"gulliver's travels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

The Laputans' appearance--one eye turned inward and the other up to the sky--is symbolic of their activities. Wholly devoted to abstract science, mathematics, and music, they have one eye turned in on their mental activity and one eye fixed on the stars. (Astronomy is a favorite of theirs.) Laputans are so oblivious to those around them that they employ "flappers" whose job it is to give them a flap on the mouth and eyes to let them know someone is talking to them. Just by the appearance Swift gives the Laputans, he lets you know he thinks them pretty silly.

Gulliver interprets Laputa as meaning "flying island." This is one of Swift's foils, though. In Spanish, "la puta" means "the whore," which Swift certainly knew and deliberately made use of. Keep this in mind when you consider the odd ways in which Laputans satisfy their physical needs. Husbands generally ignore their wives, and it is common for wives to meet their lovers in the presence of their husbands. Once a Laputan woman leaves the flying island, she rarely returns. Gulliver even recounts the tale of a woman who ran away from her husband to live with a cruel, deformed footman, so odious did she find her spouse and his Laputan ways.

For all the Laputans' expertise in theoretical matters, their mastery of practical tasks leaves much to be desired. They make Gulliver, after many calculations and measurements, a suit of ill-fitting clothes. Because Laputans disdain geometry, practical discipline that it is, their houses are poorly built because they refuse to use the right angles in their construction.

Though they are given to theoretical thinking, the Laputans are curiously irrational. They are superstitious, believing that you can tell fortunes by the stars. They are also plagued with what may well seem to you--and certainly did to Swift--ridiculous fears having mostly to do with the movement of planets and stars. One such is that the earth was nearly burned by the last comet. Swift offers these specific fears as satire of the speculations of certain scientists of his time.

^^^^^^^^^^GULLIVER'S TRAVELS: CHAPTER III

The long, involved description of the physical intricacies of the flying island is another instance of Swift providing "documentation" for something outlandish. The superdetailed, rather dull and wooden description of the flying island and what makes it fly is Swift's parody of the typical paper published in Transactions, the journal of the Royal Society. The Royal Society was and is made up of scientists and academics engaged in research. Swift thought a lot of experiments underwritten in his time by the Society frivolous in the extreme. You'll see more stringent proof of this later.

Think back to the Brobdingnagian style of government. When the king of Laputa has to handle rebellious subjects--a problem the king of Brobdingnag never faces, since he has no colonies--he has two means of quelling the insurrection. He can keep the island hovering over the troublesome town(s) so that they are deprived of sunlight and rain. This has comparatively mild consequences, "death and diseases." He can also have the island descend directly onto the region, crushing all life there. The king seldom resorts to this, however, because he wouldn't want to be deprived the riches of his colonies, and more important, he wouldn't want to damage the underside of the island. Contrast this to the Brobdingnagian way of rule.

Gulliver tells us of an incident that almost put an end to the Laputan monarchy. Lindalino, a city within the kingdom, was in revolt against the monarch. At the center of the city, they erected a tower, on top of which was a lodestone piled with a "most combustible fuel" which would burn the island if it came too near.

NOTE: The four paragraphs recounting this incident were excised from all versions of the Travels until 1899, for fear of government reprisals against Swift.

The Lindalino (this city stands for Dublin) incident is an allegorical account of the Irish campaign against the introduction of a debased currency (dubbed in Swift's letters against the project "the most combustible fuel," meaning that it would ignite a huge rebellion) into Ireland. An ironmonger by the name of William Wood had obtained permission for his project from George I. The project never went through, owing in great measure to Swift's outraged public letters.

^^^^^^^^^^GULLIVER'S TRAVELS: CHAPTER IV

Gulliver gets sick of Laputa, complaining that the inhabitants paid too little attention to him since he's universed in music and mathematics. He goes to Balnibarbi.

There, Gulliver is hosted by Lord Munodi, whose name Swift may have taken from the Latin mundum odi ("I hate the world"). Some critics believe that the Lord represents Oxford and/or Bolingbroke. These men were out of step with the tenor of their times, but Swift was a close friend of theirs and admired them both.

Lord Munodi lives in a gorgeous palace with beautifully cultivated grounds. Not far from where he lives, however, are lands that lie fallow. The Academy of Projectors (a projector is someone given to impractical and visionary projects, and the academy is a parody of the Royal Society) had taken charge of the lands on which nothing would grow--their state is an indication of their agricultural "state of the art." Projectors' houses are also built according to "the most advanced formulas" (Swift's irony is obvious). Lord Munodi's house is very beautifully and solidly constructed, but Projectors hold him in contempt for living in an old place. Projectors, for whom "progress" is everything, have little need for tradition, and even less respect for it.

The building housing the academy is another testament to their know-how. Near the building was a working mill. The projectors decided they could better it according to one of their theories, and now the mill is bone dry. The projectors, of course, blamed the man who had donated the property. Swift's message here is that the projectors are not only unfit for any useful purpose, they are blind to the fact to boot, and vindictive.

^^^^^^^^^^GULLIVER'S TRAVELS: CHAPTER V

The experiments described in this chapter are based on actual experiments done or proposed by Swift's contemporaries. Included among them is an experiment designed to extract the sunbeams from cucumbers that have been hermetically sealed. During inclement summers the cucumbers are to be released to provide sunshine. Gulliver also meets an architect who has contrived a plan to build houses starting from the roof. Another man, born blind, is teaching his blind apprentices to mix colors for painters. How do they do it? They "recognize" colors by their feel and smell. Gulliver admits they frequently make mistakes.

These experiments are just plain silly. Certainly, all experiments sponsored by the Royal Society weren't so, but Swift is nonetheless making fun of the Society as a whole.

^^^^^^^^^^GULLIVER'S TRAVELS: CHAPTER VI

Gulliver describes the political Projectors as appearing "wholly out of their senses," a perception that makes him "melancholy." This is Swift talking directly to you through Gulliver. He tells of schemes whereby monarchs would choose favorites on the basis of wisdom and merit, and ministers would act always with the public good uppermost in their minds. Swift is indeed discouraged by the politics of his times, for he says that his solutions for improvement are "impossible chimaeras."

Up to now Gulliver's descriptions of Projectors' activities have led us to believe that these people operate only on theories and never deal in the literal. When they do, however, the propositions are still absurd. One Projector has concluded that political bodies and natural bodies are completely analogous, and that because they are vulnerable to exactly the same maladies, ministers should be thoroughly examined after senate meetings. They would then be given proper medication, and this would solve political problems as well as physical ones. The same Projector proposed that every senator vote in opposition to his true opinion--that way, the public good would truly be served. This is Swift expressing his distrust of government officials.

The high point of this section is a Projector's suggestion for solving conflict in the senate. According to his plan, two senators with opposing opinions would be coupled; each would then have his skull sliced and they would exchange brain parts. In this way the two half-brains would debate the matter inside one skull, and this would result in a moderate senate. Surely this is folly if ever folly existed. Swift's purpose here is again to express his perception that things are desperate in English politics and that no one seems to have a reasonable idea as to what to do.

NOTE: Swift makes an acute judgment on human nature in his passage on taxation. The question under debate in Balnibarbi is whether people should be taxed for virtues or for their vices. "But, as to honour, justice, wisdom, and learning, they should not be taxed at all, because they are qualifications of so singular a kind, that no man will either allow them in his neighbour, or value them in himself." Do you agree with Swift here?

After the Projector has finished his explanation, Gulliver tells him a little about Tribnia and Langden--these are anagrams for "Britain" and "England." There, he says, the "bulk of the people consist... wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers...." Plots in government, the Projector says, are "usually the workmanship of those persons who desire... to restore new vigour to a crazy administration," to quell general discontent and to get rich.

NOTE: Not a pretty place, as Swift describes England, yet Gulliver says he is anxious to return there. So, as harshly as Swift has criticized his country, it would seem he does so out of concern and love for it, not out of malice. Do you think that Swift, if he unreservedly reviled Britain and honestly felt there was no hope for improvement, would exert himself writing about it, and participating in its politics?