Gulliver's Travels Part 3, Chapters 1-4
Part 3, Chapters 1-4
Gulliver remains at home to recover from his adventure but he is soon visited by a captain of an English ship with whom he had served in the past. The captain visits Gulliver often and after a few visits, the captain finally invites Gulliver to accompany him on a voyage to East Indies. Gulliver is unable to refuse the Captain for the incredible regard he bears him, and for the profitability of the position that he offers. The ship sets sail fairly quickly but it then ports in Toquinese, from whence the captain purchases a sloop and asks Gulliver to continue the voyage with a few men, but the sloop is soon overtaken by Pirates. Gulliver asks his crew to surrender and the pirates soon board the vessel. One of their captors is a Dutchman, and Gulliver appeals to him for the life of his crew on grounds of their shared religion. The Dutchman takes offense with Gulliver and asks his commander, who is a Japanese man to put them to death. The captain commands that the men of sloop should not die, however, the dutchman wishes to punish Gulliver. As such, Gulliver is set on a canoe with a supply of a few days and cast off from the group of ships.
Gulliver sights islands nearby and manages to reach them, he goes from one island to the other, surviving on what materials he can harvest. On the fifth day of his stay on the islands, Gulliver is dejected and hopeless. He stays inside a cave and only exits it once morning has fully set in. He sees a shocking sight, an island floating in the air, covered with galleries and stairs. There are people aboard the island moving in the sky, and Gulliver makes supplicating gestures and shouts for help. The number of people in the lower gallery increases and soon people of apparent importance come to observe Gulliver. The island is brought down lower in the sky, and Gulliver is invited aboard. A chain is lowered, and Gulliver readily grabs hold of it to climb aboard.
The island, Laputa, is the home to the king, and the people of that land have declined faces, with one of their eyes placed inwards, and the other on the zenith of their face. Their clothes are embroidered with suns, moons, and several different kinds of musical instruments. Gulliver notices that a few of the people carry a bladder filled with stones, tied to a long stick. This instrument is called a flapper and is used to bring the people of the island out of their reverie for they are often so consumed with their inner thoughts that they lose track of their whereabouts.
Gulliver sees this phenomenon first hand, as the people who are charged with bringing him to the King often forget what they are doing and leave Gulliver to his own devices. They finally bring him to the king, who is consumed with a mathematical problem, and only addresses Gulliver once he is done with the problem, and is then roused by the two servants that stand at his side with the flappers. The king and Gulliver are unable to understand one another, but since the king is known to bear kindness to strangers, he sends Gulliver to a room in the palace, where he is visited by learned men. They dine with Gulliver on dishes that are cut into complicated mathematical shapes and musical instruments. Gulliver begins to learn the language of the people of Laputa as the island sails towards the capital of their nation.
Gulliver discovers that the people of the island are consumed with the science of mathematics and music, and despise basic geometric shapes so that not a right angle can be found in their homes. They often make mistakes in the execution of building plans or tailoring clothes for their ability with a pen and paper far outweighs what they are capable of producing in the material world. The people of that nation are constantly consumed with the movement and behavior of celestial bodies so that they first begin the day's conversation with talk of the sun and its health. Gulliver learns their language fairly quickly, and when he is finally able to converse rather fluently, he meets the king who is uninterested in learning the culture of Gulliver's people or their policy of the state and rather only expresses an interest in their mathematics but is rather disappointed by what he learns.
Gulliver takes leave of the king to go about and inspect the island and is granted permission. Gulliver finds that the island is three hundred yards thick, the bottom consists of a single piece of adamant which is two hundred yards thick. The center of the island has a large lodestone, whose orientation and movement allow the island to float and move over the surface. However, the island can only ascend to a height of 4 miles, beyond which the power of the lodestone ceases to work, and is only limited to a certain distance in the sea, the learned men of the island reason that this is because the substance that permeates the ground upon which the lodestone acts only extends in that region and not the whole globe.
The island also has a large dome in its center that is called the Astronomer's cave, which is filled with instruments of that trade, and although their telescopes are of not great size, the lenses they apply are far more proficient than the European ones. They have been able to discover a far greater number of stars, and study in detail the science of comets, something that Europe hasn't quite fully managed. Gulliver learns that the King uses the floating Island to rule his nation, for he can block off the sun and rain from regions that fail to heed his commands. At other times, when such a measure has proved unsuccessful the king has commanded the inhabitants of the island to hurl large stones upon the towns and people that disobey him. More rarely, he has been known to cause the island to slowly descend and crush the regions that defy his law. Gulliver learns of a time when a town was able to withstand all of the King's machinations and made the threat of being crushed inconsequential by using lodestones fixed on the tallest towers of their town. The king had at that occasion been forced to treat with the people of that town. Presently, the king and his eldest sons are forbidden to ever leave the island, and the same applies to the queen until she has crossed her childbearing years.
Gulliver soon grows weary of the people on the island, for none of them regard him with any concern. They don't seek to better their knowledge through Gulliver and are chiefly concerned with Mathematics and music. He believes that they fail to pay regard to him due to his superior ability at both. There is a relative of the king, who is not well regarded by the rest of the court. He visits Gulliver often and questions him about his people and culture. Gulliver sees this man in a much better light than any of the other courtiers for he only uses a flapper in court and dismisses the servants bearing the instruments when in private conversation. Gulliver appeals to him and asks him to seek the king's consent for Gulliver to leave the island. In this way, Gulliver finds himself descending near the metropolis of Lagado on bearing a note of introduction to a gentleman called Muondi from the relative of the king.
Gulliver finds the man to be an interesting and polite individual. He is taken for a tour through the city, and Gulliver sees that many fantastically shaped houses are without repair, the people rush in the streets with looks of terror, and farmers till and cultivate fields that bear no crops. He makes note of these strange things to his host, who merely tells him that he is yet too new in the country to be making judgments. However, once they have retired to his home, he invites Gulliver to visit his estate along with him and Gulliver readily complies. His estate is much better kept, for the houses are in good order, the fields appear ripe with crops, and the people seem prosperous. The gentleman confesses that the present chaotic nature of the country mainly has to do with a group called the projectors who operate several academies throughout the nation. They have the ear of the king, for the group was begun by people who had stayed at the Laputa and returned with visions of complicated solutions to mundane problems in the name of furthering advancement. He had personally had to bear the impact of their incompetence when they had convinced him to break down a functioning watermill to allow them to create a better one. The better version had never been built, despite years of labor and expenditure. He tells Gulliver to visit the academy but refuses to accompany him due to their poor relations.
Analysis
The third part of the book is said to have been written after the completion of the fourth voyage. This third voyage was supposedly written from notes he had written about satire on abstract knowledge, and is evidenced in the numerous countries that Gulliver visits in this part, he is picked up at Laputa, travels to Balnibarbi, and from there he goes to Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg, then finally Japan. The other sections of the book deal mainly with satire about states, nobility, ethics, and morality, but this third voyage's chief concern is with knowledge and scientific advancements. The people of Laputa are not as different physically as the giants of Brobdingnag or Lilliput, for their power lies in technology rather than physical size. From the time that Gulliver spends on the island of Balnibarbi, he can gather how truly deficient the ruling class is in leading its people. The island floating over the nation of Balnibarbi does not merely reflect a position of power but also one of being untethered to the people. The Laputan King is laughably bad at governing his people and seems to take sadistic pleasure in bringing them to obedience. The methods described in the book represent the cruel methods that were employed by the Europeans in the expansion and subjugation of their colonies.
Gulliver's description of the mechanism that causes the island to float and move pokes fun at the language adopted in mechanical and scientific descriptions of the time. This is very much the same manner in which Swift satirizes scientists as he has earlier done for lawyers and Travellers. The naming of different points in the mechanism, and then describing the motions of the device concerning those points, doesn't at all easily convey the function or operation of the lodestone.
