Hello and welcome to the Discourse. The full title of Book 3 of Gulliver’s Travels was “A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan.” Swift satirizes English Bureaucracy, religion, science, and The Royal Society of England in the third part. Jonathan Swift also raises the old debate of Ancients versus Modernists in this book. In addition, Swift satirizes the desire for immortality and fear of old age and death.
After spending 10 days at home, Gulliver had a visitor who proposed to him a job and promotion and a surgeon and co-captain of Hopewell, a sturdy ship. Much to his wife’s chagrin, Gulliver chose to accept the job and right after two months, he was aboard Hopewell heading towards the port Tanquin. The captain of Hopewell was William Robinson (mimicking Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe). The captain planned to make some money in Tonquin and bought a boat and sent 14 crewmembers led by Gulliver to continue their business while he stayed at the port of Tonquin for his own purpose.
Characters of A Voyage to Laputa,...and Japan:
William Robinson is the captain of the ship Hopewell while Lemuel Gulliver is the co-captain. The Dutchman is an accomplice of Japanese sea pirates whom Gulliver requests to help him being a Christian brother. The Laputans are the inhabitant of the floating island of Laputa. They are weirdos who are very good at maths and science but cannot focus on any subject for long. Their heads are always leaning towards the right or left. The Laputian King is much more distracted than other Laputians. He lacks all common sense and is utterly preoccupied with abstractions. Lord Munodi is one rare sane and sensible person of Laputa but he is rejected and hated by every other Laputian. The Projectors are the scientists and philosophers of Laputa who continue to engage in abstractions pursuing science and philosophy without too much regard for practical outcomes. The Glubbdubdribbians are magical people headed by the Governor who can raise a dead person once every three months. The Luggnaggian king is a cruel despot who humiliates his subjects. The Struldbrugs are a special kind of people of Luggnagg who are common to others in all senses except that they are immortals. They grow old naturally until age 80 and then become immortals. All struldbrugs are marked by a dot above their left eyebrow that changes color as they grow old and becomes black once they are 80 years of age.
Summary of A Voyage to Laputa,... and Japan:
As Gulliver heads the boat with 14 crewmembers towards India, he encounters a band of sea pirates who attack the boat and capture Gulliver along with other men. Gulliver notices that while all the pirates are Japanese, one of them is Dutch. Gulliver calls him his Christian brother and asks for his help but this angers the Dutchman who suggests the head of the pirates kill all the captured men. However, the Japanese pirate assures Gulliver that nobody will be murdered as their aim is to loot not to kill. Gulliver praises the Japanese pirate while criticizing the Dutchman and says that he has found “more mercy in a heathen.” This further angers the Dutchman who convinces the leader of the pirates to leave Gulliver stranded alone in a small canoe to die by himself. Gulliver struggles to survive and rows the canoe aimlessly until he finds an island where he gets some eggs to eat in the jungle. As it grows dark, he decides to sleep in a cave. The next morning, he observes “a vast opaque body” crossing the sun while moving towards the island. At first, Gulliver thinks that is some strange extra dark large cloud. Gulliver uses his binocular to observe the cloud and realizes that it is not a cloud but a whole island that is floating in the air above him. Gulliver is awestruck seeing it and when he sees some men walking on the floating island he bows in supplication and begs for their help in saving him. Those men couldn’t understand English but they understood the supplicant behavior of Gulliver and decided to help him by lowering a chair tied to a chain through which Gulliver could reach them up on the floating island. As Gulliver reaches up, he observes that these people on the floating island are a bit weird looking and all of them keep their heads either tilted towards right or left. All of them wear similar clothes with prints of abstract figures, celestial bodies, or musical instruments. Some of them are masters while others are servants known as Flappers. The flappers carry blown bladders filled with little pebbles or peas to flap at the mouths and ears of those around them. The flappers strike the mouth of the person who should speak and they also strike the ear of the person to whom they should speak. Gulliver learns that the residents of this island are so distracted that they cannot focus for more than a minute and often fail to remember what are they talking about or who are they talking to hence, they need the services of flappers. The flapper is also responsible for preventing his absent-minded master from tripping over things, bumping into walls, etc.
Gulliver is taken to the Laputan King and he learns that the king is the most distracted person in the lot. The king was busy solving a mathematical puzzle and he ignores Gulliver for an hour but then his flapper strikes him and reminds him of Gulliver. The king then orders Gulliver to be sent away and fed well. He also arranges a teacher who may teach the language of Laputa to Gulliver. Moreover, the king observes that Gulliver’s clothes are dirty and hence, he orders new clothes to be made for Gulliver. All the food items were made and cut into geometrical shapes. Gulliver is measured for clothes using a quadrant, a ruler, and compasses, and the resultant clothes are very misshapen due to a failure in the calculation. The tutor explains to Gulliver that the floating Island is known as Laputa while the island beneath it is known as Balnibarbi. Gulliver learns that Laputa continues to float above Balnibarbi with the help of a large strong magnet and the Laputian king often exploits the people of Balnibarbi as he can cut off sunshine and rain from any region on the lower island. Or, if he wishes, he can pelt it with stones. Theoretically, he could lower Laputa and crush Balnibarbian towns. Gulliver learns that the language of the Laputan people also includes many mathematical terms while Laputan people do not like their homes to be built with any right angle because they hate practical geometry and cannot think of living in a rectangle and thus, all the houses in Laputa are badly misshaped. Laputan people remain engaged with abstract math while they lack any common sense and practical knowledge. They have no idea of imagination or invention and they keep worrying about the health of the sun and that the sun would ultimately die one day. Gulliver notices that Laputian women are very beautiful with an ‘abundance of vivacity’ but they do not like Laputian men and often would choose lovers from Lagado, an island below. Laputian women prefer visceral and practical men but Laputans are not like that. To control women and stop them from running away with Lagadans, the king has framed some stringent laws.
The Laputan king allows Gulliver to explore the floating Island and Gulliver notices that it is a four-and-a-half mile diameter circle with a layer of adamant as its base and an immense magnetic loadstone in a chasm at the island’s center. Skilled Laputan astronomers control the movement of Laputa and know much more about celestial bodies than their European counterparts. Despite his obvious power over Balnibarbi and other lower islands, the Laptan king never thinks of actually destroying the lower land as it is as necessary for the survival of the floating island as the piece of the magnet within it. Gulliver doesn’t enjoy his days in Laputa as he is not that much skilled in mathematics, astronomy, or music. He spends most of his time talking with women, and flappers who are more practical than Laputan masters.
Gulliver then visits to Lagado to meet Munodi, a friend of the Laputan king. He notices that Lagado is in utter destruction. However, the private estate of Munodi is well-managed and beautiful. Munodi informs him that some 40 years ago, some scholars from Lagado went to Laputa and when they returned, they tried to mimic the ways of Laputa by using the same high scientific and mathematical ways, and that brought all destruction. He informs that those scholars established an academy in Lagado that continues to engage in new important experiments. Gulliver visits the academy which is situated in several dilapidated buildings. He learns that the scholars experimenting in the academy are called projectors. The projectors are engaged in many bizarre projects such as working on extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, or turning human excrement back into food, or, turning calcine ice into gunpowder; building houses from the roof down, and so on. Gulliver notices that all Projectors are immensely happy though none of them is making any progress in their experiments. The Projectors teach mathematics to Lagadan kids and suggest that eating wafers with mathematical concepts written on them helps in learning mathematics. Gulliver then visits the Political wing of Projectors and notices that the political Projectors are also equally insane. Gulliver then visits a hall where some projectors were debating on how people should be taxed. One of them suggested that men should be taxed on vices, follies, talents, sexual prowess, “wit, valor, and politeness,” but never on “honor, justice, wisdom, and learning,” since those four are valueless. Women could be taxed on “beauty” and style, but not on “constancy, chastity, good sense, and good nature,” because these qualities are so rare, they would attract no tax.
Gulliver decides to leave Lagado to explore Luggnagg, another island that is situated between Western America and Japan. However, he fails to find any direct ship to go there and hence he decides to visit the island of Glubbdubdrib. He learns that the inhabitants of Glubbdubdrib are all magicians who practice necromancy. The leader of Glubbdubdrians is known as the governor, the most skilled magician among them. The Glubbdubdrian governor soon develops a friendly rapport with Gulliver. Gulliver is a bit threatened by knowing that all the servants of the governor are ghosts but soon he becomes accustomed to it. The governor tells him that he can call anyone from the dead to whom Gulliver wishes to talk. Gulliver decides to summon Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Caesar, Pompey, the Roman senate, Caesar, and Brutus. Gulliver summons many other ghosts who were “chiefly…destroyers of tyrants and usurpers, and the restorers of liberty to oppressed and injured nations.” He then summons the ghosts of Homer and Aristotle and learns that none of them have ever met any of their critics in the afterlife. He learns that the critics and the commentators are so ashamed of the gross lies they’ve made up in their commentaries that they’ve avoided Homer and Aristotle in the afterlife. Gulliver then summons the ghosts of Descartes and Gassendi who teach their own science to Aristotle. Aristotle accepts his mistakes but says that no matter how strongly based these new principles are, they will keep proving to be wrong and out of fashion with time.
Finally, Gulliver gets a ship to Luggnagg from where he wishes to go to Japan. He knows that only Dutch Europeans are allowed in Japan and thus, he lies that he is Dutch. He hires a Luggnaggian boy to be his interpreter. After reaching Luggnagg, he decides to meet the king to get permission to go to Japan. He learns a strange custom of Luggnaggians that if a stranger has to meet the Luggnaggian king, he must crawl on his belly, licking the floor in front of the king. Gulliver obediently follows the custom while noticing that the floor was properly cleaned before he paid respect to the king. He learns that the Luggnaggian is not particularly interested in cleanliness and often the floor of the palace remains dirty and the visitors are forced to lick the dirt off the floor. He further learns that if an enemy visits the Luggnaggian king, he may decide to order poison to be sprinkled on the floor and as the enemy would lick it, he will get killed. Gulliver praises the king with bombastic words saying, "May your celestial majesty outlive the sun, eleven moons and a half." The king gets impressed by Gulliver and he allows him food, lodging, and other amenities for three months. During his stay in Luggnagg, Gulliver learns about Struldbrugs. While they are exactly similar to other Luggnaggian in all matters, they are special because all the Struldbrugs are immortals who cannot die. Gulliver is excited about immortality and wishes to know the secret.
Gulliver learns that the Struldbrugs continue to age till 80 years but then their body becomes still and never gets any elder. However, by the age of 80, they are already too weak, useless, cantankerous, and disturbing. No Luggnaggian likes any Struldbrugs and often a common Luggnaggian wouldn’t like to become a Struldbrug. He learns that it is not a hereditary condition and most often the children of Struldbrugs are simple Luggnaggians who die much before their Struldbrug parents get to the age of 80. After knowing all this, Gulliver vows never to wish for immortality.
The Luggnaggian king becomes fond of Gulliver and wishes him to stay for more time but Gulliver insists that he must go to Japan. Thus, the Luggnaggian king sends him off with gifts and a letter of recommendation to the emperor of Japan. In Japan, Gulliver continues his lie that he is Dutch and asks the help of the Japanese emperor to find a Dutch ship leaving from Nangasac. However, he further lies that he is suffering pain in his back and thus he may not be able to follow the Dutch maritime custom of trampling a crucifix. The emperor of Japan gets a bit suspicious wondering if Gulliver is really a Catholic. Nonetheless, Gulliver had the recommendation of the Luggnaggian king and thus, he helps Gulliver catch the ship. Gulliver successfully convinces the Dutch crewmen of the ship that he is Dutch and thus, he sails back to England safely. He reaches home and meets his wife and children after five years since he left home.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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