Commonbook

Professor Nelson, please forgive the sideways photo of my commonbook. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to rotate it and I apologize. But I did remember how to add a subpage all on my own and I think that should count for something!

Anyways, this is a very long excerpt from Chapter X of Gulliver's Travel. This is the passage where Gulliver is told her must either live with the YAHOOs or flee the island entirely. Forgive how repetitive all of this Gulliver talk is due to me turning so many assignments in but this passage and this story really stuck with me! My knowledge of Gulliver's Travel was just that Jack Black movie that came out about 10 years ago, I believe it is based on Book I. When I watched that movie, I had no idea how deep (and satirical) the novel actually was! Since this morning my project idea has gone through many different stages but no matter what idea I thought I would go with, this passage was the climax. This is where Gulliver gets rejected by the ruling class, the horses, HOUYHNHNMs, and realizes he cannot live with his counterparts, the YAHOOs.

I believe this is one of the most satirical parts of the story. Gulliver, a a white man, does not have a place in society, especially a foreign society he was not able to take over. Over the years he grew to hate the YAHOOs and risked his life by escaping the island. Gulliver, who taught the HOUYHNHNMs almost everything he knows about his society, culture, and way of life, was rejected. This is satirical because this is not how colonialism works. Had Gulliver's entire crew land with him, they potentially could have taken over the island and exploit both the HOUYHNHNMs and the YAHOOs to harvest nature resources. Instead, the colonizer's way of life was rejected and the native's society gets to remain intact. Unfortunately this is not how colonialism works in the real world.

After all, this is a satire!