Why are the immortal Struldbruggs miserable in Gulliver’s Travels?

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Illustration of Lemuel Gulliver lying on the ground, tied down by tiny Lilliputians, with crowds and small buildings in the background, from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. — Gulliver’s Travels Lemuel Gulliver in Lilliput, illustration from an edition of Jonathan Swift's *Gulliver's Travels*.

In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver’s Travels, the Struldbruggs of Luggnagg are miserable because they are cursed with eternal life without the benefit of eternal youth.12

While they are immortal, they are not exempt from the natural process of aging. Consequently, they suffer from a state of "eternal senility," living on in a wretched, decaying condition. By the age of 80, they are legally declared dead, yet they continue to exist in a state of perpetual physical and mental decline, serving as a grim satire on the horrors of unending old age.31