This blog is somewhat about the last two parts of the book Gulliver's Travels but it's also about comparing the parts. In the third part Gulliver goes to many different places. He starts in the land of Laputa where all the citizens have great appreciation and intelligence about music and mathematics. The capital of Laputa is a floating island that uses a lodestone to float over different parts of the mainland. The king of Laputa is not a allowed to leave the floating island but when he is mad at a village on the mainland he makes the island float over that village so it doesn't receive any sun or rain. The inhabitants only believe music and certain math to be useful and don't have knowledge on anything else. They consider practical geometry a bad thing so have no 90 degree angles in their buildings. Later Gulliver goes down to the mainland and visits a university. Each of the students and professors there have ridiculous and (to us) impossible ideas. One person tried to get sunlight out of cucumbers and store it in a jar for future use. Gulliver travels to many other places throughout this section, he travels to Glubbdubdrib where a magician summons up spirits of famous dead people so that Gulliver can talk to them. Then he travels to Luggnagg where certain people have the ability to live forever. Gulliver finds this so fantastic to be able to talk to people that have been around for so long and to learn from these elders, but it turns out that over the years the Struldbrugs(the people that live forever) turn crazy, forgetful and selfish and are only a burden on society. In the fourth section he travels to the land of the Houyhnhnms or horse people. In this land he is considered a "yahoo". A yahoo is the more animalistic version of the human race. They are covered in hair, have long tough nails and are vicious and unable to reason. He views the yahoos as disgusting creatures and soon views the entire human race that way. Yahoos get into fights that are very similiar to how humans act, but to the houyhnhnms it doesn't make any sense. Houyhnhnms are moral creatures and treat everyone equally and with courtesy. They are rational and intelligent yet have no way to describe a lie. It is impossible for them to lie and altogether don't understand the point of saying what is not.
I personally think these two sections have more of a fantastical and fairytale feeling to it. But these sections are so full of strange ideas and people that it is sometimes hard to see the point Swift is trying to get across. In the third section he mocks the ridiculousness of strange sciences that do no one any good. The Struldbrugs are capable of living forever, the dream of many individuals, and yet cannot enjoy it and are doomed to a terrible and depressing life. The fourth section however shows how Gulliver has given up on the human race. He wishes to stay with the horses and not return to England. He finds the human race disgusting and irrational. He no longer wishes to be a part of it. This is really a turning point for the character and for the reader. It sums up all of his adventures and all he has learned from the other races about them and humans in general. I feel that the fourth section may be the most important, but why is the first and second sections the only ones remembered? More specifically, why is Lilliput the story people identify with? I feel that the message of the the third and fourth section is a little obscured because of all the fairytale like qualities associated with them. I also feel that people may not want to remember the fourth section and the big revelation that Gulliver has. People don't want to think of themselves as yahoos. It makes them uneasy and that may be why the fourth story is less recognizable, because of human's dislike of seeing the bad in ourselves.
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