The Mowgli Syndrome

In Gulliver’s description of the Yahoos, where he describes them being hairy everywhere except for “any hair at all on their buttocks” page 173, which made me immediately think of feral children and anorexics. Feral children (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_children) are basically children who have not been raised in human society, and often have been “raised” by animals, which is to say that they lived with them to provide food and protection. I first heard of them in a Discovery Channel documentary, in which a boy was found living amongst monkeys. He had become hairy all over, except for his buttocks. This was due to the fact that he was not eating as much as he needed to, which made his body become hairy, which also happens to undernourished anorexics, but hair doesn’t’ grow on the buttocks. Feral children do not speak because they have not been taught language, and they often move in animalistic ways and imitate the animals they have been around, as there have been no human examples. A feral girl in Russia grew up in a room with old dogs and cats, so she would bark at the door. The Yahoos are obviously humans who have been in bad conditions, and like the children have taken on animal characteristics in the absence of human examples. Both real and fictional accounts of these kids date back as far as the 1300s, so it is not irrational to think that Swift may have based his portrayal of uncultured humans on these accounts, and it adds to the satirical nature of the piece that the reader recognizes these creatures as humans easily, while Gulliver does not.

Another quick note is that I was happy to find I was right as to motivation in the name of the Houyhnhnms