Book IV Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Although Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift has long been considered of as a children's article, it is actually a dark satire on the fallacies of human nature. The four parts of the publication are arranged in a planned sequence, to display Gulliver's optimism and lack of shame with the Lilliputians, decaying into his shame and disgust with humans when he is in the land of the Houyhnhmns. The Brobdingnagians are more hospitable than the Lilliputians, but Gulliver's attitude towards them is more disgusted and bitter. Gulliver's pitch becomes even more critical of the introspective persons of Laputa and Lagado, and in Glubbdubdrib he learns the reality about up to date man. Gulliver finds the Luggnuggians to be a "polite and bountiful people" (III, 177), until he learns that the Struldbruggs' immortality is a curse rather than a blessing. Throughout the course of Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver's comes across with each heritage signify a progression from benevolence towards man to misanthropy, resulting in Gulliver's final insanity.

The fourth voyage concerns the scientific, mental side, as demonstrated by the Laputians who inhabit a floating island. Gulliver finds them both impractical and difficult to communicate with: "I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy People, nor so slow and perplexed in their Conceptions upon all other Subjects, except those of Mathematicks and Musick" (IV, 136). In this book, Gulliver criticizes the culture more openly than he does in the previous two books, and he sums up the problem with this society as follows: "I rather take this Quality to spring from a very common Infirmity of human Nature, inclining us to be more curious and conceited in Matters where we have least Concern, and for which we are least adapted either by Study or Nature" (IV, 137). As Swift satirizes the people who absorb themselves so much into the scientific world that they cannot communicate with others, Gulliver as a character becomes more aware of the dark side of human nature. The floating of the island is a metaphor of the side of humanity that is the mind, which often floats away from the body and becomes isolated, which is a stark contrast to the previous two books which describe the more physical side of humanity.

Gulliver becomes even more disgusted with the inhabitants of the country that lies below the floating island of Laputa. He discovers that ...