The final voyage of Gulliver to the land of Houyhnhnms is distinct from his previous voyages in terms of theeffect it leaves on Gulliver. It can be designated as an effect of alienation—the alienation of Gulliver not onlyfrom himself but also from his human identity. As opposed to the humanism of the Enlightenment whichcorresponded to the period in which Swift lived, it appears that Swift lost his faith in both the human being andthe humanity. Although each of his previous voyages ends with his happy return back to England, and althoughone previous voyage consolidates his motivation to take on another, he wishes to prolong his stay in the land ofHouyhnhnms for as long as possible, and he dismisses the possibility of returning to his homeland as utterlyundesirable. The reason is that he emerges as ontologically someone else from his final voyage, particularly inthe sense that he is now identifying himself as a Yahoo who is desperately aspiring to become a Houyhnhnm. Hecannot avoid the paradoxical sense of belonging to the Yahoos despite his intense hatred of them. In a similarway, he cannot avoid the paradoxical desire to become a Houyhnhnm despite his assurance that he will not beable to do so. Both the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos are defined as creatures endowed with the capability ofreasoning. However, the fundamental difference between the two is that the Houyhnhnms are representatives ofvirtue, whereas the Yahoos are representatives of vice. This distinction provides the basis of the justification forGulliver’s growing misanthropic attitude towards the human kind. This paper situates Gulliver’s Travels in alargely historical context in its first part to demonstrate how Swift responds to the foregrounding of reason in histime as the most principal defining characteristic of human existence, and then examines the emergence ofalienation through the example of Gulliver in its second part.