What happens in Part IV of Gulliver's Travels?
In the final chapters of Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver is banished from the land of the Houyhnhnms by the General Assembly, which decides that a rational Yahoo is too much of a threat to their society. Heartbroken, Gulliver constructs a canoe using Yahoo skins and reluctantly leaves, making a brief stop on a nearby island before being rescued by a Portuguese ship captained by the compassionate Don Pedro de Mendez. Despite Don Pedro's gentle kindness, Gulliver can hardly stand his presence—he smells, to Gulliver's tainted senses, like a Yahoo. After returning to Lisbon and then to England, Gulliver reunites with his wife and children but is filled with disgust; he cannot bear to share a table with his family and instead spends his time in the stable, talking to his horses. He buys two stallions and speaks to them in the Houyhnhnm language, finding their company the only source of comfort. The story concludes with Gulliver defending his honesty and delivering a bitter, satirical message to the reader, criticizing English arrogance and imperialism, stating that no nation has less reason to take pride in its virtue than his own.
Analysis
Swift delivers a profound twist in these final chapters: the returning traveler, a familiar figure in voyage literature, comes home not enlightened but shattered. Gulliver’s misanthropy is portrayed with stark clarity rather than authorial approval, and Swift’s skill lies in maintaining that ambiguity. Don Pedro de Mendez serves as the structural center—a genuinely good man whose kindness Gulliver fails to recognize, inviting readers to assess Gulliver’s shortcomings rather than humanity’s. The stable scenes represent Swift's darkest humor: Gulliver’s preference for horses over his own wife takes the Houyhnhnm ideal to an absurd extreme, revealing how a philosophy based purely on reason, devoid of affection, becomes its own madness.
The Yahoo-skin canoe is a subtly grotesque symbol—Gulliver literally wraps himself in the flesh of what he loathes most, implying he cannot escape his own nature no matter how far he goes. Swift’s prose in these chapters tightens into the style of pamphlets and legal documents, echoing the rational tone of Enlightenment discourse while leading to irrational conclusions. The concluding address to the reader—direct, scornful, yet formally polite—closes the gap between satirist and narrator just enough to leave a mark. Whether Swift supports Gulliver’s misanthropy or critiques it remains the novel's key, intentionally unresolved question, and these chapters are where that lack of resolution has its most damaging effect.
Key quotes from Part IV
“I must freely confess, that the many virtues of those excellent Quadrupeds placed in opposite view to human corruptions, had so far opened mine eyes, and enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the actions and passions of man in a very different light.”
Gulliver reflects on the psychological transformation wrought by his time among the Houyhnhnms, framing his misanthropy as a form of moral enlightenment.
“My wife and family received me with great surprise and joy, because they concluded me certainly dead; but I must freely own, that their company was extremely disagreeable to me, and the smell of a Yahoo very offensive.”
Gulliver describes his homecoming, the domestic reunion rendered grotesque by his inability to perceive his family as anything other than Yahoos.
“I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind, over whom I may, without breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority, in virtue of my travels.”
In his closing address to the reader, Gulliver adopts a tone of supreme self-regard that Swift calibrates to expose the vanity lurking inside every claim to rational superiority.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Part IV
- Quadrupeds
- Four-footed animals. Gulliver uses this formal term to refer to the Houyhnhnms, emphasising their animal bodies while praising their superior moral virtues.
- breach of modesty
- A violation of proper humility; claiming more credit for oneself than is considered acceptable or polite. Gulliver argues that his travels genuinely entitle him to claim superiority without it counting as boasting.