LITR 5737 Literary & Historical Utopias UHCL 2005 final exam submission

LITR 5737: Literary & Historical Utopias
Final Exam Submission 2005

Bryon Smith

LITR 5737 2005 final

Topic 2. Evaluate the injection of “millennialism” into the utopian narrative. How does millennialism change the concept or dynamics of utopia? What literary or cultural advantages or disadvantages accrue? Refer to Revelation, Parable of the Sower, a presentation, and perhaps to another text, as helpful. Refer to Objective 2 and especially 2c.

5:40PM-6:50PM

Millennialism serves to thicken the plot of the utopian narrative. Like conflict, the idea that the end is near gives people something to fear, something to worry about, and something to work against. Utopia, after all, can be a very boring place. Arriving at Utopia, however, or fleeing from Dystopia once things have gone horribly wrong, can be a much more interesting situation, if not a desirable one. The book of Revelations is a perfect example of this. At the end of Revelations, heaven, in the form of New Jerusalem, has descended to earth. This place is undeniably a utopia, with no poverty, no suffering, no death, no age. It is, however, not described in a great deal of detail. What is described is that which shall not be present: temples, lamps, sun, moon, or sin. Before the arrival of New Jerusalem, however, there is a great deal of very graphic description. The plagues and sufferings visited upon humans are recounted with an unflinching eye to detail. Several of the middle chapters of Revelations resemble horror films of the Friday the 13^th variety. These more colorful chapters of Revelations have, historically, been very popular, probably for the same reasons as tragedies and other tales of woe.

In Parable of the Sower, the reader is presented with a nightmare vision of the future. In this tale of woe, the narrator suffers a great deal of hardship, hardship which, while it starts out heavy enough, increases drastically as the plot progresses. This is interesting to the reader. The reader begins with simple curiosity about what the narrator’s life is like in the future. When this life begins to reveal itself as decidedly different from that of the average reader, the interest increases. As the reader discovers that things appear to be not only bad, but worsening, they will be unable to look away; it’s like passing an accident sight, you don’t want to see, but you can’t look away.

The idea that something is coming, that something is happening, causes millennialist novels to be far more gripping than utopian novels. It is difficult, in a utopian novel, to care about the characters, beyond perhaps a twinge of disgust and envy. When reading a dystopian novel, this is not the case. One tends to pity the characters and wish them well. Even if the reader dislikes the characters and wishes them ill, it is usually an emphatic dislike. This is because dystopian novels are, by nature, millennialist to some degree. In dystopian novels there is a struggle against a prevailing trend. This trend can be either an established status quo, or an evolving trend which threatens to become a future status quo. The end (of something) is always nigh in dystopian novels. Inevitably there is the idea that something is changing. In Anthem, the change is a break in the old order. In Parable, the old order has already largely broken down and the struggle to replace it has begun.

The idea that the end is coming is not limited to fiction. Humans, in our life of perpetual struggle, have occasionally latched onto the idea that the end is nigh. Sometimes this is merely the end of their own suffering, sometimes the end of everything. American culture abounds with examples of groups who insist that we are living in the end times. Some groups, such as the Oneida community, have even believed that some of the things associated with the end of the world have already occurred, such as the second coming of Christ, which they dated at 70 C.E.

Topic 3. How much does Callenbach’s Ecotopia resemble and differ from previous utopian texts? How much is an ecotopian concept already built into previous utopian or dystopian fictions, or not? Refer primarily to Ecotopia but also to two other texts and a presentation.

2:31PM-3:30PM 3:40PM-4:00PM

Ecotopia bears many similarities to other utopian texts. One of the most obvious features of Ecotopia is the importance that the residents place upon trees. This of course is very similar to Herland, where the residents work hard to care for their forests. Herland, however, is described as being like a giant park or garden, filled with trees and other plants that serve humans, usually by bearing fruit. In fact, the residents of Herland have deliberately propagated fruit bearing trees out of purely ornamental ones. It could be said that the residents of Herland view nature as a sort of mother who works for her children. In Ecotopia, nature, while it may be personified and even deified, is not viewed as existing to serve humans. Ecotopians do cultivate trees for wood and fruit, but the reader is left with no doubt that they would also cultivate “useless” trees that, to an outsider, would seem to serve no purpose. Herland and Ecotopia also resemble each other in their recognition of the need to control population.

The importance of trees in these two texts parallels that of The Parable of the Sower. In Parable, as in Herland, trees provide food; the residents of the walled community depend upon fruit and acorns to supplement their diet. Parable’s trees do more than this however. In Parable trees also provide protection and a feeling of security. At one point, the residents guarding the community are kept safe by hiding behind pomegranate bushes. Later, Lauren and her traveling companions hide behind trees during a firefight. They also clearly prefer camping among trees to camping in the open, presumably because of the cover they provide and their resistance to bullets. Perhaps the most profound use of trees in Parable is their spiritual use. At the end of Parable, Lauren and her companions plant trees in memory of their lost family and friends. This, of course, is symbolic of change, (“seed to tree / tree to forest,”) but also of renewal, regeneration, and rebirth. The trees in Parable may symbolically be the tree of life of Revelations. This image of renewing, regenerating trees is also present in Ecotopia. The land of Ecotopia was once thickly forested, then was devastated by logging, clear cutting, and pollution, and finally was reforested.

This pattern of fecundity, devastation, and regeneration, can be seen in some form in all of the texts we’ve examined this semester. In Parable the devastation appears to be nearing its climax, but the regeneration is promised by Lauren’s acorns. In Genesis we see the initial fecundity, while in Revelations we see the climax of devastation, followed by the renewal of the New Jerusalem and the tree of life. Herland’s population appears to have gone through the cycle twice, with devastation occurring at their initial founding, and again later when their population grows too great. Both instances are followed with a rebirth. In Looking Backwards, Mr. West falls asleep when the devastation is reaching its zenith, and awakes after the rebirth has already occurred. In Anthem, the fecundity appears to be technological, lost in the distant past, while the devastation is everywhere present, and the renewal appears to be present in Prometheus, if only in seed form again. Thus Anthem differs from Ecotopia in the kind of fecundity it has lost. These two differ in other ways as well. In Anthem technology is valued while trees and nature, symbolized by ferocious wild beasts, are feared. In spite of this, the trees in Anthem provide a safe hiding place for Prometheus and Gaia. This is similar to the function of trees in Parable. In Ecotopia, trees are not feared, nor does it seem that the ferocious animals which are known to dwell among them are feared. As in other texts, Ecotopian trees provide shelter, both indirectly as wood and plastic housing, and directly, in the form of hollow redwood shrines.

It does seem that utopias, in order to be utopias, must be ecotopias to some extent. In literary utopias such as Herland and Ecotopia, the need to maintain the health of the environment is recognized. In Herland, some of this recognition seems to come naturally, perhaps resulting from the inhabitants recognition of nature and their home as a kind of mother. Much of it, however, seems to result from their experience, having once overpopulated their land and overtaxed their resources. Historical utopias have also recognized this need to live in harmony with the world around you. The members of The Farm, Dancing Rabbit, and the Kibbutzim all seem to recognize that humans cannot form successful, healthy communities by destroying the land they inhabit. The kibbutzniks, for example, recognize the need to reforest Israel in order to transform it from swamps and deserts. It is also worth noting that Parable, one of the more dystopian novels we’ve examined, tells a story of people who are unwilling to maintain a harmony with nature. They’ve allowed their population to grow unchecked, they’ve polluted their environment, poisoned their water supply, and changed the global climate. It is as a direct result of these actions that their world is so unpleasant to inhabit.