Gulliver's Travels Part 3: Laputa Summary

Gulliver's Travels (1726), a prose satire by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan

Chapter 1: Pirates and the Floating Island

Gulliver prepares to set out for the East Indies. On the voyage, pirates attack the ship. Gulliver hears a Dutch voice among them and speaks to the pirate in Dutch, begging to be set free. A Japanese pirate tells them they will not die, and Gulliver tells the Dutchman that he is surprised to find more mercy in a heathen than in a Christian. The Dutchman grows angry and punishes Gulliver by sending him out to sea in a small boat. Gulliver finds some islands and goes ashore on one of them. There he sees a landmass dropping down from the sky and notices that it is crawling with people. He is baffled by this floating island and shouts up to its inhabitants. They lower the island and send down a chain by which he is drawn up.

Chapter 2: The Kingdom of Laputa

Laputa is a kingdom devoted to the arts of music and mathematics but unable to use them for practical ends.

The people look totally bizarre: all of their heads lean either to the right or the left, one of their eyes points in and the other up, and they are all dressed in clothes decorated with stars, moons, and musical instruments.

The King provides Gulliver with a tutor to teach him their language; most of the words he learns are for different signs of the zodiac, mathematical figures – really abstract stuff, in other words.

Gulliver also discovers that Laputa controls the continent under it, Balnibarbi, and that there are frequent visitors and deliveries from sea level up to Laputa by means of rope.

He also finds it weird that the Laputians live in such constant fear of the end of the world that they can hardly sleep at night or enjoy life. Their science has actually become a terror to them.

Chapter 3: The Lodestone and Laputa's Control

At the center of the island is a deep canyon with a giant lodestone, a naturally occurring magnet, in the middle of it.

The King uses this lodestone to raise and drop the island and to keep it moving in relation to the Earth's own magnetic poles.

At the same time, the King still has two methods for keeping his authority over the lower islands without absolutely enslaving them:

• (1) If any of them refuse to pay tribute, he can make his island float directly overhead, blocking their sunlight and rain, until they give in;
• (2) If they continue to refuse to obey him, the King can drop his island directly on their heads.