Gulliver’s Travels Book III: Should we be United?

          Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels wrote this book to be sarcastic. It’s supposed to shed light on issues of the human condition in ridiculous ways. Book III is focused on a few of Gulliver’s many different journeys. The first of which is when he met the Laputans on the floating island of Laputa.

     In book 3 chapter 6, Gulliver learns about doctors who are coming up with a way for two people to share their two brains. Why? What's wrong or right about the concept? The idea was to couple hundreds of people when fights are growing common and you switch half of their brains around. This is the Tower of Babel story, people trying to read each other so that they can all come to the same greater conclusion by thinking equally.

    First, there is some truth to the idea of having two brains in your skull working together even though they are opposites, even if Swift didn’t know much about psychology in the 17th century. Your right brain and left brain operate like two different consciousnesses in one skull and they have different values. Your consciousness is born out of the argument between your two brains.

     "That the two brains being left to debate the matter between themselves within the space of one skull would soon come to a good understanding and produce such moderation as well as regularity of thinking…” This quote comes from the unnamed Laputan doctor Gulliver is speaking to in book 3 chapter 6. This idea has a double meaning, fitting with the double brain idea. Firstly, you do kind of have two brains, and they are constantly silently debating matters between themselves to come to a good understanding with your conscious thoughts well moderated. 

     On the other hand, there is always a political debate to be had and the doctor’s ridiculous solution to the societal problem does have some weight to it. Gulliver makes himself a good example of this. Gulliver is naive, young, and ambitious, but still the protagonist of our story.

       Gulliver is an Englishman, and there were many things wrong with the political culture of England in the 17th century, as there are rough patches with all politics. However, Gulliver was brought up to uphold his country’s hierarchy and culture, and he is a passionately patriotic man.

     Gulliver is often an idiot. Every time he goes to a new land and finds a way to communicate his ways to them he makes it sound awful but like it is obviously a wonderful system because that’s what he was taught, and every time he is baffled when the natives of the land he is visiting are shocked, confused, and often appalled.

     Politicians never speak the same language. The Tower of Babel is a story of people coming together to try and understand something bigger than them, and as they build toward understanding they break off into different languages and can no longer understand one another. Sound familiar? Gulliver speaks a different figurative language from the Laputans. Gulliver talks of gunpowder, tyrannical kings, and the concept of lying lawyers and immoral justice systems all like it is completely natural and obviously a good thing all throughout his different voyages. Meanwhile, each culture he visits has its own issues, like the Lilliputians’ education system, the Brognagdians’ hierarchical systems, Laputans’ refusal to pay attention to anything but music and mathematics, and more to come throughout the book.

     Everyone is wrong one way or another, but it is the refusal to understand another' s point of view that causes such dissonance throughout culture, no one speaks the same language as those around them entirely. There is a difference between intellectual capacity and wisdom, a difference between having a high IQ and an ability to grasp complex textbook concepts and having understanding for those around you and a sense for the world and your future at large. People fail to come together with each other the way they do between the two halves of their brain, meaning they never come to a sound conclusion unlike when your brains are warring for what to do in certain circumstances. Cohesiveness often means force, understanding is the search for fruition of man. To search for what is within one’s rights as a person and should be explored through curiosity is to facilitate growth where trying to all think the same is an ideology that leads to well-meaning dults like Gulliver or angry mobsters.