This was the first of Gulliver’s travels where he doesn’t actually come into contact with humans. Instead, he encounters these weird beasts, which posses a couple of human aspects. Gulliver even says at one point that they look like humans. Their appearance, along with the fact that they tried to attack Gulliver by defecating on him, had to have put some sort of satire into play. Keeping in mind also, that these creatures and dominated by horses, swift is probably targeting the bums and the low life human beings. He obviously emphasized on how disgusting they were.
The horses represented just the opposite. In the unknown island, they were the only ones that could speak, dine, live in houses, make decisions, and basically rule their kingdom. Although Swift does make these horses look like heroes by mentioning how altruistic and cooperative they are with each other, there are many characteristics that actually make them seem quite unpleasant. First of all, they sit around talking bad about everyone behind their backs (mainly the Yahoos). They are obviously a very self centered group of creatures who consider themselves the elite species on the face of the earth. I couldn’t help relating these Houyhnhnms to the high class humans, which posses the same traits that I said the horses had. Horses are known to be very magnificent and hard working animals, but in the end, they are still animals.
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