Chapter 12 - A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, &c.

Summary

Part III of Gulliver’s Travels stands out from the other voyages: instead of landing Gulliver in a single country, it consists of four, distinct journeys to extraordinary lands. Each of these is peopled by quasi-magical beings and each voyage dramatizes the abuses of the 'modern' learning and political and scientific culture of Swift’s time. In Laputa, the Floating Island, Gulliver encounters fanatical mathematicians whose bodies are as twisted as their mistaken calculations. In Balnibarbi, the literally overshadowed country beneath, barren crops and cockeyed buildings testify to the misapplied science of its Academy of Projectors. In Glubbdubdriub, the Island of Sorcerers, Gulliver meets the ghosts of the heroes and great thinkers of the ancient world who battled tyranny; he also encounters the ghosts both of corrupt modern commentators who distort classic texts and of the syphilitic ancestors of modern aristocrats. The final voyage to Luggnagg features a race of immortals who illustrate the vanity of human wishes as they grow increasingly quarrelsome, discontented and senile forever. As a whole, Part III constitutes a savage satire on the entire Whiggish project of Swift’s contemporary Britain.