A critique and analysis of R.S. Crane's interpretive essay on Book IV of Swift's Gulliver's Travels
             Since its first publication nearly three hundred years ago, Jonathan Swift's satirical prose Gulliver's Travels has been the subject of a wide variety of literary critique and social interpretation. Although many readers, at first glance, take this tale to be simply a fantastic narrative of a common man and his encounters with unusual locations and people through several journeys, further inspection reveals Swift's true purpose of creativity - satire.
             Using the then contemporary style of the Travel Narrative, Swift is able to insert his own personal criticisms of modern life into the experiences of Gulliver. Gulliver, representing a common man, encounters a wide variety of characters along his travels, each representing a subject Swift wishes to criticize. Ranging from relatively simply political criticisms in his experiences in Book I and II, to a socio-political criticism in Book III, to the social, philosophical criticism of man in Book IV. It is to this final book that we turn our attention.
             If Book IV is read literally, with no knowledge of satire, it appears to be another bizarre journey of Gulliver, no more unusual than his other travels. However, upon further inspection, we see that Book IV criticizes the nature of man as a rational being (Crane, 402). Of interest to the readers of today is Swift's choice of creatures inhabiting this land; a barbaric, man-like creature dubbed the Yahoo, and the civilized, good-natured horse-like creature, the Houyhnhnms. R.S. Crane explains the reason for this choice in his essay "The Houyhnhms, the Yahoos, and the History of Ideas".
             Crane begins his analysis of Book IV by discussing how Gulliver is able to discard his preconceived notion of man as a superior being for a more cynical outlook after interacting with the inhabitants of Houyhnhnmla
             ...