The two best known of the four voyages in Gulliver's Travels are, it's probably fair to say, the expeditions to Lilliput and Brobdingnag. And the final one, the voyage to the Houyhnhnms, is the one that seems to recieve most academic attention. The third voyage seems to be the least liked or written about.

This is a bit of a shame, as I find it to be unusually packed with memorable and distinctive concepts, and if read closely, has, I think, as much to say as the other three voyages.

The actual device of Laputa, the Flying Island, is commonly thought to be a partial representation of Britain's governance over Ireland at the time, with the country below, Balnibarbi, being a mostly ruined wasteland, barely able to feed or support its own population. It becomes clear, though, that Swift's targets include an attitude of the mind as much as anything else. The Laputans controlling the island are shown to be dominated by abstractions, interested in little beyond mathematics and astronomy, and despite having managed the feat of constructing such an island, are completely incapable of achieving anything worthwhile with their science. They cannot so much as cut clothes that fit properly, still less successfully devise new agricultural practices for Balnibarbi down below. They can observe the stars and planets at great distances, can calculate all manner of possible future calamities involving meteor and asteroid crashes, but cannot actually apply any of their knowledge in any practical way. They are permanently preoccupied, to the extent that they require "flappers" - servants with bladders on sticks to poke them with to attract their attention when necessary. In effect, they are cocooned in their own obsessions and thoughts to the extent that they cannot function properly as individuals - their wives (interesting perhaps that Swift attributes these failings only to the men of the island) are invariably delighted by the flattery they receive from visitors, and are able to go to as far as having affairs right under their husbands' noses, such is the latter group's neglect of them.

The sorry state of Balnibarbi, with mills and dams that don't work, and a starving and degraded population, is attributed squarely to the thoughtless addiction to new and untried ideas developed from visitors to Laputa. And when their ideas ARE tried and shown not to work, this is simply proof to those responsible that they haven't been applied zealously enough yet. The few who resist this pressure and insist on running their estates in the old ways, as productively and as happily as before, like Gulliver's friend Lord Munodi, are reviled as reactionaries and dinosaurs who are on the losing side of history.

The crackpot schemes and ideas being proposed and demonstrated at the Lagado Projectors Academy include visionary schemes to detect people's thoughts by reading their ordure, replace spoken speech by having people carry with them whichever objects they need to refer to, and to abolish individuality by grafting pieces of different people's brains together. There is also, in the course of this, a thinly disguised attack on Tribnia and Langden (spot the anagrams), with their extensive network of spies, informers, and secret agents deciphering innocuous letters to reveal alleged treason (this is almost certainly at least a partial reference to the Jacobite plot scare of 1722, in which the Bishop of Rochester was forced into permanent exile).

It can be seen that there is, at least potentially, a distinctly anti-learning reactionary aspect to all this. I think the main point, though, is to attack the soppy-minded sort of attitude which clings to anything new for its own sake, and also the blinkered inability to accept evidence that shows this or that scheme doesn't necessarily work.

The spirits called up from the dead on Glubbdubdrib serve several purposes. One is to indicate the unreliability of much historical writing and arguments, as with Homer and Aristotle for instance. Another is to rob history of the grandiose air surrounding allegedly "great" kings, lawmakers, governments or warriors, by showing the utterly base lusts and instincts that frequently motivated them. Many of the best people in history are shown to be forgotten obscure figures who never knew any glory and were mostly swindled and abused by more powerful and unscrupulous types. And another is to contrast what Swift sees as the rottenness of then-contemporary legislators, in the job for little but money, not much better than thieves, with the unspoiled integrity of their Yeomen ancestors, or a Roman Senate (held up as an ideal in this case).

Having the dead appear as spirits to converse with Gulliver also presents quite a contrast to the alternative fate of immortality, as seen in the Struldbruggs of Luggnagg. When first told about these people, Gulliver makes the mistaken assumption that this somehow also means eternal youth as well, with enough leisure time to increase one's learning and accomplishments, and rhapsodises about this at length to the amusement of the court there. The reality is cruelly disillusioning. The Struldbruggs are indeed immortal, but they still age normally, which means that they decay and degenerate into a perpetual enfeebled old age, unable to read, concentrate, look after themselves, or remember anything. All of Gulliver's fond speculations about what he could do with eternal life are nullified and made a nonsense of, and, as he admits, it quickly cures him of the desire for life everlasting.

Generally, I would say that the Laputa voyage is an attack on pride as much as anything - pride in defying the past with new inventions, pride in history and human endeavour, and pride in human capacity. The silliness and helplessness of humanity are taken to extremes and found severely wanting.