A grand committee: A fictitious group of people who supposedly planned the book.

Curious and refined observer: This person discovered the sailor's tactic of using a tub to distract a whale.

Whale as Leviathan: The whale is equated with Hobbes's Leviathan, a powerful, uncontrollable force representing government or society. It's seen as a threat to religious and governmental structures.

Ship as commonwealth: The ship symbolizes the state or commonwealth.

Tub as distraction: The tub, the book itself, is intended to distract the Leviathan (criticism) from attacking the ship (the state).

The Epistle Dedicatory to His Royal Highness Prince Posterity

Apart from the points about maintaining their inheritance of the coats, the father also instructs them to live together in one house which symbolically refers to God's wish for unity within the Church.

Swift disapproves of the brother's process of becoming "worldly" and acquiring the "good qualities of town." At the same time the more worldly they become, the more easily they leave behind the Christian legacy they have received from their father. Gradually, to the author's disapproval, like those around them, the brothers become clothes-worshippers, full-fledged participants in a society occupied by shallow pleasures.

The learned brother's pseudo interpretation of the father's will for the sake of justifying their choices of altering the coats can be interpreted as a reference to the alterations made to the word of God i.e. Bible.

Against popular opinion, Swift doesn't clarify much about the age or appearance of the three brothers. He rather focuses on their behavioral traits and approaches towards their father's will. For instance, "the most learned of the three brothers" may refer to either of the three brothers.

Swift breaks off from his story to make a few important observations about the contemporary state of literary criticism.

The first are the ones who invent rules for assessing literature and getting the most out of it. They point out errors in books but do not dwell upon them or revel in fault-finding.

The second are those who busy themselves with restoring "ancient learning" from old texts.

But the "noblest" critics, Swift asserts, are those whose "heroic" spirit moves them to hunt down the tiniest errors and faults in a work.

First, a true critic is always most impressed by the first idea he comes up with—and not, presumably, by anything that involves too much labor or reflection.

Second, true critics "swarm" about the best writers, like rats to cheese or wasps to fruit, because they recognize the inherent quality.

Third, true critics are obsessed with what other readers discard or ignore. In other words, they are unhappy when a literary "feast" leaves them without many bones to gnaw. In this, they find their true calling and skill, which others might disdain.

Swift now moves back to the story of the three brothers. The three brothers have moved in together in the house acquired by the most learned one.

The learned brother now declares himself as the eldest one and demands total obedience from the other two.

He styles himself "Lord Peter" and, using proceeds from inventions and investments, embarks on a lavish lifestyle. Among his projects are colonial ventures, quack remedies, a "whispering-office" for the talkative and the neurotic, and a preservative known as the "universal pickle." Peter also goes into livestock rearing and becomes famous for his herd of flying, fire-breathing bulls, which he sends to extort gold from people around the world. A final project of note is the writing of pardons for the condemned, who pay for them only to find that they are hanged anyway.

Eventually Peter loses his sanity to the point that he is not able to tell bread and meat apart. When his brothers try to point the discrepancy, he gets angry and scolds them.

The two younger brothers, unable to tolerate Peter's madness any longer, demand a copy of their father's will from him and decide to set out for making their own lifestyle. They realize how far they have come from the wishes and will of their father. Conclusively, Peter kicks the younger brothers out with the help of a contingent of soldiers.

Every one of Peter's wild schemes and bizarre behaviors can be traced to a specific aspect of Catholicism that Swift aims to criticize. Although the papacy was not a colonial power in its own right, it famously adjudicated colonial disputes between the Catholic countries of Spain and Portugal.

The "whispering-office" Peter establishes is the sacrament of confession, still practiced by Catholics but long ago rejected by most Protestant denominations. The "universal pickle" is holy water, which was and is used in a vast array of Catholic rituals.

Peter's behavior at the dinner table provides a coarse parody of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation: the belief that the bread and wine of the Eucharist literally become the body and blood of Christ.

Swift, like most Anglicans of his day, likewise expressed belief in the real presence of Christ but not in transubstantiation. His opinion of the latter doctrine can be seen in Peter's ludicrous inability to tell the difference between bread and mutton and in his failure to make any convincing argument for why the two substances are the same.

Peter's act of kicking his brothers out of the house is true to history: early Protestant reformers were often exiled from Catholic lands at the point of the sword, if not executed outright.

"The public good," Swift proposes in this next digression, is served in "two ways—instruction and diversion."

Since the modern age is so steeped in wit and learning, there is now more need for diversion than for instruction.

It would be very helpful, Swift remarks, if someone would compile everything that needs to be known into "a small portable volume."

Reference to Homer's idea that literature should be dulce et utile (sweet and useful)

The idea of compiling everything that is useful into a "small portable volume" can be considered as a reference to the creation of an encyclopedia.

Through a series of absurd and convoluted arguments, Swift highlights the hollowness of many intellectual pursuits and the tendency of scholars to prioritize style over substance.

The two younger brothers have been ejected from Peter's house. Impoverished and exiled, they seek lodgings together and take some time to go over their father's will in greater detail. They are horrified to find how far they have strayed from their father's commands and resolve to mend their ways by first mending their coats.

Martin, the middle brother, carefully goes to work removing the excess lace and embroidery. What he cannot remove without damaging the coat, he leaves in place.

Jack, the youngest brother, goes about his work with a "spirit" of hatred and vengeance against Peter. In attempting to remove every last forbidden stitch, he tears the underlying fabric into rags.

Martin admonishes Jack to be guided by their father's will, not controlled by his anger toward Peter. Jack leaves the house in a huff and goes off to find a new residence. Within a few days, rumors spread that Jack has "run out of his wits" and started a cult.

This is the first time that the two other brothers are given the names Martin and Jack. It is also the first chapter that clarifies the age difference between the three.

Swift describes two different approaches to church reform: the moderate (Martin) and the radical (Jack).

Digressions, Swift says, add richness and variety to literature: a book that contains them is like a dish with many ingredients.

Some, it is true, consider the proliferation of digressions in modern writing to be a sign of "corruption and degeneracy of taste." But such people, Swift confidently declares, are as arrogant as they are incorrect.

Moreover, in the modern age, all the basic subjects of literature have been exhausted, even as the number of writers continues to multiply. With little available in the way of new material, constant digressions such as he includes are the only way to create a volume large enough to stand handsomely on the bookseller's shelf.

Swift is exaggerating quite a bit when he describes digressions as a modern fad or "innovation." As he was well aware from his own schooling, the ancient poets were quite adept at interrupting their own stories and meandering their way back to the main plot. Homer—whom Swift elsewhere scolds for not being encyclopedic enough—used numerous digressions to vary the plot of The Iliad, whose main narrative recounts a few weeks of fighting toward the end of the Trojan war.

Martin's name as a reflection of the religious leader Martin Luther who in 1517 spoke against the practice of selling indulgences. Under the indulgence system, money could be paid to the Church to shorten or reduce the penance needed to atone for one's sin.

In Geneva, where Calvin lived from 1541 onward, laws were enacted against dancing (Jack, not coincidentally, turns out to hate music), and heretics were burned. These and other reforms, along with Calvin's crusade against what he considered to be the superstitious elements of Catholicism, likely inspired Swift's portrayal of Jack as the extremist archenemy of his brother Peter.

Swift basically satirizes the tendency of modern writers who seem to believe that they invented everything about contemporary literature while he takes a longer view.

Swift's work is part of a contemporary aesthetic he believes valid.

After moving out of the lodging, Jack establishes a cult named the Aeolists. Strange news and stories spread about the cult and its activities.

Called the Æolists, the members of this sect worship the winds, which they view as the soul or inspiration of humanity. In their rituals, the Æolist priests blow each other up with bellows and then go and belch forth the excess air to their congregations. On holy days, Swift continues, the Æolist priests climb up into barrels from which they belch out their "sanctified breath" in great quantities, supplied from beneath with "new supplies of inspiration."

Instead of a devil, their belief system includes a "huge terrible monster" called Moulinavent (French for "windmill"), whom the winds are unable to vanquish. In concluding his description, Swift leaves open the question of whether Jack invented all of the Æolists' beliefs and practices or whether some derive from ancient Greece.

Swift's description of the Æolists reflects the contemporary prejudices against the Dissenters and Nonconformists, two overlapping historical groups of British Protestants who did not "conform" to established Anglican practices of the day.

Dissent and Nonconformism were seen as traditions that greatly emphasized fervent preaching—a stereotype that inspires Swift to portray the Æolists as people "bursting with too much wind." They were closely associated with Scotland (hence the "Scotia" quip), where the relative status of Established and Dissenting churches was a major bone of contention.

The pulpits in which Dissenting preachers addressed their congregation were colloquially called "tubs." Swift, who has already alluded to this fact in the work's title, here picks up the image in an extended pun.

The treatment of the Aeolists in this section is something which Swift develops further in his Gulliver's Travels.

On the one hand, he creates an elaborate mythology to mock the grand pretensions he associates with Dissent. He names his fictitious cult after Aeolus, the keeper of the winds from Greek mythology, describes their rituals with mock solemnity, and gives them a fancifully named archfiend to fight against.

On the other hand, Swift's humor here is as coarse as anywhere else in the story, with lots of belching and a few puns about flatulence for good measure. Swift effectively "inflates" the Æolists and, by proxy, the Dissenters with high-flown mythological rhetoric, only to "deflate" them again with grotesque jokes.

The four classical winds in Greek mythology include: Boreas (Aquilo in Roman mythology) is the north wind and bringer of cold winter air.

Zephyrus (Favonius in Latin) is the west wind and bringer of light spring and early-summer breezes.

Notus (Auster in Latin) is the south wind and bringer of the storms of late summer and autumn.

Eurus, the southeast[6] (or according to some,[7] the east) wind, was not associated with any of the three Greek seasons, and is the only one of these four Anemoi not mentioned in Hesiod's Theogony or in the Orphic hymns.

The Æolists, Swift argues, should not be ridiculed simply because their leader was a madman.

Madness of a kind seems to be a vital ingredient in the great achievements of politics, philosophy, and religion. The accomplishments of King Henry IV (1553–1610) of France, Swift claims, can be credited to prolonged lovesickness, and the great deeds of King Louis XIV (1638–1715) of France likewise stemmed from an agitated mind.

Because madness has been such a constructive force in human history, modern societies should take advantage of its power. He urges the passage of a law requiring officials to visit Bedlam (an infamous psychiatric asylum) and conduct interviews to see which of the inmates are fit for public office. The public would benefit greatly from this scheme, he says, by recovering many "poets and politicians" whose talents are "buried or at least misapplied."

Famous philosophers throughout the centuries have been accused of madness by their peers only to be recognized for their brilliance by later generations. Swift attributes all these cases to a kind of vapor that ascends to the brain and inspires individuals in various ways.

In the process of praising madness, Swift offers some broader claims about illusion and reality. He suggests that imagination in general—not just the overactive imagination of the so-called mad—is more powerful than dry realism because it can, in a sense, create things that do not exist.

"Happiness," he concludes, "is a perpetual possession of being well deceived."

To an even greater extent than in previous chapters, this "digression" jumps from topic to topic.

Swift at first thanks his readers, the king and his privy council for the enthusiastic reception they are sure to give his work. He then jokes about the booksellers' habit of overstating the popularity of their works to sell more copies.

He also warns the readers to beware of the unauthorized sequel that will surely follow once A Tale of a Tub is an acknowledged success. He proposes to eliminate the need for such a sequel by writing all that he has to say in the current book.

Division of readers into the "superficial, the ignorant and the learned" A Tale of a Tub is a text catering to all three.

Expressing a half-joking wish to see his work reach new heights of popularity before he dies, Swift mocks his fellow writers who have used the "expedient" of dying to improve their literary reputations.

Finally, he proposes a complicated numerological exercise by which true scholars can decipher the secrets of alchemy from A Tale of a Tub.

Jack becomes obsessed with his father's will, which he uses not only as reading material, but as an umbrella, a bandage, and a nightcap.

He swallows pieces of burning candle to maintain a "flame in his belly" and frightens people with the way he glows at night. Walking down the street, Jack shuts his eyes and claims that any bumps or bruises he receives were preordained by God. He hates music, dancing, and the arts in general and contrives various means to cause himself pain and discomfort.

Jack is a seeming schizophrenic hypocrite. He picks fights and sometimes asks people outright to hit him, and then he claims to have received his injuries defending Christianity and the realm. He continues to hate his brother Peter but is chagrined to find that many people cannot tell them apart.

Swift now breaks into a mini-digression on the size, shape, and significance of ears. Large ears were once seen as a mark of handsomeness and virility, but lately, people have adopted fashions that hide the ears behind wigs or hairdos.

Finally, Swift takes a self-congratulatory bow and warns the reader that the story is about to end. He had planned to tell much more about the further adventures of Peter, Martin, and Jack, but the papers have been mislaid. He tells the readers not to take this disappointment too personally and, with many rhetorical flourishes, invites them to join him in the book's eventual conclusion by listing its contents.

As with the treatment of Peter in Chapter 4, the details of Jack's "mad" behavior all hearken back to common stereotypes of Dissenter/Nonconformist behavior. Jack's attempt to use his father's will in all sorts of mundane ways reflects a stereotype that Dissenters were too reliant on Scripture even in areas where the Bible's wisdom was not intended to apply. Supposedly, they did things "by the book" to an even greater extent than other Protestants.

Likewise, the burning candles and "flame in [the] belly" reflect the "inward fire" of inspiration that was highly valued in the Dissenting tradition. Martin Luther (represented in A Tale of a Tub by Martin) had envisioned a Christian practice that gave more room for inward experience and direct communication with God than did the highly hierarchical Catholic Church. Dissenters were ridiculed for taking the emphasis on individual piety too far, letting their "inward fire" guide them rather than their eyesight.

The "ear" business near the end of the chapter is a coded way of talking about the different treatment of the clergy under successive English monarchs. The hiding, cutting off, or mutilating of ears refers to the fates met by those who did not conform to the royal edicts concerning religion.

Reference to the Clarendon Code enacted in the early 1660s by the Charles II

Like the "digression" chapters before it, the conclusion to A Tale of a Tub is a satire on modern book-writing conventions. Swift first compares the merits of writing too much with those of writing too little.

He reveals his bookseller's trick to tell buyers that the anonymous Tale was written by "whichever of the wits shall happen to be that week in the vogue."

Swift also cracks a joke about profound writers, saying that dry wells often seem deep because there is nothing at the bottom to reflect light.

In the final paragraphs, Swift declares that he is embarking on an experiment to see whether he can keep writing with nothing left to say. He says he will consider his work to have performed a public service if it becomes so tedious that it helps readers get to sleep "in times so turbulent and unquiet as these."

Then, stopping to appreciate how drawn-out the conclusion has become, Swift promises to resume writing at an unspecified later date.

Soon after A Tale of a Tub was first published, Swift made good on his promise and continued the story of the three brothers in a short sequel called "The History of Martin." This bonus material was inserted into some early editions of A Tale of a Tub and is much more compact in style than the original chapters.

It also differs from the main body of the Tale, as it is densely laden and includes direct references to relatively recent British history. Swift tells of Martin and Jack's troubles with their "landlords" (the various British monarchs) and of the attempts to make Martin (mainline Protestantism) more like Peter (Catholicism).

True to form, Swift interrupts his brief "History" long enough to fit in one more digression, this time praising the virtues of wars and rebellions.

However, this sequel was omitted from later editions of the novel because the authorities found it too flippant. This was because Swift ridiculed the "landlords" from the earlier Tudor dynasty as well as from the then-reigning Stuart dynasty. He called King Henry VIII (Tudor, r. 1509–47) "Harry Huff," for instance, hardly a flattering name for a monarch, and then caricatures King James I (Stuart, r. 1603–25) as a cowardly "North-Country farmer."

"I have one concluding favor to request of my reader, that he will not expect to be equally diverted and informed by every line or every page of this discourse; but give some allowance to the author’s spleen and short fits or intervals of dullness, as well as his own; and lay it seriously to his conscience, whether, if he were walking the streets in dirty weather or a rainy day, he would allow it fair dealing in folks at their ease from a window to criticise his gait and ridicule his dress at such a juncture."