Whether or not Swift himself was a misanthrope is a
question for a historian; Swift's novel, Gulliver's Travels,
however, certainly expresses a misanthropic view.
Many of
the peoples he discovers in his travels are intended as parodies of human
weaknesses.
In Lagado, for example, Gulliver visits the
Academy, where he mets "scientists" working on projects such as "extracting Sun-Beams
out of Cucumbers," and reducing "human Excrement to its original Food." Another
researcher is involved in a scheme to abolish the use of words, since "every Word we
speak is in some Degree a Diminution of our Lungs by Corrosion." All of this is a
parody, of course, on the obscurantism of some
scholars.
The most misanthopic section of
Gulliver's Travels is Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the
Houyhnhnms. The Houyhnhnms are a race of intelligent, clean, talking horses. Their
behavior is "orderly and rational...and judicious." Their morality is so pure that
their language does not have a word for lying.
The
Houhynhnms share their land with a creature known as the Yahoos. They are human-like,
but stupid, brutal, and filthy. The Houhyhnmns use the Yahoos as
slaves.
Gulliver realizes that he is not much better than
the Yahoos, and he becomes ashamed of his humanness. When he finally returns to
England, he is greeted by his wife and children, but is repulsed by their similarity to
the Yahoos:
The Sight of them filled me only with Hatred,
Disgust and Contempt...My Wife took me in her Arms, and kissed me; at which, having not
been used to the Touch of that odious Animal for so many Years, I fell in a Swoon for
almost an Hour.
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