Gulliver's Travels

What idea do you form about the men and women of Laputa?

gulliver's travels-part 3

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On Laputa, the floating island, Swift creates a way of physically stratifying a society. Those who work with their hands for a living-and the ridiculous professors-live on Balnibarbi. The upper class, including the royal family and the more able intellectuals, live on the floating island of Laputa. In this way Swift makes the separation between the two types of people visually obvious, with the better above the lesser. The people living in Laputa also have very limited attention spans. One thinks here of the absentminded professor.

The people of Laputa are also very intelligent, but it affords them little. With their slanting heads, they do not see things directly as they are. They seem to have no common sense, which for someone like Swift, who cares a great deal about the material world, may be more important than raw intelligence. Because of their lack of sense, they spend too much time worrying about ridiculous things rather than noticing what is really wrong in their own lives. They are so unaware that the men do not know that their wives cheat on them. This emasculating fact is all too common for the unmanly intellectual.

Source(s)

http://www.gradesaver.com/gullivers-travels/study-guide/summary-part-iii-a-voyage-to-laputa--and-japan