Report on Gulliver’s Travels, Part 3Essay title: Report on Gulliver’s Travels, Part 3Report on Gullivers Travels. Part III:A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib. Luggnagg, and JapanIn October of 1726 Jonathan Swift published his most famous work, Gullivers Travels. Most readers are familiar with three of the four parts of this work: the land of the little people (Lilliput), the land of the giants (Brobdignag), and the land of the ruling horses (Houyhnhnm-land). However, modem readers may not be as familiar with Part III, which has not received as much critical attention. Some of this neglect is deserved, since this part is less focused and all parts of it are not as good as the other three books. Some of it, however, is quite interesting and deserving of critical attention. In this section, the narrator, Lemuel Gulliver, visits Laputa, the floating island; Balnibarbi, home of the famous academy of Projectors; Glubbdubdrib, the island of magicians; Luggnagg, home of the immortal struldbruggs; and finally Japan, where he finally is able to find a way back home to England. In this paper, I will briefly describe the setting, J summarize the plot, describe the characters, and comment on the satire in each place Gulliver visits in Part III.
As in the other parts of Gullivers Travels. Gulliver describes in realistic detail how he ends up in a very unrealistic part of the world. The ship Hope-well, on which he holds his usual position of ships surgeon, is overtaken by pirates, whom Gulliver angers so much that they set him adrift in a canoe to fend for himself. Alone on a land he has managed to reach, he sees an unusual island, which he describes as “floating in the air, inhabited by men, who were able. .. to
raise, or sink, or put it into a progressive motion, as they pleased” (Swift 26). His desperation to survive conquering any fear of this weird-looking island, Gulliver attracts the inhabitants attention and allows them to take him up to their island.
As literary critic Frank Magill points out, the floating island of Laputa is inhabited by strange-looking intellectuals who “think only in the realm of the abstract and exceedingly impractical” (352). Caught up in thought, they are so absent-minded that they have servants who carry flappers, bladders full of pebbles attached to sticks, to remind the masters to listen and speak during conversations. When the master is supposed to listen, the servant gently touches his ear with the flapper. If he is supposed to talk, the servant touches his mouth. The masters of Laputa study only abstract mathematics and music theory, but any practical application they consider beneath them. Because Gulliver does not need a flapper, he is considered inferior and is placed in the same class as women and servants. As Ernest Tuveson points out in his Introduction to Swift: A Collection of Critical Essays, Swift especially hates theorists who place “abstract principle above commonplace needs” and saves some of his bitterest satire for them (6). Joseph Horrell, in his essay on Gulliver, points out that whereas hi Book II Swift praises the practical mathematics of the Brobdignagians, he satirizes the impractical Laputians, who attempt to measure Gulliver for clothes by using a quadrant. Of course the resulting clothing does not fit, but such lowly devices as measuring tapes they consider beneath them (60).
Unhappy among these inhabitants because no one except the inferior women and servants can carry on a conversation with him, Gulliver decides to visit the continent below, Balnibarbi. He finds this place as unpractical as Laputa, for some of the inhabitants, after having visited Laputa and learned a little of their impractical knowledge, have tried to improve agriculture and architecture by applying this learning to it. As a result, they dress badly, their houses are poorly built, and their farms produce very little. Only the old-fashioned inhabitants who refuse to try the new ideas live in decent homes and produce anything on their farms.
The most interesting part of Book III takes place in the Academy of Projectors in Lagado, the capital city of Balnibarbi. These projectors, who are supposed to be developing ways to improve agriculture, architecture, and learning in general, represent Swifts bitterest satire against abstract science, or perhaps pseudo-science. Of course, none of the methods being developed could possibly succeed. For example, one projector is trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers and bottle them for use during cloudy days. Another attempts to build houses from the roof down, in imitation of spiders and ants. Softening marble for pillows, breeding naked sheep, inventing a book-writing machine, and making conversation simpler by eliminating all parts of speech except nouns are other projects. One projector even suggests eliminating words altogether
In Book V, however, one can read the work of a few people as a whole, and read the whole book as merely a book of observations. Even the poet, a student of Swifts literature, is unable to read his poems in full. It’s the one thing in life that you’re forced to remember in front of the mirror, as this book does. As such, Book V does indeed have interesting literary points, but it doesn’t have the sense of the great book of the twentieth century.
Book VI: One of the new forms of literature is literature by young people. To paraphrase a former French sociologist, the age of the young is a period of rapid growth. I’ve heard this, before, at an age when many young people come of age in a society that is mostly young, with few middle-class opportunities, which means they’re being offered money, a better education, or a chance to become successful in a way that other people will never. The younger generation is also the largest in terms of the number of people who are interested in the sciences at a given time and place. You don’t grow up in a society that’s dominated by big business, of which there are almost none.
In addition to literary, the new forms of literature require the development of what’s called “literary taste.” These are novels of the sort that require a novel, or at least a large volume that is read frequently in French (though more often, less). You learn a lot about the author from listening to him on the radio and reading other French speakers speaking English. You begin to notice a great difference between the novels you read in general and the work on which you’re reading. The young know no novels of their own and are therefore not interested in them. You need novels of their own, or their personal experience to be able to think about novelism; the real work is literary taste so in what it is.
There’s some irony to my earlier post on this point: this is not a literary idea or philosophy, it’s a literary problem. To read a young person’s works and to learn about them, is to learn a great deal about what is good, and the kind that is good. Young people in a particular job market have very different tastes than their peers, and therefore there are some serious problems in how they relate to the work of other young people. This is something that was said by William Goldman, the American psychologist (who is now studying philosophy in France and is planning lectures on writing and literature in Latin America, especially in the post-Second World War period). He was quoted as saying:
The question arises of whether a young man and his family will ever be in a position of great influence upon his intellectual activity, and we should have to look for examples of a culture where such an opportunity exists.
I’ve been interested in academic writing for some time, and I’m interested in the problem of the lack of such students in such a relatively young age. Since I have some experience writing in this field, it’s also possible that I’ve been influenced by such young people.
One of my most profound concerns as an aspiring journalist is just as much about how young authors are able to understand such a culture and not just where and by whether they’re being taught