Gulliver's Travels (Swift)/Part 3
from the Collection “Gulliver's Travels”
Short summary
Lemuel Gulliver had been home for less than ten days when a former captain invited him on a voyage to the East Indies.
In 1707 pirates captured Gulliver's small trading vessel and set him adrift in a canoe. Stranded on a rocky islet, he was rescued by Laputa, a flying island moved by a giant magnet.
Its king and courtiers were so lost in mathematics and music that servants had to strike them with bladders to make them listen. They looked down on Gulliver. The king kept the land below obedient by hovering over rebellious towns, though one city had forced him to accept its terms.
Gulliver went down to Lagado, the capital below, where a former governor showed him ruined farms. Scientists at the Grand Academy wasted the country's resources on absurd projects, such as extracting sunshine from cucumbers or writing books with a machine.
On Glubbdubdrib, an island of sorcerers, the governor summoned the dead for him. Great figures of the past revealed that history was full of lies and corruption.
In Luggnagg Gulliver learned of the struldbrugs, people born immortal. He dreamed of the wisdom and wealth he would gain, but was told they grew old, sick and bitter and were declared legally dead at eighty. When he met them, he lost his wish to live forever.
I grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed, and thought no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure from such a life.
Pretending to be Dutch, Gulliver travelled to Japan, where the emperor excused him from trampling on a crucifix. A Dutch ship took him to Amsterdam, and in 1710 he returned to his family in England.
Detailed summary by chapters
Chapter titles are editorial.
Chapter 1. Pirates set Gulliver adrift, and a flying island rescues him
Lemuel Gulliver, an English surgeon and traveller, had scarcely returned home when another voyage tempted him.
His former captain, William Robinson, offered him double pay to sail to the East Indies as chief surgeon.
They sailed in August 1706. At Tonquin, while waiting for cargo, Robinson put Gulliver in command of a small trading vessel and fourteen men. A storm drove them off course, and two pirate ships captured them. A Dutch pirate demanded their deaths, but the Japanese commander promised to spare them. Gulliver angered the Dutchman by saying that a non-Christian had shown more mercy than a fellow Christian.
The pirates took his vessel and crew and set him adrift in a canoe. The Japanese captain doubled his food supply and protected his belongings. Gulliver sailed between rocky islands, eating birds' eggs and sleeping under rocks. On the fifth day he found a cave but feared starvation. The next morning a huge inhabited island blocked the sun. He waved and shouted until its people noticed him, lowered a seat on a chain and pulled him aboard.
Chapter 2. Life among Laputa's distracted mathematicians and musicians
Laputa's inhabitants wore clothes patterned with stars and musical instruments. Their heads leaned sideways, with one eye turned inward and the other upward. Servants called flappers tapped their mouths and ears with inflated bladders to remind them to speak, listen or avoid obstacles. At the palace, Gulliver waited an hour while the King of Laputa remained absorbed in a mathematical problem.
The king gave him rooms, servants and a language tutor. Refusing a flapper made Gulliver seem unintelligent to the court. Meals were cut into geometric shapes, and a tailor's calculations produced a badly fitting suit. As Gulliver learned the language, the island travelled above Lagado, the mainland capital. Subjects sent petitions up on strings, and supplies were raised by pulleys.
Despite their theoretical skill, the islanders built crooked houses and managed ordinary tasks poorly. They argued eagerly about politics and feared disasters involving the sun and comets. Women despised their distracted husbands and sought permission to visit the mainland, often resisting a return. Gulliver described the islanders' constant anxiety:
These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minute’s peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes which very little affect the rest of mortals.
Chapter 3. The magnet that moves Laputa and the rebellion of Lindalino
With royal permission, Gulliver examined Laputa's machinery. The circular island rested on a thick base of adamant, an exceptionally hard substance. In a central chamber, astronomers controlled a huge magnet whose ends attracted or repelled a mineral in the land below. Turning it raised, lowered or moved the island sideways; a horizontal position held it still. Laputa could rise only four miles and could not leave the region containing that mineral.
The astronomers had catalogued ten thousand fixed stars and discovered two moons of Mars. The king used Laputa to punish rebellious towns by blocking sunlight and rain or dropping stones. Crushing a town was his final threat, but rocks, towers or fires could crack the island's base and bring it down. His ministers also owned estates below and feared provoking the people.
Three years earlier, Lindalino had rebelled, seized its governor and placed powerful magnets on four towers and a central rock. The citizens stored food, sheltered from falling stones and demanded redress and the right to choose their governor. When the king lowered Laputa, the magnets pulled it dangerously downward. Tests confirmed their power, forcing him to accept the city's terms rather than risk capture and a change of government.
Chapter 4. Gulliver leaves Laputa and sees Balnibarbi's ruined countryside
After two months, Gulliver wanted to leave Laputa, where his lack of advanced musical and mathematical skill made him an object of contempt. A sympathetic royal relative obtained permission, gave him money and supplied an introduction to Lord Munodi, a former governor of Lagado.
Lowered onto Balnibarbi, Gulliver walked to the capital and received a warm welcome. Munodi showed him ruined houses, ragged people and fertile fields producing almost nothing. His own estate, managed by established methods, flourished, but neighbours mocked him for resisting improvement. He explained that an academy founded by visitors returning from Laputa had spread schemes promising effortless work and enormous harvests. Munodi described their results:
The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection, and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes.
An uphill water-pumping scheme had destroyed his useful mill; its inventors blamed him for the failure.
Chapter 5. The Grand Academy of Lagado and its impractical inventions
Munodi arranged for a friend to guide Gulliver through the Grand Academy of Lagado, whose researchers occupied hundreds of rooms. One soot-covered inventor had spent eight years extracting sunshine from cucumbers and asked for money to continue. Another tried to turn human excrement back into food. Others proposed making gunpowder from ice, building houses from the roof downward and teaching blind people to distinguish colours by touch and smell.
Experiments with pigs ploughing fields had yielded little crop. A spider keeper hoped to replace silk with coloured webs. A physician treated stomach pains by drawing air out or pumping it in with bellows; a dog died during his demonstration. A celebrated inventor employed fifty men to solidify air, soften marble for pillows and prevent wool from growing on sheep.
In theoretical learning, a professor displayed a frame covered with word-bearing blocks. Forty pupils turned its handles to rearrange the words, selected sensible fragments and dictated them to scribes. He intended to assemble a complete collection of knowledge without requiring genius or study and sought public funds for five hundred machines. Gulliver promised to credit his invention.
Language professors planned to shorten words and remove verbs, or abolish speech entirely. In the second scheme, speakers carried objects to express their meaning, sometimes struggling under heavy bundles. Women and ordinary people threatened rebellion. Mathematics students swallowed wafers bearing written proofs, then fasted on bread and water; they often vomited the lesson or broke the diet.
Chapter 6. Political projectors, strange taxes and methods for detecting plots
In the political school, Gulliver dismissed proposals to reward merit and appoint capable officials as impossible. A doctor instead proposed treating senators with medicines after debates, hurting ministers to prevent forgotten requests and making senators vote against their own arguments. To reconcile parties, he would exchange half the brains of their leaders.
Two professors proposed taxes on either vices assessed by neighbours or admired qualities assessed by their possessors. Another would make senators swear loyalty to the crown and raffle for offices, leaving disappointed candidates to blame chance. A specialist claimed that examining suspects' excrement could reveal conspiracies.
Gulliver described a kingdom where ministers imprisoned chosen suspects and gave innocent papers sinister meanings, using coded initials and rearranged letters. Explaining to the professor how such plots served their makers, he said:
The plots in that kingdom are usually the workmanship of those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound politicians... to fill their pockets with forfeitures...
He then planned to leave.
Chapter 7. On Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver questions the illustrious dead
Planning to return through Luggnagg and Japan, Gulliver travelled to Maldonada but found no ship expected for a month. A local gentleman offered to take him to nearby Glubbdubdrib, an island ruled by magicians. There the Governor of Glubbdubdrib received the visitors in a palace guarded by spirits.
The governor dismissed his attendants with a gesture, making them vanish. Gulliver was terrified but gradually became accustomed to ghostly servants. During ten days, he could question any dead person about their lifetime and trust the answers. A famous conqueror denied being poisoned and blamed his death on fever after heavy drinking. Another ancient commander denied using vinegar while crossing the Alps. Gulliver compared ancient senators with modern representatives and admired those who had killed tyrants. A murdered Roman ruler and his republican killer appeared together on friendly terms.
Chapter 8. The dead expose false learning, corrupt history and forgotten merit
Gulliver summoned a great Greek poet and a philosopher with their commentators. The authors did not recognize their interpreters, who had misrepresented their writings. The ancient philosopher admitted the weakness of his theories and predicted that fashionable explanations of nature would continue changing. Gulliver then examined royal and noble family lines, finding servants, entertainers and thieves among supposedly distinguished ancestors.
Questioning people from recent European courts, he learned that powerful figures had advanced through fraud, betrayal and corrupt justice. He described how flattering historians had reversed the truth:
...I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war to cowards, the wisest counsel to fools, sincerity to flatterers... truth to informers.
Many genuine servants of their countries had died poor or disgraced. A naval captain said that his decisive service at an ancient sea battle had brought no reward: a court favourite received the command he sought, and another favourite replaced him. The admiral confirmed his account. Gulliver also summoned English farmers of an earlier generation and contrasted their honesty and independence with descendants who sold their votes.
Chapter 9. Gulliver reaches Luggnagg and licks the dust before its king
After returning to Maldonada, Gulliver sailed to Luggnagg and arrived in April 1708. Claiming to be Dutch because only Dutch Europeans could enter Japan, he was questioned and comfortably confined until orders arrived from the King of Luggnagg.
He hired a young interpreter who knew both Luggnaggian and Balnibarbian. An escort took them to the capital, where Gulliver learned that licking the dust before the throne was a literal ceremony. He crawled forward licking the floor, which had been cleaned as a favour to a foreigner. Enemies could have dust scattered before them, and spitting or wiping it away meant death.
The king sometimes executed nobles by having poison spread on the floor. Gulliver performed the formal greetings and answered questions through his interpreter. The pleased king provided money and lodgings, but after three months Gulliver still wanted to return to his family.
Chapter 10. The struldbrugs teach Gulliver to fear endless old age
Among his new acquaintances, Gulliver met the Luggnaggian gentleman, a former ambassador who told him about the struldbrugs.
These rare immortals were born with a red mark above the left eyebrow, which darkened with age. Their children were usually mortal. Gulliver imagined them as wise, fortunate advisers and considered remaining in Luggnagg. Asked how he would use endless life, he planned to accumulate wealth, master the arts and sciences and record changes in history and society.
He would guide the young, share his estate with poorer immortals and watch empires rise and fall. He expected long experience to make mortal friends' deaths easier to bear and hoped to witness great discoveries. His listeners laughed. The gentleman explained that Gulliver had assumed permanent youth and health, whereas struldbrugs aged like everyone else without ever escaping the weaknesses of old age.
After thirty they became increasingly melancholy; by eighty they suffered ordinary infirmities and the knowledge that death would never release them. They envied the young their pleasures and the dead their rest. Their memories became unreliable, affection weakened and lasting friendship became difficult. At eighty, the law declared them legally dead: heirs inherited their property, they received a small allowance, and they could neither hold office nor acquire land nor testify in court.
A marriage between immortals ended when the younger reached eighty. By ninety they lost their teeth and hair, could not taste food and forgot words and relatives' names. They could no longer follow a sentence while reading. As language changed, older struldbrugs became unable to converse with their neighbours or even with immortals from other periods. Endless life brought neither accumulated knowledge nor lasting enjoyment.
When Gulliver met several struldbrugs, none asked about his travels; they only begged for small gifts. Their appearance and condition destroyed his wish for immortality. The king teased him about taking some home, but the law forbade their removal from Luggnagg.
Chapter 11. Through Japan and Holland, Gulliver returns to his family
Determined to return home, Gulliver declined the king's offers of employment. He received gold, a valuable diamond and a letter recommending him to the Emperor of Japan.
In May 1709 he sailed to Japan, where officials sent him to the capital. Still claiming to be Dutch, he asked for passage to Nangasac and exemption from trampling a crucifix. The emperor suspected he was a Christian but granted the favour secretly out of regard for the king.
At Nangasac, Gulliver joined a Dutch ship as surgeon for a reduced fare. An officer silenced an accusation about the crucifix ceremony. The ship reached Amsterdam in April 1710, and Gulliver crossed to England. He recalled his homecoming:
I landed the next morning, and saw once more my native country after an absence of five years and six months complete. I went straight to Redriff... and found my wife and family in good health.