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Though Gulliver’s worldly knowledge usually assists him by helping him empathize with and understand other people around him, here it does him no favors: instead of winning the Dutchman over, Gulliver’s ability to speak Dutch only winds up irritating the Dutchman further and landing Gulliver in an abandoned canoe. Swift’s prose is again attuned to Gulliver’s perspective when it refers to the island in the sky as a vague, unknown thing. Gulliver assumes a pose of physical powerlessness to express his deference to the floating islanders. The posture wins them over and inspires their moral power: they altruistically rescue Gulliver from his abandonment.