In each of the books of the pentalogy, except Book 3, characters go on adventures and voyages that test them and describe strange new worlds, making forms of voyage an important motif in the text.

In Book 1, the settings are more realistic, with Pantagruel traveling to real-world places across France. In Book 2 as well, Gargantua fights King Picrochole of Lerne, a commune in France to this day. However, these real-world places coexist with the fictional Utopia, the land of the giants from which Gargantua and Pantagruel hail, and later in the novel, a whole host of magical islands. These seeming discrepancies show that the text occupies the space of epic and folklore.

The travel motif is a convenient way for Rabelais to explore new, idealized worlds as well as give free rein to his whimsy. The islands to which Pantagruel and his friends travel are not merely strange, but radical, pushing the bounds of reality as it is known. They function as alternate universes. There is an island where people are essentially squirrel-like sausages and dress their wounds with mustard, an island where people live on nothing but air, and an island where the sole aim of being is to extract the pure form of everything.