potency he hauls out his scimitar, "Scabbard
and all," and dazzles their eyes by lashing it around in the sunlight; he then
fires his pistol into the air; finally, he stands "like a Colossus" with his legs
"far asunder" and gloats while the army prances between them, looking up in
great "Admiration" at what is lurking inside his torn breeches (his Big Endian).
But he performs his greatest feat when he has the opportunity to conquer an
entire nation.
It is significant, for our purposes at least, that the initial cause of the war
has to do with how one is to break his eggs. Indeed, the "Animosities between
these two Parties run so high that they will neither eat nor drink, nor talk with
each other" (p. 48, emphasis mine). Despite the risk of drowning (p. 53), Fles
trin ends the war in short order, receives the "highest Rank in that Empire,"
the Nardac, and receives a visit from the former enemy who "desired me to
shew them some Proofs of my prodigious Strength, of which they had heard
so many Wonders; wherein I readily obliged them, but I shall not interrupt
the Reader with the Particulars" (p. 54). Flestrin's display of potency, his
risking of the body, or his phallic assertiveness, is a defense against oral
dependency or oral engulfment.25 Much of this occurs in Brobdingnag where
he valiantly fights off devouring rats and hungry wasps.
Flestrin is not entirely unaware of the reality of his situation in Lilliput. He
knows that he has a rival, a secret enemy in Flimnap. At one point Flimnap
and his Majesty dine with Flestrin. (He receives them, as he does all of his
guests, on his dinner table.) Flimnap attends "with his white Staff' and a "sour

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 Swift and Identity 7

Countenance" which Flestrin "would not seem to regard, but eat more than
usual, in Honour to my dear Country, as well as to fill the Court with Admira
tion" (p. 64). Earlier, some "evil Tongues" had informed Flimnap of Flestrin's
alleged (vaguely incestuous) evening of passion with his wife, "her Grace."
The pettiness of the Lilliputian society is driven home to Flestrin by means
of a wordy document smuggled into him by a friend. Flestrin is about to be
persecuted for two basic reasons: he urinated in her Majesty's apartment
and "might, at another time, raise an Inundation by the same Means, to
drown the whole Palace" (p. 70) ; and, because of his involvement in the egg
affair, i.e., the mercy he displayed, he is suspected of being a closet Big
Endian. Eventually, he loses his title oiNardac, and discovers that he is an
"insupportable Incumbrance" (p. 77).
Part One ends on an ambivalent note. He leaves Lilliput because it is a
society with which he cannot completely form an identification. His sense
of reality is thus somewhat heightened, but the knowledge that he is an
insupportable incumbrance is a blow to his sense of self-esteem.
Gulliver's adventure in Lilliput is re-enacted in Brobdingnag; the same
basic process takes place. After he is discovered hiding in a field of corn he
is wrapped in swaddling clothes—"laid myself in full Length upon the Hand
kerchief, with the Remainder of which he lapped me up to the Head for
further Security"—and he is hustled home to the mother who becomes
"extreamly tender of me" (p. 89). He is immediately fed and then takes his
first walk on the table and subsequently has his first fall—he trips over a
bread crust. This is the first blow to his sense of self-esteem and, of course,
it is directly connected with food, as it was in Lilliput.
Following this, Gulliver endures a barrage of incidents that do great damage
to his sense of self-esteem and to his sense of identity. His most humbling
experiences have to do with food and with the mouth. He is in constant peril
of being swallowed by, overwhelmed by, his immediate environment. Although
help is close by, it usually does not arrive until after he has been demeaned
and has taken appropriate action to keep his self intact. For example, he is
picked up by an infant who "got my head in his mouth, where I roared so
loud that the Urchin was frightened, and let me drop" (p. 91; recall Gulliver
picking up a Lilliputian and making "a countenance as if I would eat him
alive" [p. 31]. After his battle to the death with two rats he comments: "If I
had taken off my Belt before I went to sleep, I must have infallibly been torn
to pieces and devoured" (p. 93). He is further humiliated when the maid picks
the dead rat up with a pair of tongs and tosses it out the window. Later he is
almost brained by a walnut thrown by a schoolboy.
Then there is his series of exchanges with the Queen's dwarf, who "seldom
failed of a smart Word or two upon my Littleness ; against which I could only
revenge myself by calling him Brother." The dwarf, in professional jealousy
no doubt, drops him into a large bowl of cream but, since he is a powerful
swimmer, he survives. Unfortunately he "had swallowed above a Quart of
Cream," but the dwarf is forced "to drink up the Bowl of Cream into which

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8 Bernie Seiinger

he had thrown me." His legs are also wedged by this dwarf during dinner
into a marrow bone "where I stuck for some time, and made a very ridiculous
Figure" (p. 108). Flies, odious insects, trouble him at dinner; they "alight
upon" his "victuals" and leave their excrement behind ; but he is admired for
cutting them into pieces with his knife. Fierce wasps steal his cake but he
shows courage in attack and "dispatches" four of them. The dwarf returns
to pummel him with apples and then a dog comes along, takes him in his
mouth and runs off. Grildrig is also perturbed by the boldness and arrogance
of birds that steal his cake and ignore him while hunting for worms. He
retaliates by putting a death lock on a linnet which recovers and beats him
about the head until he is ready to drop ; fortunately a servant happens along,
wrings the bird's neck and Grildrig has "him next Day for Dinner by the
Queen's Command" (p. 118). Then he is almost drowned by a frog.
The crowning humiliation is the monkey snatching him and holding him
"as a Nurse doth a Child she is going to suckle" (p. 122), feeding him food
from his own "Chaps," patting him when he will not eat. "I was almost choked
with the filthy Stuff the Monkey had crammed down my throat ; but my dear
little Nurse picked it out of my Mouth with a small Needle; and then I fell a
vomiting, which gave me great Relief' (p. 123).26 The monkey is killed. Finally,
Grildrig is taken away from Brobdingnag by an eagle (while the servant is
off looking for birds' eggs) : "some Eagle had got the Ring of my Box in his
Beak, with an Intent to let it fall on a Rock like a Tortoise in a Shell, and then
pick out my Body and devour it" (pp. 140-41). All this is built into that explicit
statement by the king who sees Grildrig's kind as "the most pernicious Race
of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of
the Earth" (p. 132).
This lengthy, perhaps obvious, list serves to underline the supposition that
the central concern of this voyage is a fear of being devoured. Grildrig pre
vails against oral engulfment and every potential engulfer is made to pay, in
some way, for his deed. Grildrig never is devoured and that is why these
scenes are so humourous; we laugh at situations that we are, unconsciously,
most afraid of but which we, Gullivers, get out of relatively unscathed. It is
scenes like these that speak simultaneously to the adult and to the child in us.
The adult Gulliver, the Englishman and fearless voyager, is satirized and
made to suffer for the sin of pride. This is done in such a playful as well as
preposterous fashion that we cannot but laugh. The child Grildrig is testing
reality, the "out there" world. His sense of self esteem and his sense of
himself as a distinct entity is at stake. But he manages to keep himself intact
against an environment that threatens to overwhelm him. As children and as
adults, we laugh in relief when our identities are no longer in jeopardy and
when our basic fears and wishes are being dealt with. For some reason the
psychoanalytic critics of the Travels miss (or perhaps, in some cases, ignore)
the fact that the Travels is a very funny book. Duff, for example, believes
that Swift "has certainly hidden profound anxieties...in all the pages of this
terror ridden book."27

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 Swift and Identity 9

In addition to the above series of blows to Grildrig's pride, his self-esteem,

there are others of a more cerebral nature which serve to develop his sense
of reality. Despite the fact that he is constantly with his mommy Glumdal
clitch, who teaches him the language so that he can "make (his] Wants known"
(p. 95), and who carries him in a box "tied about her Waist" (no less) which
is furnished with "her Baby's Bed" (p. 99), he does separate himself from her
often enough to have conversations with the King. Although the Queen and
the rest of the population regard Grildrig, the splacknuck, as something of a
toy, the King attempts to relate to him on a man to (ver)man basis. Grildrig
wishes for the "Tongue of Demosthenes or Cicero'" (p. 127), finds himself
overstating his case for his society, and speaks like a true Lilliputian. Although
Grildrig is amazed at the King's "naivite" in refusing his recipe for gunpowder,
something that would make him absolute master of the fortunes of his people,
we can be sure that the King's distaste for such ideas and for "so impotent
and groveling an Insect as I" (p. 134) have opened Grildrig's eyes to the reality
from which he comes. When he is rescued by English sailors, Grildrig identi
fies with the King's contempt for his kind, viewing the sailors as "the most
little contemptible Creatures I had ever beheld. For, indeed, while I was in
that Prince's Country, I could never endure to look in a Glass after my Eyes
had become accustomed to such prodigious Objects ; because the Comparison
gave me so despicable a Conceit of my self" (p. 147). Thus, even though
Grildrig establishes a bond of trust with the Brobdingnagian matrix, his trust
in the machinations of his own society is lessened ; this loss of trust goes hand
in hand with his increasing awareness of reality and his deteriorating sense of
self-esteem and sense of identity.
Having more or less failed in a society where self-esteem depends on size,
Gulliver wades into a society where self-esteem depends on intellect—this
is the reality of Laputa. Everything becomes more abstract and less personal.
While in Brobdingnag Gulliver himself was in constant fear of being de
voured, there is the more distant, less concrete fear "that the Earth, by the
continual Approaches of the Sun towards it, must in Course of Time be
absorbed or swallowed up," or that "the Sun daily spending its Rays without
any Nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed or annihi
lated; which must be attended with the Destruction of this Earth" (pp. 164
65). Although Gulliver has trouble communicating with these people who
have to be struck on the mouth before they deign to speak, they do feed
him and soon he is dining with the King over a table of food that is cut into
all types of configurations. Gulliver works hard at the language, "hoping to
raise my Admiration of their great Abilities," and he is "soon able to call for
Bread and Drink, or whatever else I wanted" (p. 161).
But despite his initial optimism and his approval of life on the floating
island, which he considers to be "the most delicious Spot of Ground in the
World" (p. 165), he is disheartened by the fact that no one has the least
curiosity to inquire into the laws and customs of the countries where he has
been but confine their questions to the state of mathematics. Statements

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 10 Bernie Seiinger

such as "I must confess I thought my self too much neglected" and "I was
weary of being confined to an Island where I received so little Counte
nance" (p. 173) indicate his low sense of self-esteem and lack of identity in
that country. And just as he is beginning to master the language, he dis
covers the scheme, developed in the school of languages, "for entirely
abolishing all Words whatsoever." This scheme, however, is loudly criticized
by the women in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate who wanted "the
Liberty to speak with their Tongues" (p. 185). Although he has some diversion
by playing with and explaining the anagrammatic method, he is ready to leave
that country.
From Lagado he travels to Glubbdubdrib, "a world of no meaning, of
delusion and death, darker and more shadowy than Laputa."28 Nonetheless,
he "feeds his eyes," beholding the destroyers of tyrants and usurpers, and
the restorers of liberty (p. 146). He instigates his own little battle between
the ancients and the moderns by calling forth Descartes, Gassendi, "who
had made the Doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as he could" (p. 197), and
Aristotle. After conversing with the "ancient learned" he "prevailed on the
Governor to call up Eliogabalus's Cooks to dress up a Dinner" and " He lot
of Agesilaus made us a Dish of Spartan Broth, but I was not able to get down
a second Spoonfur (p. 198). It is just after this experience that Gulliver
finds he can no longer stomach modern history. "For having strictly examined
all the Persons of greatest Name in the Courts of Princes for an Hundred
Years past, I found how the World had been misled by prostitute Writers"
(p. 199). This realization, and the several that follow, are earth-shattering to
our naive child-hero. And he is not totally unaware that he partakes of the
pox that "had altered every Lineament of an English Countenance" (p. 201).
He rallies from this realization and travels to Traldagdubh or Trildrogdrib
where it is necessary to "lick the dust" before his Majesty's footstool. "And
I have seen a great Lord with his mouth so crammed, that when he had crept
to the proper Distance from the Throne, he was not able to speak a Word"
(p. 204). Gulliver does as directed and from his knees says, "Fluft drin
Yale rick Dwuldum prastrad mirplush which properly signifies, My Tongue
is in the Mouth of my Friend1' (p. 305). After this childlike prattle Gulliver
goes on to receive the strongest blow he has yet been dealt in the voyage.
He discovers the Struldbruggs—people who never die. He suddenly
becomes extremely loquacious and excited, talking at great length about
how, if it had been his good fortune to "Come into the World a Struldbrugg,"
he would, "as soon as I could discover my own Happiness by understanding
the Difference between Life and Death" (p. 209), solve the problems of the
world and create a veritable Utopia. When he becomes aware of this illu
sion and finds that the Struldbruggs at ninety "lose their Teeth and Hair;
they have at that Age no Distinction of Taste, but eat and drink whatever
they can get, without Relish or Appetite" (p. 213), he concludes sadly: "The
Reader will easily believe, that from what I had heard and seen, my keen
Appetite for Perpetuity of Life was much abated" (p. 214).

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 Swift and Identity 11

Kathleen Williams states that "the 'Voyage to Laputa,' which opens among
a people essentially frivolous in its refusal to face the facts of human exist
ence, ends face to face with inescapable reality....The voyage to illusion,
the escape from facts, ends in a darker reality than any Gulliver has yet
encountered."29 This emphasis on reality is crucial. Most critics tend to
follow the path of Bonamy Dobree who suggested that the Third Book "may
not in itself be very coherent, but it is a necessary gap in the emotional
sequence."30 According to the reading being presented here, however, this
book that puts Gulliver face to face with inescapable reality is a necessary
and logical step in the child's growing sense of reality which is so important
to the first stage in childhood. Hence the pervasive oral imagery (even the
experiments with excrement are done in order to reduce it to its original
food). In addition, Gulliver's sense of esteem and identity suffers a harsher
blow than it did in Brobdingnag—he receives no name, he merges com
pletely into his surroundings and becomes a nonentity. Most of all, the
closing section of the book indicates, he has a sense that there is little
meaning to what he has just seen—little meaning to a society that is most
similar to his own, a society that Swift "imagined" in order to make his
most penetrating criticism of European civilization so far in the Travels.
As Erikson tells us, the parents as agents of society "must be able to represent
to the child a deep, an almost somatic conviction that there is a meaning to
what they are doing."31
It is significant that when the first Yahoo Gulliver meets raises his arm in
a universal gesture of communication, Gulliver's reaction is violence: he
strikes the Yahoo with the flat of his sword. However, with his first group of
Houyhnhnms he immediately attempts to imitate their language; he impresses
them with his ability to imitate their neighing of the word Yahoo, "the mean
ing of which Word I could not then comprehend, although it were the first
I had learned to pronounce" (p. 229). His biggest problem is food. Signifi
cantly, this problem helps him to establish a sense of identity, if we accept
the crucial questions concerning identity to be "What is me? What is not
me?"32 He cannot eat the piece of ass's flesh that a Yahoo greedily "devoured,"
nor can he eat the hay or the fetlock full of oats that the Houyhnhnms eat.
He is refreshed with milk and eventually—for the first time in his travels—
he is able to procure and prepare his own food; grinding grain with two
stones, he makes "a Paste or Cake, which I toasted at the Fire, and eat warm
with milk" (p. 232).
The most important thing for him, however, is to learn the language,
particularly because his ability to speak raises him in the estimation of the
Houyhnhnms: "My principal Endeavour was to learn the Language....For
they looked upon it as a Prodigy, that a brute Animal should discover such
Marks of a rational Creature" (p. 234). And for every setback in self-esteem
that he experiences there is also a gain. For instance, Gulliver expresses
his uneasiness at his master's "giving me so often the Appelation of Yahoo,
an odious Animal." But this feeling is leavened by his master's encouraging

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 12 Bernie Seiinger

him to go on "with my utmost Diligence to learn their Language, because

he was more astonished at my capacity for Speech and Reason than at the
Figure of my Body" (p. 237). Shortly before the humbling bathing scene
his master tells him that he is sure "I must have been born of some Noble
Family, because I far exceeded in Shape, Colour, and Cleanliness, all the
Yahoos of his nation" (p. 256). The bathing scene, where he realizes that he
"could no longer deny, that I was a real Yahoo, in every Limb and Feature,
since the Females had a natural Propensity to me as one of their own Species"
(p. 267), is quickly followed by his master referring to him as "a certain
wonderful Yahoo" and his discovery that "the Representatives had taken
Offence at his keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his Family more like a
Houyhnhnm than a Brute Animal" (p. 279). Gulliver is finally on the brink
of the sense of self he has been searching for when he says that his awe for
the Houyhnhnms "was mingled with a respectful Love and Gratitude, that
they would condescend to distinguish me from the rest of my Species"
(p. 278). This is Gulliver's happiest moment. His quest for an identity, his
desire to exist as an entity distinct from his environment, specifically earliest
environment, is here realized, however temporarily.
Accordingly, Gulliver no longer questions the Houyhnhnm way of life or
his master's criticisms of his society and his praise of his own land. Gulliver
appears to know the difference between "good" and "evil."33 He acknowl
edges the evil of war to a large extent,34 which is caused by differences in
opinion : "For Instance, whether Flesh be Bread, or Bread be Flesh : Whether
the Juice of a certain Berry be Blood or Wine : Whether Whistling be a Vice
or a Virtue: Whether it is better to kiss a Post" (p. 246). He realizes that
institutions such as law ("proving by words") and the medium of money are
unnecessary evils. Of course the Houyhnhnms have none of these things.
This learning process, this developing sense of reality, that Gulliver goes
through is a continuation of his earlier learning experiences, except this
time he absorbs and believes all; he no longer tries to refute. This is partly
due to the fact that "he hungers for membership and group definition,"35 as
one critic has put it. But, more important, he has absolute trust in his master
and the society he represents; after he realizes "that the Houyhnhnms have
no Word in their Language to express any thing that is evil" (p. 275) he tells
us: "I enjoyed perfect Health of Body, and Tranquillity of Mind; I did not
feel the Treachery or Inconstancy of a Friend, nor the Injuries of a secret
or open Enemy" (p. 276). Integrate this with the complete absence of the
fear of death ("retire to his first Mother") and then the following statement
by Erikson becomes particularly helpful and astute : "Trust (the first of our
ego values) is here defined as the assured reliance on another's integrity,
the last of our values....And it seems possible to further paraphrase the
relation of adult integrity and infantile trust by saying that healthy children
will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death."36
In this light, Gulliver's trust and belief in the Houyhnhnms is totally
warranted. Subsequently, his mistrust or misanthropy regarding his own

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 Swift and Identity 13

species is, as R. S. Crane states, "the natural and proper consequence of

the experience he has had."37 Indeed Gulliver's fellow human beings are less
than reliable, and the tone of each voyage is dictated to some extent by the
nature of the event that brings about the adventure; and each adventure
ends on a darker note than the previous one. As is well known, in the first
voyage it is the carelessness of the lookout that accounts for the shipwreck;
in the second he is abandoned by cowardly shipmates; in the third he is
captured by pirates, who threaten to drown him and then set him adrift; in
the fourth his own crew mutinies, threatens to drown him, chains him to his
bed—echoes of his first days in Lilliput; the implication is that Europeans
are Lilliputians—and then leaves him to starve on a nearby island.38 His
conversion to the Houyhnhnm way of life, then, gives credence to his growing
sense of misanthropy.
Although Houyhnhnmland may not be a Utopia to us, it is to the beleaguered,
naive, relatively asexual Gulliver (asexual in that his main erogenous zone
right now is his mouth). At least one critic feels that in Houyhnhnmland
"Gulliver finds what he has subconsciously sought: the veritable Garden of
Eden."39 This unconscious search for a lost paradise is one answer to why
Gulliver is always leaving home. "For, a Stranger from the remotest Part, is
equally treated with the nearest Neighbour, and where-ever he goes, looks
upon himself as at home" (p. 268). Hence Gulliver's gloom when he is separ
ated from this family matrix which consists of constant care and protection
from his sorrel nag, constant advice and ego boosts from his master, and a
sense of worth (he has his own house, attached to his master's, which he
carefully and ingeniously furnishes himself).
Unfortunately Gulliver is forced to leave all this. His state of mind at the
end of the novel is explained by Erikson: "A drastic loss of accustomed
mother love without proper substitution at this time can lead...to acute
infantile depression or to a mild but chronic state of mourning which may
give a depressive undertone to the whole remainder of life. But even under
the most favorable circumstances, this stage leaves a residue of a primary
sense of evil and doom and of a universal nostalgia for a lost paradise."40
This lost paradise idea and Gulliver's subsequent loss of identity in Eng
land correspond closely to two strong themes in the Travels, themes which
are conjoined: Gulliver's tendency to imitate the behavior of others; and
his tendency, which dictates the structure of the Travels, to get himself into
the same situation over and over—or, more cynically, "released from bond
age he hastens to put himself in bondage again."41
It is Gulliver's refusal to "imitate the bad Practice of too many among
my Brethren" (p. 20) that causes him (on a conscious level) to keep leaving
his homeland. Specifically, he is not able to identify with them. However,
we do find him imitating the Lilliputians in Brobdingnag. He adopts the Lilli
putian perspective and displays the hunger for power and the pettiness of
those little vermin. After leaving Brobdingnag he sees his rescuers as "pig
mies" and at home in England he tells us: "I began to think of my self in

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14 Bernie Seiinger

Lilliput. I was afraid of trampling on every Traveller I met; and often called
aloud to have them stand out of the Way" (pp. 148-49). This is all leading
up to the supreme identification with the Houyhnhnms: he neighs his words
and trots like a horse; he tries to become a Houyhnhnm and believes that
every one else should become one as well. Gulliver's desire to imitate is
consistent with the actions of a child in the first stage of development and
it is necessary to his sense of identity: "a common form of behaviour in oral
characters is identification with the object by whom they want to be fed....
The development of a sense of identity grows out of the various identifica
tions experienced in childhood."42 Gulliver wants to be fed only by those he
trusts. Unfortunately, he identifies with them to the point of complete loss
of identity.43
Gulliver's need to get himself into the same situations—being set adrift,
captured, learning the language, imitating—is directly connected to his search
for identity and his search for a paradise. This compulsion to repeat "sym
bolizes a wish to return to one's warm hungerless paradise before birth."44
The principle of repetition-compulsion, often noted by Freud, has been
developed into an identity principle: "the deepest motivation, beneath even
the pleasure principle, is the organism's drive to maintain its own continuity
of being, its identity.. .we will die rather than suffer a fundamental assault on
what we believe essential to our being...we are seduced into becoming our
selves by the love and nurture we receive in infancy."45
In Houyhnhnmland, then, Gulliver could have his cake and eat it too: he
has the worry-free protection of the matrix and he is moving toward a strong
sense of identity. Surely all readers respond to this. Equally surely, the Travels
imply, there is no actual, physical Utopia; thus one must be content to deal
with reality or, if this is unacceptable, one can, like Gulliver—the visionary
horse editing journals in order to "correct every Vice and Folly"—attempt
to change it. But Swift's satire, as an ironic form of self-definition, under
mines this as well because Gulliver, regardless of what he writes or imagines,
will always be confronted with the problem of the self: how to be a part of
and yet apart from that society. The need to create and recreate an identity
which, as we have seen, is directly supported by the oral imagery in the
Travels, sheds some light on the pleasures of reading and re-reading the book.
Each time we read it and try to talk about it we work through our own, often
comic, attempts at self-definition. However, if Swift's writings are merely
"neurotic fantasies," we can at least, as Norman 0. Brown proposes, "seek
to appreciate his insights into the universal neurosis of mankind."46 But we
can no longer allow Gulliver, or indeed Swift, to be laid to rest in the pro
crustean bed that psychoanalytic critics have made for them.

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