Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

Yahoos

As soon as Gulliver claps eyes on this pack of oddly hairy, mostly naked animals, he finds them completely and totally repulsive. Imagine his surprise when he finally recognizes that the Yahoos are humans, and that he himself is just a slightly cleaned up version of the animals the Houyhnhnms keep chained in their stables. By sketching out Gulliver's instinctive, total rejection of the Yahoos, Swift shows us that his critique in this novel goes beyond English politics to the heart of humankind itself. To adapt the words of 1970s comic strip character Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."