Study Questions

1. How does Gulliver leave the Floating Island?

2. How did the Academy of Lagado originate?

3. What are the consequences of establishing the Academy?

4. What, generally, does the Academy of Lagado do?

5. What is the first scholar Gulliver sees at the Academy of Lagado trying to do?

6. What is the architect Gulliver sees at the Academy trying to do?

7. What is the first physician Gulliver sees at the Academy attempting?

8. What is the first activity Gulliver sees in the more theoretical¬ly oriented part of the Academy?

9. What are the political professors doing to cure politicians?

10. What does Gulliver propose to the Academy of Lagado?

Answers

1. Gulliver leaves the Floating Island by getting a court official, related to the King, to intervene.

2. The Academy of Lagado originated when some people from the continent of Balnibarbi spent some months on the Floating Island, learning a little mathematics but filling themselves with “volatile spirits,” meaning impractical, theoretical orientation (not liquor).

3. The consequence of the Academy is poverty, caused by the neglect of practical work in favor of visionary, impracticable, schemes.

4. The Academy of Lagado comes up with a variety of visionary, impracticable schemes that have not yet been perfected (and presumably never will be).

5. The first scholar Gulliver sees at the Academy of Lagado has been working for eight years on a project for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.

6. The architect Gulliver first sees at the Academy is trying to build houses from the top down.

7. The first physician Gulliver sees at the Academy is trying to cure patients with a bellows.

8. The first activity Gulliver sees in the more theoretically oriented part of the Academy is an attempt to create new writings by putting all the words of the language on pieces of wood, linked by wires, on an enormous frame and rearranging them mechanically.

9. The politicians are trying to cure professors with medicines and violent attacks, or through brain transplants.

10. Gulliver proposes to the Academy of Lagado a scheme to accuse people of plots against the state by misinterpreting their letters as secret codes.