The tale of Gulliver's Travels can be described as a written criticism of the society in which Swift lived. In each of the worlds Gulliver encountered the problems he saw with the civilizations were actually the political and social aspects Jonathan Swift disliked about his own world. He also accomplishes this by giving the inhabitants of these worlds superior traits and attitudes in order to compare them to and belittle the culture that surrounded Swift. An example of this could be the intellectual and proper race of houyhnhnms.
             One of the most interesting questions about Gulliver's Travels is whether the Houyhnhnms
             represent his ideal of rationality or whether they are also part of Swift's satire. In Book IV, is Swift poking fun at the talking horses or does he intend for us to take them seriously. If we look closely at the way that the Houyhnhnms act, we can see that in fact Swift does not take them seriously: he uses them to show the dangers of pride.
             First we have to see that Swift does not even take Gulliver seriously. For instance, his name sounds much like gullible, which suggests that he will believe anything indicating that his perceptions of what is good and bad may not be accurate making the teller of the story bias. Also, when he first sees the Yahoos and they throw excrement on him, he responds by doing the same in return until they run away. Even though as a human he is suppose to be the most rational being there is, according to our beliefs. This here is a perfect example of the way Swift shows the weakness of the human race and how we can easily be influenced to behave immaturely and uncivilized even though we see ourselves as the height of the living world.
             Lemule Gulliver is clearly satirized as a human, but does that make the Houyhnhnms Swifts ideal society? They walk on two legs instead of four, and seem to be much like people. As Gulliver says, "It was with the utmost...