Report of Gulliver's Travels. Part III: A trip to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib. Luggnagg and JapanIn October 1726, Jonathan Swift published his most famous work, Gulliver's Travels. Most readers are familiar with three of the four parts of this work: the land of the little people (Lilliput), the land of the giants (Brobdignag) and the land of the ruling horses (Houyhnhnm-land). However, modem readers may not be as familiar with Part III, which has not received as much critical attention. Some of this neglect is deserved, since this part is less focused and not all parts of it are as good as the other three books. Some of them, however, are very interesting and deserve critical attention. In this section, the narrator, Lemuel Gulliver, visits Laputa, the floating island; Balnibarbi, headquarters of the famous spotlight academy; Glubbdubdrib, the island of magicians; Luggnagg, home of the immortal struldbruggs; and finally Japan, where he finally manages to return home to England. In this article, I will briefly describe the setting, summarize the plot, describe the characters, and comment on the satire in each location Gulliver visits in Part Three. As in the other parts of Gulliver's Travels. Gulliver realistically describes how he finds himself in a very unrealistic part of the world. The ship Hope-well, on which he holds his usual position as ship's surgeon, is overtaken by pirates, whom Gulliver so angers that they send him adrift in a canoe to fend for himself. Alone on a land that he has managed to reach, he sees an unusual island, which he describes as "floating in the air, inhabited by men, who knew how to... lift it, or sink it, or put it in progressive movement, as they please” (Swift 26). Desperate to survive, overcoming any fear of this strange island, Gulliver attracts the attention of the locals and allows them to take him to their island. As literary critic Frank Magill points out, the floating island of Laputa is inhabited by strange creatures. intellectuals who “think only in the abstract and extremely impractical realm” (352). Absorbed in their thoughts, they are so distracted that they have servants who carry flappers, bladders full of stones attached to sticks, to remind the masters to listen and speak during conversations. When the master is supposed to be listening, the servant gently touches... middle of paper... the rope. Eventually, Gulliver sails for Japan, where he pretends to be Dutch; it is assumed that these are the only Europeans with whom the Japanese will trade because they do not consider the Dutch Christians, who they fear will send missionaries to destroy the Japanese religion. There may be satire here on the dissident Protestant sects that allow religious tolerance in Holland and on religious intolerance in general. Finally, Gulliver returns home, having been away only five years. Book III of Gulliver's Travels is of more uneven quality than the other three books. However, Gulliver's hilarious description of the spotlight academy and his melancholy account of the wretched immortal struldbruggs comes close to matching the excellence of the rest of Gulliver's travels. Works Cited. Magill, Frank, ed. Masterpieces of world literature. New York: HarperCollins, 1989. Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings. Ed. Louis A. Landa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960. Tuveson, Ernest, ed. Swift: a collection of critical essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey Prentice-Hall, 1964. Horrell, Joseph. “What Gulliver Knew.” Tuveson 55-70. Brown, Norman O. “Excremental Vision.” Tuvéson 31 -54