Thursday, July 23, 2015

In Gulliver's Travels, what are some examples with quotes about economic inequality or equality?

In part 4, chapter 6, Gulliver goes into detail about England's economic inequality. His Houyhnhnm master is unable to understand why lawyers would participate in injustice "merely for the sake of injuring their fellow-animals." Gulliver explains that lawyers do it for hire, but his master cannot comprehend the concept of money in relation to power. Gulliver details the circumstances in his own country, using the "Yahoo" term that his master is familiar with to parallel England's lower class:

When a Yahoo had got a great store of this precious substance, he was able to purchase whatever he had a mind to; the finest clothing, the noblest houses, great tracts of land, the most costly meats and drinks, and have his choice of the most beautiful females . . . that the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man’s labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the former; that the bulk of our people were forced to live miserably, by labouring every day for small wages, to make a few live plentifully.

Thus when a member of the lower class is able to accumulate considerable wealth, they become part of the upper class, which outnumbers the lower class 1:1000. The inequality lies in the reality that the poor are working to expand the riches of their masters, while they themselves are not profiting on their own labor.
I recommend you focus on this section of the novel, as it goes into detail on England's economic disparity in relation to class, trading of goods, colonization, and law.

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