According to Scout, what does a jury do when they've found a defendant guilty, and is exactly what Tom's jury does?

Being the daughter of an attorney provides Scout with insight about how court proceedings, procedures, and policies work because her father discusses those things at home sometimes. Scout is also very intelligent and observant; so she picks up on the little things, such as the mannerisms of a jury. At the end of chapter 21, the jury is done deliberating and makes its way back into the courtroom. Everyone is very anxious to find out if Tom Robinson will be acquitted or convicted. Based on Atticus's strong defense, which smashed the prosecution's allegations to pieces, there are high hopes that Tom could actually go free. Scout's description of the moments surrounding the reading of the verdict is as follows:

"I saw something only a lawyer's child could be expected to see, could be expected to watch for, and it was like watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowing that the gun was empty.

"A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson" (211).

Scout notices that the jury doesn't look at Tom because they know the news they have for him is bad.

What are eugenics?

The Founding of the Eugenics Movement

With the publication of Charles Darwin’s
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), the concept of evolution began to revolutionize the way people thought about the human condition. Herbert Spencer and other proponents of what came to be known as social Darwinism
adhered to the belief that social class structure arose through natural selection, seeing class stratification in industrial societies, including the existence of a permanently poor underclass, as a reflection of the underlying, innate differences between classes.

During this era there was also a rush to legitimize all sciences by using careful measurement and quantification. There was a blind belief that attaching numbers to a study would ensure its objectivity.

Francis Galton, an aristocratic inventor, statistician, and cousin of Darwin, became one of the primary promoters of such quantification. Obsessed with mathematical analysis, Galton measured everything from physiology and reaction times to boredom, the efficacy of prayer, and the beauty of women. He was particularly interested in the differences between human races. Galton eventually founded the field of biometry by applying statistics to biological problems.

A hereditarian, Galton assumed that talent in humans was subject to the laws of heredity. Although Galton did not coin the term “eugenics” until 1883, he published the first discussion of his ideas in 1865, in which he recognized the apparent evolutionary paradox that those of talent often have few, if any, children and that civilization itself diminishes the effects of natural selection on human populations. Fearing that medicine and social aid would lead to the propagation of weak individuals, Galton advocated increased breeding by “better elements” in the population (positive eugenics), while at the same time discouraging breeding of the “poorer elements” (negative eugenics).

Like most in his time, Galton believed in “blending inheritance,” whereby hereditary material would mix together like different colors of paint. Trying to reconcile how superior traits would avoid being swamped by such blending, he came up with the statistical concept of the correlation coefficient, and in the process connected Darwinian evolution to the “probability revolution.” His work focused on the bell-shaped curve or “normal distribution” demonstrated by many traits and the possibility of shifting the mean by selection pressure at either extreme. His statistical framework deepened the theory of natural selection. Unfortunately, the mathematical predictability he studied has often been misinterpreted as inevitability. In 1907, Galton founded the Eugenics Education Society of London. He also carefully cataloged eminent families in his Hereditary Genius
(1869), wherein the Victorian world was assumed to be the
ultimate level that society could attain and the cultural transmission of status, knowledge, and social connections were discounted.

Early Eugenics in Britain

Statistician and social theorist Karl Pearson
was Galton’s disciple and first Galton Professor of Eugenics at the Galton Laboratory at the University of London. His Grammar of Science
(1892) outlined his belief that eugenic management of society could prevent genetic deterioration and ensure the existence of intelligent rulers, in part by transferring resources from inferior races back into the society. According to philosopher David J. Depew and biochemist Bruce H. Weber, even attorney Thomas Henry Huxley, champion of Darwinism, balked at this “pruning” of the human garden by the administrators of eugenics. For the most part, though, British eugenicists focused on improving the superior rather than eliminating the inferior.

Another of Galton’s followers, comparative anatomist Walter Frank Weldon, like Galton before him, set out to measure all manner of things, showing that the distribution of many human traits formed a bell-shaped curve. In a study on crabs, he showed that natural selection can cause the mean of such a curve to shift, adding fuel to the eugenicists’ conviction that they could better the human race through artificial selection.

Population geneticist Ronald A. Fisher was Pearson’s successor as the Galton Professor of Eugenics. Fisher cofounded the Cambridge Eugenics Society and became close to Charles Darwin’s sons, Leonard and Horace Darwin. In a speech made to the Eugenics Education Society, Fisher called eugenicists the “agents of a new phase of evolution” and the “new natural nobility,” with the view that humans were becoming responsible for their own evolution. The second half of his book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection
(1930) deals expressly with eugenics and the power of “good-making traits” to shape society. Like Galton, he believed that those in the higher social strata should be provided with financial subsidies to counteract the “resultant sterility” caused when upper class individuals opt to have fewer children for their own social advantage.

British embryologist William Bateson, who coined the terms “genes” and “genetics,” championed the Mendelian genetics that finally unseated the popularity of Galton’s ideas in England. In a debate that lasted thirty years, those that believed in Austrian monk Gregor Mendel’s particulate inheritance argued against the selection touted by the biometricians, and vice versa. Bateson, who had a deep distrust of eugenics, successfully replicated Mendel’s experiments. Not recognizing that the two arguments were not mutually exclusive, Pearson and Weldon rejected genetics, thus setting up the standoff between the two camps.

Fisher, on the other hand, tried to model the trajectory of genes in a population as if they were gas molecules governed by the laws of thermodynamics, with the aim of converting natural selection into a universal law. He used such “genetic atomism” to propose that continuous variation, natural selection, and Mendelian genetics could all coexist. Fisher also mathematically derived Galton’s bell-shaped curves based on Mendelian principles. Unfortunately, by emulating physics, Fisher underestimated the degree to which environment dictates which traits are adaptive.

Early Eugenics in the United States

While Mendelians and statisticians were debating in Britain, in the United States, Harvard embryologist Charles Davenport and others embarked on a mission of meshing early genetics with the eugenics movement. In his effort, Davenport created the Laboratory for Experimental Evolution at Cold Springs Harbor, New York. The laboratory was closely linked to his Eugenics Record Office (ERO), which he established in 1910. Davenport raised much of the money for these facilities by appealing to wealthy American families who feared unrestricted immigration and race degeneration. Though their wealth depended on the availability of cheap labor guaranteed by immigration, these American aristocrats feared the cultural impact of a flood of “inferior immigrants.”

Unlike the British, US eugenicists thought of selection as a purifying force and thus focused on how to stop the defective from reproducing. Davenport wrongly felt that Mendelian genetics supported eugenics by reinforcing the effects of inheritance over the environment. He launched a hunt to identify human defects and link specific genes (as yet poorly understood entities) to specific traits. His primary tool was the family pedigree chart. Unfortunately, these charts were usually based on highly subjective data, such as questionnaires given to schoolchildren to determine the comparative social traits of various races.

The Eugenics Research Association was founded in 1913 to report the latest findings. In 1918, the Galton Society began meeting regularly at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and in 1923 the American Eugenics Society was formed. These efforts paid off. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, eugenics was a topic in high school biology texts and college courses across the United States.

Among eugenics supporters was psychologist Lewis M. Terman, developer of the Stanford-Binet intelligence quotient (IQ) test, and Harvard psychologist Robert M. Yerkes, developer of the Army IQ test, who both believed that IQ test performance (and hence intelligence) was hereditary. The administration of such tests to immigrants by eugenicist Henry Goddard represented a supposedly “objective and quantitative tool” for screening immigrants for entry into the United States. Biologist Garland Allen reports that Goddard, in fact, determined that more than 80 percent of the Jewish, Hungarian, Polish, Italian, and Russian immigrants were mentally defective.

Fear that immigrants would take jobs away from hardworking Americans, supported by testimony from ERO’s superintendent, Harry Laughlin, and the findings of Goddard’s IQ tests, resulted in the Johnson Act of 1924, which severely restricted immigration. In the end, legal sterilization and immigration restrictions became more widespread in the United States than in any country other than Nazi Germany. By 1940, more than thirty states in the United States had enacted compulsory sterilization laws. Most were not repealed until after the 1960s.

Eugenics and the Progressive Era

During the Progressive Era, the eugenics movement became a common ground for such diverse groups as biologists, sociologists, psychologists, militarists, pacifists, socialists, communists, liberals, and conservatives. The progressive ideology, exemplified by Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party, sought the scientific management of all parts of society. Eugenics attracted the same crowd as preventive medicine, since both were seen as methods of harnessing science to reduce suffering and misfortune. For example, cereal entrepreneur John Harvey Kellogg founded the Race Betterment Foundation, mixing eugenics with hygiene, diet, and exercise. During this period, intellectuals of all stripes were attracted by the promise of “the improvement of the human race by better breeding.” The genetics research of this time focused on improving agriculture, and eugenics was seen as the logical counterpart to plant and animal husbandry.

Davenport did not hesitate to play on their sympathies by making wild claims about the inheritance of “nomadism,” “shiftlessness,” “love of the sea,” and other “traits” as if they were single Mendelian characteristics. Alcoholism, pauperism, prostitution, rebelliousness, criminality, feeblemindedness, chess expertise, and industrial sabotage were all claimed to be determined by one or two pairs of Mendelian genes. In particular, the progressives were lured by the idea of sterilizing the “weak minded,” especially after the publication of articles about families in Appalachia and New Jersey that supposedly documented genetic lines cursed by a preponderance of habitual criminal behavior and mental weakness.

Having the allure of a “social vaccination,” the enthusiasm to sterilize the “defective” spread rapidly among intellectuals, without regard to political or ideological lines. Sweden’s Social Democrats forcibly sterilized some sixty thousand Swedes under a program that lasted from 1935 to 1976 organized by the state-financed Institute for Racial Biology. Grounds for sterilization included not only “feeblemindedness” but also “gypsy features,” criminality, and “poor racial quality.” The low class or mentally slow were institutionalized in the Institutes for Misled and Morally Neglected Children and released only if they would agree to be sterilized. Involuntary sterilization policies were also adopted in countries ranging from Switzerland and Austria to Belgium and Canada, not to be repealed until the 1970s.

Hermann Müller, a eugenicist who immigrated to the Soviet Union (and later returned to the United States), attacked Davenport’s style of eugenics at the International Eugenics Congress in 1932. Müller, a geneticist who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the mutagenic power of x-rays, instead favored the style of eugenics envisioned by English novelist Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World (1932), with state nurseries, artificial insemination, and the use of other scientific techniques to produce a genetically engineered socialist society.

According to journalist Jonathan Freedland, the British left, including a large number of socialist intellectuals such as playwright George Bernard Shaw and philosopher Bertrand Russell, was convinced that it knew what was best for society. Concerned with the preservation of their higher intellectual capacities, they joined the fashionable and elitist Eugenics Society in the 1930s, where they advocated the control of reproduction, particularly favoring the idea of impregnating working-class women with sperm of men with high IQs.

The American Movement Spreads to Nazi Germany

The eugenics movement eventually led to grave consequences in Nazi Germany. Negative eugenics reached its peak there, with forced sterilization, euthanasia or “mercy killing,” experimentation, and ultimately genocide being used in the name of “racial hygiene.” Eugenicists in the United States and Germany formed close and direct alliances, especially after the Nazis came to power in 1933. The ERO’s Laughlin gave permission for his article “Eugenical Sterilization” to be reprinted in German in 1928. It soon became the basis of Nazi sterilization policy. Davenport even arranged for a group of German eugenicists to participate in the three hundredth anniversary of Harvard’s founding in 1936.

Inspired by the U.S. eugenics movement and spurred by economic hardship that followed World War I, the Nazi Physician’s League took a stand that those suffering from incurable disease caused useless waste of medications and, along with the crippled, the feebleminded, the elderly, and the chronic poor, posed an economic drain on society. Hereditary defects were considered to be the cause of such maladies, and these people were dubbed “lives not worth living.” In 1933, the German Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring made involuntary sterilization of such people, including the blind, deaf, epileptic, and poor, legal. The Nazis set up “eugenics courts” to decide cases of involuntary sterilization. Frederick Osborn, secretary of the American Eugenics Society, wrote a 1937 report summarizing the German sterilization programs, indicative of the fascination American eugenicists had for the Nazi agenda and the Nazi’s ability to move this experiment to a scale never possible in the United States.

The Demise of Eugenics

With the Great Depression in 1929, the US eugenics movement lost much of its momentum. Geneticist and evolutionary biologist Sewall Wright, although himself a member of the American Eugenics Society, found fault with the genetics and the ideology of the movement: “Positive eugenics seems to require . . . the setting up of an ideal of society to aim at, and this is just what people do not agree on.” He also wrote several articles in the 1930s challenging the assumptions of Fisher’s genetic atomism model. In a speech to the Eugenics Society in New York in 1932, Müller pointed out the economic disincentive for middle and upper classes to reproduce, epitomized by the failure of many eugenicists to have children. Galton himself died childless. This inverse relationship between fertility and social status, coupled with the apparent predatory nature of the upper class, seemed to doom eugenics to failure.

Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould claimed that the demise of the eugenics movement in the United States was more a matter of Adolf Hitler’s use of eugenic arguments for sterilization and racial purification than it was of advances in genetic knowledge. Once the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities became known, eugenicists distanced themselves from the movement. Depew and Weber have written that Catholic conservatives opposed to human intervention in reproduction and progressives, who began to abandon eugenics in favor of behaviorism (nurture rather than nature), were political forces that began to close down the eugenics movement, while Allen points out that the movement had outlived its political usefulness. Russian geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky
had by this time recognized the prime importance of context in genetics and consequently rejected the premise of eugenics, helping to push it into the realm of phony genetics.

Implications

The term “euphenics” is used to describe human genetic research that is aimed at improving the human condition, replacing the tainted term eugenics. Euphenics deals primarily with medical or genetic intervention that is designed to reduce the impact of defective genotypes on individuals (such as gene therapy for those with cystic fibrosis). However, in this age of increasing information about human genetics, it is necessary to keep in mind the important role played by environment and the malleability of human traits.

Allen argues that the eugenics movement may reappear (although probably under a different name) if economic problems again make it attractive to eliminate “unproductive” people. His hope is that a better understanding of genetics, combined with the lessons of Nazi Germany, will deter humans from ever again going down that path that journalist Jonathan Freedland calls “the foulest idea of the 20th century.”

Key terms



biometry

:

the measurement of biological and psychological variables




negative eugenics

:

improving human stocks through the restriction of reproduction




positive eugenics

:

improving human stocks by encouraging the “naturally superior” to breed extensively with other superior humans





Bibliography

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Depew, David, and Bruce Weber. Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection. Boston: MIT, 1995. Print.

Duster, Troy. Backdoor to Eugenics. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Gillham, Nicholas Wright. A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.

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Is there any connection between Estella and the Victorian England legal system in Great Expectations?

Estella’s parents were both criminals. 

Estella owes her life with Miss Havisham to the Victorian English legal system. Her mother and father were both criminals. Her mother Molly was acquitted of murder, and her father Abel Magwitch was expelled to Australia. 

Jaggers represented both Estella’s mother and father. He thought she was a beautiful little girl, and he had seen so many cases of children who were victims of the legal system or their parents’ crimes. He decided to save Estella by giving her to Miss Havisham, but had no idea what would result from that. 

Estella’s father was on his own on the streets from a very young age. He had no chance to be educated, and eventually fell in with a bad crowd. He ended up with the conman Compeyson, a despicable character. When the two were finally arrested, Compeyson was a smooth talker and convinced everyone he was a gentleman. He placed the blame on Magwitch and got off with an easier sentence. 

Estella’s mother was a very angry and jealous person. She believed that Magwitch was cheating on her and strangled the other woman she suspected Magwitch was seeing.

The murdered person was a woman… It was a case of jealousy. They both led tramping lives, and this woman in Gerrard-street here, had been married very young, over the broomstick (as we say), to a tramping man, and was a perfect fury in point of jealousy (Chapter 48).

Jaggers was able to get her acquitted through legal maneuvering and made her the housekeeper. Molly threatened Estella’s life, so Magwitch never knew if she was dead or alive. On his deathbed, Pip tells him Estella is alive and a lady.

Even though Estella was never arrested, the legal system altered the course of her life. She may not have had a happy life, but Jaggers is right that she would never have been a lady if he had not saved her. She probably would have ended up a criminal like her parents.

What is the meaning, context and significance of the following quote from Shakespeare's Othello?"Within these three days let me hear thee say...

The quote comes from Act 3, scene 3, and is an instruction from Othello to Iago. In this quite lengthy scene, Iago has managed to persuade Othello into believing that Desdemona and Othello's demoted lieutenant, Cassio, were having an affair. He did this by using innuendo, suggestion, downright lies and by playing on the general's emotions.

At the beginning of the scene, the two men chance upon Desdemona and Cassio talking. Cassio slips away and Iago cries: 'Ha! I like not that.' When Othello asks him what is not to like, he is evasive, piquing the general's interest even more. Othello asks him if it was Cassio that they had seen. He replies that no, he cannot believe that Cassio would slink away so 'guilty-like.' He plants a pernicious seed in the general's mind that Cassio has something to hide.

It had, in fact, been Iago who had advised Cassio to approach Desdemona to petition Othello on his behalf for his reinstatement. Desdemona tells Othello that she had been speaking to a suitor and that it was Cassio. She then starts nagging him about giving Cassio a hearing. The general is clearly upset by Iago's earlier intimations but finally relents, telling his wife that he would listen to him. Desdemona is, however, displeased and tells him that she expects an honest answer from him within three days.

After Desdemona has left, Iago questions Othello about Cassio and whether he knew that Othello was in love with her when they were both seeking her affection. When Othello answers in the affirmative and wishes to know the purpose of his question, he says that he did not know that Cassio had been 'acquainted with her.' Othello then asks about Cassio's honesty. Iago plays word games with him and frustrates the general by not giving him a direct answer. He then gives a speech about the virtue of honesty and one's good name.

Othello insists to know what Iago is thinking but he refuses, supposedly because he does not want to harm anyone's 'good name.' He warns the general about jealousy and tells him to guard against it. The deliberate focus on these terms is obviously to make Othello suspicious and to work him up. Othello then states the following about doubting Desdemona's virtue:

I'll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove;
And on the proof, there is no more but this,--
Away at once with love or jealousy!

Iago sees in this an opportunity to share his thoughts with Othello and tells him that he does not have proof. He suggests that Othello should watch the interaction between Desdemona and Cassio, for he does not wish to see the general's kindness being abused. He states that it is custom for Venetian women to keep a secret lover. He states further that Desdemona deceived her father and did love Othello when she appeared to be afraid of him. The suggestion is obvious - Desdemona can easily deceive.

Just to make sure that Othello has gotten his message, Iago returns soon after he has left, telling Othello that he should not listen to Cassio for a while and watch his behaviour, especially how he conducts himself with Desdemona. Othello is convinced by Iago's seeming sincerity and says: 

This fellow's of exceeding honesty,
And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit,
Of human dealings.

He has, clearly, been misled. When Desdemona returns, he has developed a headache and when she wants to wipe his brow with her handkerchief, he pushes it away, letting it fall to the ground. Emilia picks up the napkin and later gives it to Iago who is exceedingly glad about it. He plans to plant it in Cassio's rooms as definite proof of his adulterous affair with Desdemona.

Othello, who has clearly been disturbed by Iago's intimations, returns and threatens his ancient that he would kill him if he is wrongly slandering his wife's name. Iago acts the victim and cries death to honesty since it brings only trouble. Othello asks him to be open and Iago asks how. Othello says he needs ocular proof of Desdemona's infidelity. Iago slyly wants to know if the general means that he actually wants to see her having intercourse. Othello is overwhelmed by the thought and says that he needs a living reason why she is disloyal.

Iago then relates an occasion in which he and Cassio had supposedly been sharing a bed. Cassio, dreaming, and believing he was Desdemona, said, 'Sweet Desdemona, let us be wary, let us hide our loves.' He then kissed Iago passionately and laid his leg over Iago's thigh. Othello is shocked and calls what he hears 'monstrous.' He promises to tear Desdemona into little pieces. It is at this point that Iago decides to play his trump card. 

He asks Othello about a napkin spotted with strawberries. The general replies that it was his first gift to Desdemona and Iago tells him that he had seen Cassio wipe his beard with just such a handkerchief. Othello is completely overwhelmed and convinced that he has been cuckolded. He passionately cries out for blood and goes on his knees, making a sacred vow to take revenge.

Iago  kneels with the general and promises to give his life in service to him. He promises to assist the general in whatever bloody deed has to be performed. Othello expresses his gratitude for Iago's loyalty and service and immediately gives him a task. He has to kill Cassio within three days.

I greet thy love,
Not with vain thanks, but with acceptance bounteous,
And will upon the instant put thee to't:
Within these three days let me hear thee say
That Cassio's not alive.

This instruction is significant in that it links with Desdemona's earlier request that Othello should speak to Cassio within three days. He obviously wants to avoid having to speak to him and, if Iago has killed him, he would have had his revenge. Iago promises to do as he is asked but requests that Desdemona not be killed. Othello damns Desdemona and says that he must find a suitable way in which to kill her. It is also at this point that Othello appoints Iago as his lieutenant and Iago promises to be forever in his service. 

In Lord Of The Flies, why did the boys chose Ralph as their leader in chapter one?

Ralph has been chosen as leader because he is "the golden boy," handsome and fair, and he appears as a leader since he's the one who blows the conch to summon the boys.

When the other boys run to where the conch has been sounded, they see before them a fair, tall, good-looking boy:

The being that had blown that, had sat waiting for them on the platform with the delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart.

While Piggy, to whom the boys trace intelligent remarks, could be a leader, he is heavy and has asthma, two traits which detract from the appearance of a leader. Jack, who marches the choir boys in with military precision and control, is an obvious leader; however, there is just a "certain something" about Ralph. There is poise about him that sets him apart; he is an attractive, fair-haired boy, and he holds the conch that has summoned all the boys. He looks like a leader. So, when Ralph asks who will be leader, someone shouts,

"Let him be chief with the trumpet-thing."

Hearing this, Ralph tries to be democratic by asking who wants Jack for chief. With compliance to the choir leader, and in "dreary obedience," the choir raises their hands. But, when Ralph asks who wants him to be the leader, every hand outside of the choir shoots up, except for Piggy's, which is raised begrudgingly.

So, Ralph counts the votes and announces, "I'm chief, then." It is at this point that Ralph, who has already recognized Jack as a potential foe, tells Jack, "The choir belongs to you, of course." Jack offers to have them be the hunters. 

Jack and Ralph smiled at each other with shy liking. The rest began to talk eagerly.

And so, the boys begin their new lives on the island with Ralph, the fair and golden boy, as their leader, and Jack, with his red hair and dark clothing and an intimidating manner, presiding over the hunters.

In the book Gathering Blue, does Kira's society relate to the United States?

The short answer to your question is yes, Kira's society does relate to the United States.  

But to be more specific, Kira's society relates only in parts.  The society is not a mirror image of American society.  

Thematically, the story is about never giving up and working hard.  It has that "pull yourself up by your own boot straps" mentality.  Kira has to fight tooth and nail to prove that she can be a contributing member of her society, and she is surprisingly successful.  That theme is close to a standard American "rags to riches" thought process.  Work hard enough, and you can be successful.  

A more concrete reflection of U.S. society is the book's portrayal of committees and councils.  The governing body is exactly that -- a group of people.  It is not a single person like a dictator or king.  That relates to American society's legislative and judicial branches of government.    

What lands does Gulliver visit in Gulliver's Travels?

Gulliver's Travels, written by Jonathan Swift, follows the protagonist Gulliver as he travels to four distinct locations.

Lilliput: His first stop is Lilliput, a tiny society filled with tiny people. He lands here after a shipwreck in which he is the only survivor. When he awakens, he finds himself tied down by tiny people who believe him to be their enemy. You see, to the Lilliputians, he is a giant capable of great feats. However, after Gulliver agrees to serve the Lilliputians, he is freed and allowed to meet their Emperor. During his time here, he protects the kingdom by destroying the ships of the Blefuscu, the Lilliputian's enemy, and learns about life at court, including the politics of the kingdom. The Emperor and court soon grow weary of Gulliver because he requires far too many resources to be fed, clothed, and taken care of. Eventually, after urinating on a fire, he is branded a traitor and sentenced to be blinded. Gulliver escapes and finds an English ship, which takes him back to England.

Brobdingnag: Gulliver's second stop is when he is abandoned while trying to fetch water for the ship's crew. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver finds a land of giants, in which he is just a tiny curiosity. Eventually, Gulliver is purchased as a gift to the King, whom he delights with stories of England. After some time of touring the kingdom while in a small box and other misadventures due to his small size, his box is carried off by an eagle and dropped in the sea, where he is picked up by another English ship and taken back to England.

Laputa: The third voyage finds Gulliver's ship overtaken by pirates, who abandon him at sea on a small boat. After some time, Gulliver arrives at the flying island of Laputa, a land of intellect where the people only care about abstract ideas and vague speculation. The people here seem to be only interested in mathematics, philosophy, and theory. While here, Gulliver visits the Academy of Laputa, where scholars work tirelessly at useless ideas. During this trip, Gulliver also visits Glubbdubdrib, an island of magicians, Luggnagg, a place where its inhabitants have eternal life though they continue to age, and then Japan. As before, Gulliver returns to England.

Houyhnhms: Gulliver's final destination is the land of Houyhnhms, a land of intelligent horses who use human-like creatures called Yahoos as their servants. The Houyhnhms are distressed by Gulliver's accounts of England and how Yahoos seem to be in control, though they are seen as only partially rational, so they decide to expel Gulliver and send him away. Gulliver makes a boat, goes off to sea, is picked up by a Portuguese ship, and returns safely to England, where he is a changed man, preferring the company of horses to the humans he now finds disgusting and uncivilized.