Assignment task:
You may use these prompts, alter them according to your own interests, or write about a different but relevant topic concerning the text altogether. These are prompts for the Discussion Board; please do not confuse them with essay prompts.
Prompt 1: Swift is a major Enlightenment figure, and as we know, the Enlightenment stressed the importance of reason as a quintessential human trait and key to personal and societal health and happiness. In Gulliver's Travels, the Houyhnhnms are extremely rational, reasonable beings. But do we think they represent an ideal for Swift? Why or why not?
Prompt 2: How does Gulliver feel about the Yahoos? That part of the discussion question is fairly obvious, right? But dig deeper. How do we feel about the Yahoos? Is there a discrepancy? I wonder if most readers' reaction to this section of the book is like mine: if I think about this book a year or so after I have last read it, the images that come to my mind are always images of Yahoos. Of course I remember the Houyhnhnms, but they do not stick in my imagination as vividly. Do you suppose you will remember the book a year from now in the same way? Why or why not? And does it matter?
Prompt 3: We learn, toward the end of the reading, that Gulliver is undergoing the first steps of a kind of reconciliation with "the Yahoo." Of what does this reconciliation consist? And why is it significant?