Lilliput
Gulliver is a large man. General restlessness compels him to go on a long cruise (Unlike slave trader Daniel Defoe, it is not entirely clear what he intends to achieve via this trip). He gets lost at sea and is marooned on an island full of little people (who sound suspiciously like orientals - they have an emperor, multiple palaces, are godless, and do dangerous dances). I say little people but they aren’t that little - larger than ants, smaller than your forefinger (for reference, their tallest trees are 6 feet tall). Think BFG proportions. They enslave him (there are a lot of them, and they took him by surprise - he was enjoying an involuntary siesta) by showering him with an avalanche of little arrows and chaining him to a, well, something heavy (it is not immediately clear what he is chained to, thought it is made immediately clear that the chain is pretty sturdy).
Linguists are ordered to teach Gulliver the Lilliputian language, the same way humans do with gorillas, rhesus monkeys, capuchins, and other members of the primate family they are obsessed with. He is fed a steady diet of meat and alcohol. He strikes up a friendship with the emperor, his consort, and certain members of their retinue (including the Treasurer’s wife, which the Treasurer takes offense to).
Eventually the Lilliputians make no attempt to learn more about the ways of the savage than he has from them (what could you possibly hope to learn from someone more primitive than yourself) nor do they overly interest themselves in his family history (his wife and children are never brought up), viewing him merely as a weapon of mass destruction. Gulliver fulfills his Lilliputian destiny by marching across the sea to Blefuscu and seizing their entire fleet (because grand larceny is a somewhat lesser crime than wanton destruction of property. Also, it sounds more intelligent) before their imminent invasion of Lilliput, forcing the Blefuscuans to sue for peace.
The emperor is pleased for a second or two, then realizes that Gulliver, who has served his purpose, is now no more than a drain of resources. It doesn’t help that Gulliver pissed all over the palace to put out a fire. Machinations of various hawkish types (who were rendered obsolete by Gulliver’s might in battle) in court bear fruit, and Gulliver is condemned to be blinded (as opposed to the more severe sentence of death). Gulliver flees to Blefuscu, and the Blefuscuans, glad to see the back of him, help him build a boat. Gulliver sets sail and encounters an English vessel, who brings him back to England (of course).
Gulliver goes into some detail on the laws and customs of the Lilliputian “empire”. Fraud and ingratitude are punishable by death. Accusing the innocent is punishable by death. Job applicants are selected based on morals rather than ability (better dumb mistakes than smart maliciousness). The natural act of wanting to procreate and showing tenderness towards your young deems Lilliputians unfit for parenthood - their offspring are surrendered to a state-run educational commune, and they pay for their upkeep and limited visitation rights. Officials are appointed to high office based on their rope-dancing prowess (which they are often called upon to redemonstrate, often with tragic consequences). They obsess over insignificant details, like which side of an egg to crack it from (this led to rebellion from breakaway factions).
Gulliver spends two months with his wife and family, and giving in to an insatiable desire to see other countries, takes leave of his wife, school-going son Johnny, married daughter Betty to go traveling again.
Brobdingnag
Gulliver is abandoned by his fellow crew when a giant chases them. The giant turns out to be a farmer who exploits Gulliver as a traveling exhibit. Gulliver is near death from exhaustion when the farmer sells his meal ticket to the queen for a thousand pieces of gold. The farmer’s nine-year-old daughter joins the royal household as primary caretaker of Gulliver.
Gulliver quickly supplants the queen’s favorite dwarf (implying that there are other less favored dwarfs who are never mentioned) as her favorite. The queen’s smith constructs a box (in essence a small room for privacy and containment of personal effects) for ease of transportation (of Gulliver).
The king initially perceives Gulliver to be a piece of elaborate clockwork (this idea is swiftly dismissed with closer examination).
Knowing the King to be a fan of musick, Gulliver makes an attempt to get into his good graces with some dismal spinet playing (which doesn’t go too well owing to his diminutive stature) and telling him of the invention of gunpowder (upon which the King deems him an impotent and groveling Insect to entertain such inhuman Ideas).
The King shows a keen interest in Gulliver’s homeland, and takes detailed and precise notes while Gulliver dilates upon the history, politics, judiciary, nobility, governance, education, and many other aspects of Britain and Europe, after which the King cannot help but conclude the bulk of humanity to be the most pecunious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
Here are some things about the Brobdingnagians. They learn only about Morality, History, Poetry, and Mathematics - nothing that may not be applied to the improvement of life, agriculture, and mechanical arts (Gulliver deems their lack of abstract ideas defective). No law in the country exceeds in words the number of letters in their twenty-two letter alphabet. Crime and civil suits are absent. The king maintains an army to put down the odd rebellion. Public executions are considered a diversion.
When Gulliver isn’t busy facing a series of ridiculous and troublesome near-death run-ins with monkeys, frogs, flies, wasps, dwarf, and falls from not insignificant heights, he’s busy body-shaming maids-of-honor, who are too eager to grant him full view of their gargantuan breasts, nipples, nethers, and body odours. Yes, giant people are gross.
Gulliver is eventually spirited away from Brobdingnag by a passing bird, who drops his box in the middle of the ocean, which is then retrieved by a passing ship and towed back to England.
Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, Japan
Barely ten days on shore before Gulliver grows restless on shore and makes for the high seas, is set upon by Pirates and marooned in the middle of nowhere, where he discovers Laputa, the magnetic floating island!
The Laputians are perpetual thought engines. They wander about lost in their own thoughts, with brief pauses to fulfill basic bodily functions and respond to external stimuli. They employ a sort of servant known as a flapper, whose sole purpose is to follow their master around and slap him about with a pebble-filled bladder whenever this is necessary.
Their obsession with theoretical science, mathematics, and music lends itself to a wholly impractical, incompetent manner of life. Their houses are ill-built and clothes ill-sewn. Their food is cut in mathematical shapes. They are alarmed by slight movements in celestial bodies. Their women are vivacious sorts who carry out their infidelities right before the eyes of their sensory-impaired husbands.
The Laputians rule over a number of grounded vassal states, and enforce this rule by throwing stones from above to quell any disobedience.
Gulliver takes his leave of these tiresome folk and descends to one of these states, Balnibardi, where ruinous new rules and methods for agriculture, manufacture, building, trades put forth by the Academy of PROJECTORS have laid waste to once-fertile farmland. Gulliver visits Lagado, the capital of Balnibardi where said academy is based, and observes farcical experiments where scientists attempt to extract sunbeams from cucumbers and ruck through human excrement for evidence of plots and conspiracies.
Gulliver then travels to Glubbdubdrib, where his necromantic hosts summon a series of ancient and modern historical figures and subject them to his questioning. Gulliver finds the ancient beyond reproach, and the modern full of prostitutes, cowards, sodomites, flatterers. At Luggnagg (some sort of East Asian kingdom?), he crawls upon his belly and licks the floor to seek an audience with the king, and is introduced to the decrepit Struldbrugs, who enjoy eternal life without eternal youth, and are declared legally dead at eighty and banished from society.
From Luggnagg he sails forth for Japan, skirts past a cross-stamping ceremony, and finds his way back to England.
Houyhnhnms
Gulliver spends a record five months with his wife and children, before ditching his wife and unborn child for the comfort of sea travel. As is custom by now, things go awry when his mutinous crew evict him from the ship and he is set ashore on the land of the Houyhnhnms (pronounced Whinnins).
The Houyhnhnms are the most noble beings ever to trot upon the face of this earth. What they lack in intellect and high culture, they compensate with universal friendship and benevolence. They treat family, friends, strangers, and neighbors with equal respect.
They have no natural fondness for colts or foals, and consider such feelings beneath the purely rational beings that they are. Upon death, they are buried in the most obscure places - they experience no joy or grief at their departure.
They have no word for lie (in place, they use the phrase “the thing which was not”), evil (using yahoo as a suffix to denote such meaning), or opinion (pure logic dictates the right path), or any concept of war, quarrels, money, diseases, government, or lawyers (Gulliver’s master found it inconceivable that there exists a race of lawyers whose sole purpose was to inflict injustice upon others for the sake of doing so).
They have a sort of Quarterly Youth Olympics where odes are sung in the honor of the champions. They have grand assemblies and council meetings where provisions are exchanged and notions are put forward. Notions, such as - should all yahoos be exterminated and replaced with asses? Gulliver’s master, inspired by what Gulliver tells him about humankind husbandry rituals, proposes that young yahoos be castrated to render them tame, so the entire race may die out and be replaced with asses in time.
Yahoos are vile, fetid, hairy humanoid creatures with claws that they use to climb trees. They consume raw meat and have a natural inclination to hurt one another. The females, especially the red-haired ones, are salacious (Gulliver is nearly raped by one).
Gulliver cannot help but observe the similarities between the yahoos and himself. He slowly loses his mind. He makes clothing out of yahoo skin. He lines his canoe (he is forced to make one after the Houyhnhnms vote him off the island - an intelligent Yahoo is too dangerous to be released to the general Yahoo population) with yahoo skin. He is rescued by a Portuguese Captain, Don Pedro, who is a wise, courteous, and generous man. Gulliver regards him with suspicion. He returns to England and renounces human society, preferring the company of two horses in the barn.
