Book 3 Group G

Book Three Group G (Ben Beal, Beatrice)

Gulliver Learns Humility

Our group focused on Chapter Four of book three, where we witness Gulliver humbled by his interactions with the Laputians, contrasting greatly from his interactions with his voyages to some of his previous destinations. When his peers start rattling him for his sense of musical taste, you begin to see the more human side of Gulliver. We begin to see a more human and flawed side to this brave character and fearless adventurer. In his first voyage, Gulliver enjoyed being the center of attention and being made a spectacle of. Yet on the island of Laputa, he was no match for them when it came to the knowledge of music and mathematics. We believe he is a counterpart to Homer's nautical protagonist, Odysseus, because he can't maintain hubris constantly getting humbled by everyone around him. He is a human, not a god amongst men and this unsettles him greatly.

In Chapter 5, it is clear that Gulliver has a very realistic worldview, as he doesn't even begin to understand what kind of nonsense he is seeing wandering around the academy. For example, he sees a government scientist attempted to revive a dead dog by means of inflation. It is clear he has done enough travel in his lifetime to understand what is realistic and what is complete absurdity. This could potentially be evidence of how travel and experience makes you wiser as a person.

Politics and Visionary Thought

This chapter exposes us a bit more to Gulliver's preferred approach to politics and governance. In the first paragraph, Gulliver insinuates that the professors in the school of political projectors are mad for their visionary thinking. He complains that, "These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, eminent services; of choosing for employments persons qualified to exercise them, with many other wild, impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive" (Part 3, Chapter 6). The idea of a society controlled by individuals who put the public's interests first is absolutely baffling to him, as is the idea of a society in which merit and wisdom take you farther than money or social status. This gives us insight into Gulliver's elitist worldview. He's of the opinion that inequality and corruption are natural in politics and seems to chide the professors for even daring to suggest another way of governance. Essentially, anything that deviates too far from the reality he's used to in his homeland is perceived by Gulliver to be wrong or unrealistic. It seems to be that Swift's fashioning of Gulliver as this enemy of progressive thought is a social commentary on the issues plaguing British politics and governance.