Gulliver has a problem by the time his travels end, and today I asked my students to consider that problem more closely.
I asked my students to imagine the most physically attractive person they could, and then to acknowledge that out of that same body routinely comes poop and urine, that this person would, if one single millimeter of skin was removed, resemble something out of a horror movie more than the object of sexual desire.
We are able to forget this, I told them, because we have a veil over our eyes.
Gulliver has had that veil removed, and in its absence, all he can see are disgusting, sin-filled creatures, or rather vice-filled, irrational creatures.
The problem is precisely that Gulliver doesn’t see what’s wrong with the Yahoos on the Houyhnhnm Island or back in England as sin. He’s been using some other standard. And in the absence of a standard that would start with the premise that all men are made in God’s image, Gulliver begins to hate. Continue reading “Teaching Gulliver’s Travels: An Integration Diary Pt. 2”