Gulliver's Travels: Book 3, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Gulliver is immediately surrounded by a crowd of peculiar looking individuals. Many of them don’t hold their heads up straight. Some are cross-eyed. All wear clothes elaborately decorated with celestial bodies and musical instruments. Amongst these people walk servants carrying a blown bladder filled with little pebbles or peas to flap at the mouths and ears of those around them. Gulliver explains that he later learned that these servants are called “flappers” and they are responsible for striking the mouths of those who should speak and the ears of those they should speak into, for the speakers and listeners are so distracted they would often forget if left to carry on the conversation themselves. The flapper is also responsible for preventing his absent-minded master from tripping over things, bumping into walls, etc.

Gulliver is led to the Laputian king, who is too absorbed with solving a math problem to notice Gulliver for the first hour. (And even then he only notices Gulliver because a flapper bids him to.) The king gives orders for Gulliver to be sent away and fed. The food is cut into geometrical figures. After dinner, a tutor arrives, sent by the king to teach Gulliver the native language and, in the days that follow, Gulliver studies hard to learn to speak it.

Gulliver learns that the floating island is called Laputa, a word whose etymology means “high governor.” Gulliver privately doesn’t “approve of this derivation,” thinking it “strained.” He thinks the etymology should actually be traced to two words meaning ‘sun dancing on the sea’ and ‘wing.’

At the Laputian king’s orders, Gulliver is measured for clothes using a quadrant, a ruler, and compasses, and the resultant clothes are very misshapen due to a failure in the calculation. Gulliver says such mistakes were frequently made and largely ignored.

The Laputian king orders Laputa to be steered towards Lagado, the capital of the kingdom below. Along the way, Laputa stops over certain towns and villages to hoist up “petitions” from the king’s people.

Gulliver describes life among the Laputians. Their speech relies very heavily on mathematical terms and they insist that their houses be built without any right angles because they hate practical geometry and can’t bear to live in rectangles (many of their houses are thus misshapen, as the workmen can’t manage the complex mathematics of building them). They have no grasp of common sense or practical knowledge and don’t know even have words for ‘imagination’ and ‘invention.’ However, they confidently pontificate on politics (as, Gulliver notes, do mathematicians in England). Everyone is perpetually obsessed with the health of the sun and they all worry ceaselessly about its impending death.

The Laputian women “have abundance of vivacity,” loathe their husbands, and take Lagadans (from the kingdom below) to be their lovers on Laputa. Many women try to escape to Lagado, but it is difficult to get the Laputian king’s permission to leave Laputa because “the [Laputian] people of quality have found, by frequent experience, how hard it is to persuade their women to return from below.”