Jenna Wood

May 8, 2019

Essay One: Mutating the Genetics of Utopian Fiction

          Utopian fiction is commonly limited to the conventions of one developed outsider character, a journey to the utopia, and Socratic dialogue with advocates for the utopia's superior way of living. While plenty of modern readers pick up books on self-improvement and instructions on how to perform various tasks, they are not necessarily looking for those conventions in their literary fiction, and this can create an aversion to the traditional utopian novel. The authors of the books our class read in the latter half of the semester had to weave their utopian  and dystopian ideas into the widely-accepted conventions of fiction in order for more people to be interested in them, and they managed this to varying extents. The following analysis presumes the novels are works of utopian and dystopian literature, but the authors themselves may not have wanted them to be classified as such.

          While the Republic of Gilead and its shocking customs have captivated the morbid curiosity of readers, it is how they are expressed through the story of Offred that made them so well-received. Readers are interested in the complex relationships between Offred, the Commander, and the Commander's wife, which reads almost as a fresh take on the affair trope popular in the romance genre. Atwood's narrator is relatable in her reactions and her reminiscing on her past, so the traits of mystery and suspense genres she weaves into her story engages the readers' investment into Offred's future. The readers want to know if Offred survives the life of a handmaid, and whether or not she will be helped or hindered by the side characters. Their gateway into the dystopia is Offred, who convinces them to step through into a speculative future they may not have otherwise wanted to visit.

          The elements of utopian fiction are still being used, but in a different style than More or Gilman. While Herland focused on the Socratic dialogue between the women of the utopia and the three men from the outside, The Handmaid's Tale is focused on the Socratic dialogue between the narrator and the reader. Atwood accounts for the questions and concerns someone may have while reading about the setting, and she answers them through her narrator's reflections on how she ended up in her current situation. Her everyday routine in this dystopia is what sets the plot into motion. The elements of the dystopia are broken up into pieces that cater to the attention span of the modern reader and allow them to see their consequences in action.

          This divergence into the modern field of literary genres also allows The Dispossessed more efficiency than, say, Utopia. In Utopia, the land is being explained by a traveler to his fellow outsiders, but the effect of what they've heard on their daily lives is never expanded upon. The last paragraph of the work follows the thoughts of one listener, who claims that though many traits of Utopia "seemed very absurd" to him, there are "many things in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in governments" [2.78]. Despite this, the reader never sees his life after hearing about the land, never finds out if he attempted to apply changes to his own society based on what he's heard, so he or she finish the story with a lingering, "So what?" Meanwhile, The Dispossessed compares and contrasts two planets with attempted utopias through the struggles of the protagonist who has experienced both, and while the ending is left purposefully ambiguous, it is easier for the reader to care and to guess what might happen for both societies next.

          Thus, when considering modern utopian fiction such as Oryx and Crake, the range of the course is expanded into the literary sensibilities of students. Even for literature majors, works such as Utopia are dense and difficult to wade through; the character studies of Le Guin and Atwood are much more enjoyable because they cater to the lover of literary fiction. The bizarre but plausible genetic apocalypse Atwood describes would not be as enjoyable should she have listed each of its elements in an instructional tract. It is the drama between Jimmy, Crake, and Oryx that draws the reader in, and they emerge invested not only in the characters but in the strange new world they've traversed for themselves. This book would not have been expanded upon in a trilogy if it hadn't been enjoyable to a large audience. Many readers are probably not even aware that the conventions they are reading about are utopian or dystopian, but they ruminate on the possibilities presented to them, anyway. It is easier to fear the consequences of BlyssPlus if someone you know has been affected by it, and the reader closes the book knowing Jimmy and Crake like close friends.

          These books bridge the literature of ideas with literary fiction, as they indeed serve thought while simultaneously serving entertainment. By indulging the reader's desire to escape into another world, they allow them to return with ideas on how that world is better or worse than our own, packed with motivation to avoid the misfortunes of Jimmy, Offred, or Shevek. Two members of a book club debating how Jimmy could have stopped Crake, for example, sparks more inspiration for how modern society can respond to the growing trend of genetic manipulation. These three novels may be classified as utopian or dystopian, but they also are transitioning into a new stage of "ustopian"—or "ambitopian"—literature.

Essay Two: Multicultural Utopias in Western Civilization

          The police shooting unarmed children. Families being separated into concentration camps when they try to cross the border. Places of worship being vandalized or invaded by armed terrorists. The preceding sentences are potential summaries for a dystopian novel, but they are also real headlines flooding the United States' news programs. Every citizen of the country is fearing some countrywide tragedy, but for American minorities, there have always been unique terrors for them to face. Thus, you would think that they would be churning out utopian fiction by the truckload, trying to imagine worlds in which they weren't being oppressed daily for traits beyond their control. Yet the major utopian works read in this course and in most American high schools are all written by white, cishet men and women.

          Is there then an actual lack of utopian fiction written by diverse authors? If so, what reservations about the genre would such authors have? Are there different classifications of utopian fiction based on country? To answer these questions and those of Objective 3f, both utopian fiction and commentary by nonwhite people were searched for and analyzed.

          In the multiculturalism section on the course website, only African American utopian texts are listed, due probably to a disproportionate percentage of race even among nonwhite American authors. It also is likely due to the "Western civilization" specification in Objective 3f, which poses the question of whether or not the "utopian impulse" is universal. The earliest conception of what we now call a utopia can arguably be traced back to Plato's The Republic in Ancient Greece, but the "Utopia and Dystopia" website lists examples such as Tao Hua Yuan by Tao Yuanming of China and Arabic author al-Farabi's Al-Madina al-Fadilaby Al-Farabi. Given that our course is being taken in America, a Western culture that primarily consumes Western culture, there is probably a plethora of non-English utopian texts we may never be aware of. The issue seems to be transferring the multicultural utopian elements to the American utopian genre, if preliminary research is any indication.

          Apart from our course website, it is difficult to locate a list of multicultural utopian fiction. Edward K. Chan wrote an article on race in 1970s American Utopian literature, listing novels written in "the rebirth of utopia" that "stand out in their attempts to visualize the utopian subject with specific reference to racial difference" (466). "All three [of these novels] attack the problem of race at the level of the visible in order to imagine a place for race in utopia," (468) specifically on the level of the "traditional racial semiotic" (469). He claims that the reasoning for disrupting "the historical linkage between racial signifier and racial signified" is so these utopias may "escape from historical systems of racial oppression" (469). "What these examples of utopian literature do for us is show the boundary presented by this historical moment," he writes, and he quotes Gloria Anzaldúa by saying the genre needs "a new story to explain the world and our participation in it, a new value system with imagines and symbols that connect us to each other and to the planet" (483).

          Mark Tabone claims that Toni Morrison's Paradise, a novel that is commonly classified as utopian, contains a "widely studied commentary on the politics of exclusion intimately connected to the question of utopia" (129). In his article, he lists several issues responsible for the "complete absence" of scholarship on utopianism in black literature, including "utopia as politically naïve idealism or antipolitical escapist fantasy; the manifest racism and exclusivist essentialism that saturate utopias . . . and a reductive Cold War-era tendency to associate all utopias with totalitarianism, fascism, and Stalinism" (Tabone 130). However, he notes that recent decades have birthed attempts to "rehabilitate the concept and develop alternative modes for creating and reading utopian art," privileging the role of utopian literature as an imaginative vehicle for positive social change and less as a "systematic blueprint" (130).

          Meanwhile, while leaving the country limit of the United States, Rachel Haywood Ferreira explores the history of Latin American utopian and dystopian fiction in a chapter of her book, The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction. She also lists three novels that fit the genre, listing shared themes that "reflect each writer's vision of progress" for his nation: "individual merit to be valued more highly that one's inherited title or class or race; the involvement or integration of different races and immigrant groups into national life; the importance of education and literacy; the . . . benefits of new technologies of transportation and communication; and the necessity of a free press" (Ferreira 18). While there are similarities with the American novels read in the course syllabus, and there is apparent influence of literature from Europe and the United States there is a more prominent celebration of the differences found in a community. This is achieved by setting these utopian societies "in locations remote either in time or in space, using these devices of displacement to achieve Suvin's effect of cognitive estrangement of the writer's own reality" (16). Similar to the non-signification of race by African American authors, the Latin American authors appear to have removed their nation's history from their utopias in an attempt to remove any national unrest (16).

          In regards to American fiction, minority and multicultural studies are not as repressed as they are nearly absent altogether. The few nonwhite authors mentioned above tend to shy away from the traditional utopian sameness apparent in the works we've read, and the utopian ideal appears to be living peacefully despite differences in appearance or culture. Given the disturbing history of white utopian ideas concerning genetics and colonization, it is not a surprise that minorities would shy away from an intentional community carefully structured to separate themselves from the "other." The utopian genre must be adjusted to accommodate the possibilities of growth and diversity within their communities if it can truly be used for the positive social change.

          Chan, Edward K. “Utopia and the Problem of Race: Accounting for the Remainder in the Imagination of the 1970s Utopian Subject.” Utopian Studies, vol. 17, no. 3, 2006, pp. 465–490.

          Haywood Ferreira, Rachel. The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, 2011.

          “List of Utopian Literature - Famous Utopian Works.” Utopia and Dystopia, 2019, www.utopiaanddystopia.com/utopian-fiction/utopian-literature-list/.

          Tabone, Mark A. "Rethinking Paradise: Toni Morrison and Utopia at the Millennium." African American Review, vol. 49, no. 2, 2016, pp. 129-144.

Essay 3: More's Law vs. Murphy's Law: Making Utopias Entertaining

          When assigned a review of the research previous classes have performed, I was primarily concerned with searching for explorations of social change utopian fiction may achieve in our current century. This course has convinced me that the utopian genre is something our real-world dystopia must revisit: society needs hope to inspire ideal change. However, I learned from the posts I read that in order to plan a reemergence of the utopian genre, it should be cater specifically to the human psyche of our time. In understanding exactly why utopian fiction is not as popular—both due to genre conventions and the general  reaction to the subject matter–authors will be able to balance the dystopian genre of despair with the utopian proposal of hope.

          In her essay "Utopian Literature and Social Change," Ruthi McDonald's claim that "people react better to fear and are wary about hope" was an eye-opening explanation for the death of utopian fiction (2013). The modern audience knows that in their experience, "something is more likely to go wrong than right," a principle commonly named Murphy ’s Law (McDonald 2013). This sentiment is shared by Umaymah Shahid in "Teaching About an Almost Perfect Society," adding that "instinctively mankind conjures the worst-case scenario to the chaotic life he finds himself in (dystopia), instead of trying to remedy the problems (utopia)" (2015). As dystopian novels "manifest man's greatest fears," they are more appealing to modern readers (Shahid 2015). In relation to Objective 5c in our syllabus, a difficulty for the modern classroom would be breaking down the wall of cynicism that hinders the American populace. When tragedy and panic are common in news headlines and Twitter hashtags, serious utopian thinking runs the risk of seeming satirical.

          As mentioned in the first essay for the final exam, there are also the literary constraints of the utopian genre that have not been rectified with new utopian novels. "The author's priority is to outline a social theory," as Alicia Costello points out in her 2011 essay, "The Fight Between Ideas and Mindless Entertainment." On the other side of the genre, dystopian novels like Oryx and Crake are richer in conflict and "more concerned with telling a story than promoting an agenda" (McDonald 2013).  The book "doesn’t try to hit the reader over the head with a prearranged outcome," but merely offers options and doesn't try to convince the reader which one is best (McDonald 2013). Utopian fiction tends to choose the opposite approach of a "dry and drawn out writing style" that is "employed in the literature because the first and foremost goal is to inform, and entertainment is not a guaranteed by-product" (Shahid 2015). Typically, the lack of entertainment is due to a lack of action, "with no dynamic characters or elements of plot" (Shahid 2015).

          So, how can utopian fiction have convincing action while simultaneously convincing its audience of utopian ideals? The general consensus among these essays is the personal connection that authors like Callenbach and Atwood have utilized. Costello claims that Ernest Callenbach, author of Ecotopia, "recognizes the tensions between the social theory and the personal narrative," giving his main character Weston pre-judgment of the utopia he visits and making him "unlearn it all when he gets there" (2011). This seems like it would be a recurring plot to utopian novels, but it was not commonly performed in the depth Callenbach gave his work. Shahid adds that he did not even have to abandon the instructional tract format to accomplish this, highlighting that the combination of "informative essay-style writing and journal writing" ensures that "the reader is both entertained as well as informed of Ecotopia" (2015). There are still some recognized sacrifices to character development and narrative conflict (Shahid 2015), yet in the end, the takeaway seems to read that as long as utopian authors are creative and cater to their intended audience, utopian fiction can still work.

          In conclusion, the common thread tying these essays together is the notion that utopian narratives must be willing to add personal conflict for the main characters if they wish to establish a personal connection with their audiences. Hope can still be inspired in the hearts of those that are able to address their fears in the process. Perhaps by playing the expectations of Murphy's Law, revealing that sometimes things may indeed go right instead of wrong, audiences can discover a new taste for utopian settings. If the author does not turn the hard work of a character to maintain their utopia into an active conflict, however, readers may not be invested enough in the ideals to sacrifice their entertainment.

Costello, Alicia. "The Fight Between Ideas and Mindless Entertainment." LITR 5431 Literary & Historical Utopias. 2011.

McDonald, Ruthi Engelke. "Utopian Literature and Social Change." LITR 5431 Literary & Historical Utopias. 2013.

Shahid, Umaymah. "Teaching About an Almost Perfect Society." LITR 5431 Literary & Historical Utopias. 2015.