Beliefs In Gulliver's Travels By Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift had many beliefs he expressed in the book Gulliver’s Travels. Some of these are that humans are animals, but that humans are also capable of reason. Swift convenes these beliefs in the travels that Gullivers takes and his adventures. Gulliver meets many different human like creatures as well as humans themselves. Swift uses these characters like pirates or Yahoo 's, to show that humans really are just animals. Swift wants everyone to know that humans think of themselves as above other animals. Humans believe themselves to be great creatures, who help and do great works through their actions. But Swift shows us that this is not true, humans are not what they say they are. They really are just animals who are fighting with each …show more content…
Part of the reason that humans and in this case the Lilliputians fight in such pointless cases is because we as humans believe that we are better than animals, and that therefore any reason we have for fighting is well based. This is simply not true, the Lilliputians show us that humans really are animals, because animals fight for no reason at all, killing each other for no reason. The Lilliputians are fighting and killing over how to break an egg, which is just as pointless and probably even more so than the reason that animals fight and kill each other. Another example of humans acting as animals is shown when Gullivers tells the Houyhnhnms of the state of England and its wars, and after recounting the events and the great number of deaths that occurred, he explains the reasons behind the fighting “Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine” (255). Gulliver says that a simple difference of opinion has caused the deaths of millions of people leading to loss and grief for even more than that number. All because of a simple difference of opinion. Another example of millions of human lives being killed that could be prevented. The Yahoos are the best of example of humans being animals. The Yahoos are humans, and they throw poop at one another, they fight among each other, they play like dogs, and the act like animals. No specific quote can show the general actions of the Yahoos being animals, because all of the Yahoos actions show them to be animals. Animals fight, animals kill each other, animals do this to survive, the killing is not necessary for them, but they do it because that 's what they do. Humans have a choice, they can decide to be animals, and to continue to kill each