1042 swift, Jonathan
bladders contained “a small quantity of dried Pease,
or little Pebbles” and that the servants frequently
“flapped the mouth and ears of those standing near
them.” Soon the narrator learns that the Laputians’
minds are so involved with higher thinking (he is
soon to discover their often-misguided fascination
with not only science but also music) that they
cannot respond to the speech of others—or even
pay attention to it—without being brought back
into the nonscientific world. All of the higher class
of this small territory need “Flappers,” as they are
called, who follow them and basically interrupt their
intense thought to remind them to listen or to speak.
The author’s satire of the Enlightenment further
appears in Gulliver’s descriptions of the upper class’s
obsession with musical instruments. On one visit to
the court, the king’s “Nobility, Courtiers, and Offi-
cers” play their instruments for three hours “without
Intermission,” and Gulliver comments that he “was
quite stunned with the Noise.” However, his tutor
explains that the people of the island “had their
Eears adapted to hear the Music of the Spheres.”
This obsession with music and the science of
mathematics continues in other areas of their lives.
For example, when Gulliver’s first meal appears, he
discovers that everything in the two courses, a total
of six dishes, resembles a mathematical figure or a
musical instrument. His mutton has been cut into
“an Equilateral Triangle”; his pudding resembles
“a Cycloid”; and, in the second course, two ducks,
“trussed up into the Form of Fiddles,” follow.
To carry his satire further, Swift has the Lapu-
tians declare that Gulliver must have suitable cloth-
ing, and they subsequently order a tailor to measure
him for new clothes. The tailor “first took [his]
Altitude by a Quadrant, and then with Rule and
Compasses, described the Dimensions and Out-
Lines of [his] whole Body.” Upon receiving his new
clothing, Gulliver discovers that the clothes “were
very ill made, and quite out of Shape” because of the
tailor’s errors in calculation. However, he does not
protest greatly because he has observed that almost
no one’s clothes fit properly.
The author makes his criticism even more
apparent upon his narrator’s visit to Balnibarbi and
its capital city Lagado. Here he observes houses in
ruin, field workers destroying rather than tilling
the soil, and townspeople who “walked fast, looked
wild, [with] their Eyes fixed, . . . and generally in
Rags.” The ruler, who suffers none of the other
inhabitants’ faults, explains to Gulliver that some of
his subjects “went up to Laputa . . . and came back
with a very little Smattering in Mathematicks” along
with “Volatile Spirits acquired in that Airy Region.”
This description almost certainly ties in with Swift’s
views of many involved in the Enlightenment. The
satire actually becomes even more pronounced
with Gulliver’s visit to the Academy of Lagado,
where one “scientist” is trying to “[extract] Sun-
beams out of Cucumbers” to use during “raw sum-
mers,” another—a blind man—has his helpers mix
“Colours for Painters . . . by feeling and smelling,”
and still another who “found a Device of plowing
the Ground with Hogs” to save money.
From the picture of the absurdity of individuals
so caught up in thought that they cannot participate
in a conversation or, for that matter, even clothe
themselves adequately, to the pseudo-scientists who
spend every wakening moment attempting ludicrous
projects, the reader can discern Swift’s views of those
involved in the Enlightenment. One can probably
assume that Swift does not actually attack science
or higher thinking so much as he attacks those who
become so involved in science and “higher thinking”
that they no longer belong to the real world.
Shirley ShumanSwiF T, JoNaTHaN A Modest Proposal
(1729)
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was the Protestant
Anglo-Irish dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dub-
lin. He was politically astute and deeply concerned
with the plight of the poor Irish Catholics who
were openly discriminated against by their English
colonizers. For these reasons, Swift wrote his 1729
satirical essay A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the
Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Bur-
den to Their Parents or Country and for Making Them
Benef icial to the Publics. He was well read in classic
literature and adopted the Roman genre of the satire
for this essay. This is vital to remember because on
first reading, A Modest Proposal appears to advocate
solving poverty by selling the children of the poor to