Question

Discuss the character of the master horse in the part 4 of Gulliver's travels?

Answer 1

The Master Horse is the gray horse whom Gulliver first meets when he's being attacked by Yahoos upon his arrival in Houyhnhnm Land. Gulliver thinks of himself as serving the Master Horse. The main reason the Master Horse appears in this novel is to hone Gulliver's comparisons of the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, but his way of talking about Houyhnhnms does cast some doubt on Gulliver's conclusions.

By the end of his stay with the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver has come to love them. All of his old hesitation about insulting England that he felt in Brobdingnag is totally gone now that he's chatting with the awesome Houyhnhnms. But the Master Horse does not seem a hundred percent perfect to us. He seems kind of stuck up,actually: he shares the astonishment of the Brobdingnagians at the idea that there could be other countries beyond the sea. And he practically calls Gulliver a liar (even though he doesn't know the exact word) when Gulliver breaks it to him that, in our neck of the woods, humans are the rational beings and horses are the beasts of burden.