Marisela N. Caylor       

July 6, 2013

Essay 2: The Value of Utopian Literature

          Before taking this class, I had limited knowledge of Utopian Literature. As a student in high school and college student, my exposure to utopias came in the form of dystopias. We are under the impression that students are immediately drawn to dystopian novels which could be correct, in some cases but they should be exposed to Utopias as well (Obj. 3e.). Overall, the texts we read in our seminar serve as valuable examples of how everyone should be introduced to both utopias and dystopias. As a class, we all agreed that Utopian Literature can be “talky” and “long-winded,” but if taught with diligence and patience, students would be well versed in the value of Utopian Literature. Utopias benefit students by offering texts to value Utopian Literature as a formal subject, open up discussions through other interdisciplinary fields of study, and expose them to historical utopias and intentional communities. The purpose of my essay is to examine the positives in evaluating Utopia as Literature, how to overcome the stigma of utopias serving to educate rather than entertain, and realizing the value of historical utopias / intentional communities that I covered in my Research Posts.

Utopia as Literature/Teaching Utopia

           As a Literature student, I have been exposed to many types of novels, plays, and essays but my exposure to utopias was limited. When I enrolled in the course, I had just come off of an intense examination of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games YA series in my Rhetorical Criticism seminar. In other words, I was exhausted with reading dystopian novels. Utopias offered a refreshing change from the drab world of dystopias and offered much insight into the Conventions of Utopian / Dystopian Literature that I was not aware of before taking this course. I enjoyed the course immensely and it was a valuable resource to help me understand Rhetorical Criticism but I understood the exhaustion that sometimes avid readers experience when they read too much of one type of genre. Again, in high school and undergraduate courses, I had been exposed only to dystopian texts. Utopian Literature remedied my exhaustion and provided me with a fresh outlook of utopias as historical and literary subjects. I learned that these two genres are interdependent on one another and can serve as platforms to launch other genres (Obj. 1a). I never imagined that this course would be the epitome of Homer’s Literature of Ideas concept: “To Entertain and Inform.”

          This course offered an array of Conventions that were an invaluable resource when analyzing what type of genre or characterizations of utopia an author was trying to convey within their work. Dr. White provided an indispensable array of Handouts on his website that came in handy when trying to examine the texts. After examining these Conventions and Objectives provided, I began to see an important pattern in Utopian Literature. This allowed me to understand the work and look past the convention of “wordiness” that is prominent in most Utopian novels. I was able to read Thomas More’s Utopia through a different lens and I felt I have come far from where I was during the Midterm (only a few weeks ago). More’s tract intimidated me but I have seen the value in this formative text and its influence on Utopian Literature. I have become more comfortable with the idea that at some point, the authors of Utopian Literature must explain how the utopia was formed. The explanations tend to be lengthy and wordy but prove immensely valuable to open up the forum for so many other questions that arise from the utopia’s formation. We want to know “Why Utopia?” and “What are the requirements for living there?”

In Thomas More’s Utopia, Raphael Hythloday acts as a “guide” through utopia by simply, explaining the community in a series of Socratic dialogues. After using this particular set of Conventions, I have been able to dissect More’s Utopia and use this tool to better understand the reasons for the wordiness of Utopian Literature. Hythloday describes Utopia’s communal life:

No town desires to enlarge its bounds, for the people consider themselves rather as tenants than landlords. They have built, over all the country, farmhouses for husbandmen, which are well contrived, and furnished with all things necessary for country labour. Inhabitants are sent, by turns, from the cities to dwell in them; no country family has fewer than forty men and women in it, besides two slaves. There is a master and a mistress set over every family, and over thirty families there is a magistrate.  (More 2.2a)

More’s text reveals a communal way of life that enjoys shared property rather than private property. This convention demonstrates the way the inhabitants feel they are participating toward the good of the entire community rather than their own individual needs (Obj. 3c.). Utopos had a small set of people within a certain area with one leader per area. This is a small-scale utopia within another which is ideally the best way to set up the utopia for a successful run, much like an existing intentional community in Virginia called Twin Oaks (Obj. 3a.). Twin Oaks operates with only about one hundred people at a time and I believe keeping this number low is the key to its success. Once it is overrun with too many people, we begin to see differing opinions come to light and power struggles may topple the community.

          One of the ways to keep Utopian Literature from becoming too overbearing and boring is to examine the author’s insight on society or satire present in the text. As readers we should ask ourselves: “What is the text trying to tell me about utopias and present society?”(Obj. 3a.). The novels we examined in our course were written over several decades and as the times change, some principles can age but are still worth reading. The utopias may vary through the ages but the conventions of the literature stay the same over time. The value of the novel’s time period comes into play when explaining another advantage of the course. As I pointed out in my Midterm “typically, in Literature seminars we only learn about one time period, whereas in Utopian Literature, we are learning about several time periods and some in the future” (Caylor 3). This is an advantage of Utopian Literature and one that would help students see the Conventions of utopia are similar no matter when they are written.

          Another advantage to Utopian Literature is its ability to open up discussions about the texts’ message, prose style, and adaptation to other disciplines of study. Utopias tend to open up the floor for the question: “What is the author trying to tell us about our own society?” when it is pitted up against utopia. As Literature students, we must adhere to the “death of the author” concept but we always move towards the author’s message about our society when discussing utopias. This is great question for high school and college students who may dismiss the message and view the texts as “hippie” nonsense. I have found when I read these novels I have learned to question what is going on around me. Students would benefit greatly by Utopian Literature’s ability to make us uncomfortable with the idea of having to live in a communal society without technology and individuality (Obj. 3c.). This is a scary concept but one that utopias bring up time and time again that is worth examining in a classroom setting.

          Ayn Rand’s Anthem is taught widely in schools and several of my classmates have taught this book in middle school. I agree teaching this book provides students insight on what a repressed, totalitarian community would feel like. This book raises so many questions about politics, government, history, sociology, science, and psychology (Obj. 4a.). Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s Herland should be taught in schools alongside this Anthem because it would present a lot of questions about the emergence of a true utopia in Herland and contrasts Anthem’s repressed society. Taught side by side, I feel these two books would benefit students greatly and open up discussion for the importance of utopias. Dr. White reviewed The Founding Texts of European America which provided another valuable resource and offered examples of utopian principles within our founding government. I found this presentation interesting because I had not thought of this principle at first, but quickly realized our country was founded on the basis of utopian principles we have been learning in our seminar. Utopian Literature is useful to Literature students and could be analyzed in a number of ways. The rhetoric, Socratic Dialogues, and numerous speeches made in several of our course texts would make a great subject for Rhetorical Criticism and Literary Theory courses (Obj. 4d.). Many of these texts could be compared alongside Feminist views, Marxism, Cultural Criticism, and Dramatist Criticism. Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake would pair well in a Rhetorical Criticism course. For example in Ecotopia, “In Ecotopia’s Big Woods” a long explanation is given about the importance of woods to the Ecotopians. These passages can be reviewed and analyzed through a Rhetorical Criticism lens. Overall, the quality of all the novels we read was really good and fit well within a Graduate Literature course. I must confess that some of the novels would become too wordy and long but I found that my perseverance paid off because this course taught me to use my skills as a Literature student to analyze the world around me and the conventions of Utopian Literature can be easily adapted to other forms of Literature.

Personal/Professional Interests in Suburbs and Exurbs as Utopia

          My personal interest in utopia involves suburbs, exurbs, and intentional communities. I became interested in this topic when I examined Twin Oaks intentional community for my Web Review assignment and listening to Kristine Vermillion’s Web Review about suburbs as utopia. I was vaguely familiar with intentional communities or “communes” and began to notice another convention of Utopian Literature similar to these real communities which involves: communal living and dining, its focus on gardens and sustainable living, and cooperation vs. competition. I have lived in suburbs all my life, this topic sparked my interest and I set out to find why the suburbs and exurbs would be seen as utopia.

          My first reaction to intentional communities was “Do they really work?” While researching Twin Oaks, I learned more about its dedication to making this community successful. Through communal living, shared vehicles, and shared work, Twin Oaks had made a small-scale utopia very successful over the last forty years. Twin Oaks was founded as a Walden Two community that adopted the behaviorist theories of psychologist, B.F. Skinner which exemplifies Utopian Literature’s range into interdisciplinary studies. When I began to think more about Twin Oaks as a small-scale utopia, I began to wonder about the suburbs as utopia. In Objective 3., the notion of utopias as “they don’t work” is brought up and I began to look into why suburbs would fit into this category. What I found was that intentional communities are just that, intentional. The community was built intentionally for the purpose of housing individuals who are like-minded, share a common vision of utopia, and live for the community. The community favors community vs. individuality which is one of the conventions of utopia. Other than living in the same style house and choosing to socialize with your neighbors, the suburbs are a “voluntary” utopia. You can participate if you want to, but if you don’t you just shut your own door and leave the community outside. For example in Ecotopia, Weston stays in his own private hotel room but when he finds The Cove, a news reporter commune, he is overjoyed with being around these like-minded people. He feels at home there. In the suburbs, my neighbors might be like-minded but we do not have communal feasts and share household duties, although there has been a time or two I would have volunteered to cut their grass.

Through my Research Post about Lakewood Community in California, I found many negatives to the suburbs including the exclusion of minorities and discrimination (Obj. 4c.). I would like to think that everyone is welcome to live in the suburbs but there are instances when this is frowned upon because someone’s ideal utopia may only welcome families at certain income levels and certain races. For example, in Oryx and Crake, the compounds only house the employees and their families and have large fences to keep the people from the pleeblands out of their paradise. This is where some intentional communities, like Twin Oaks would differ from the suburbs because they tend to welcome anyone no matter race, class, gender, or sexual orientation. Overall, I found this topic to be fascinating and the suburbs as utopia should be mentioned as a broader topic within our Objectives.

As the suburbs become more diverse and overcrowded, people are looking for an alternative place to live that will take them out even more out of the city and into new frontiers. My second Research Post examined Seasteading communities, and the cruise ship, The World. I thought of these communities as the “ultimate exurbs” because they were housed on the water, far away from civilization (Obj. 3b.). The World cruise ship is for the uber-rich population that can live with like-minded adventurers but comes with a stiff price tag. Who said you can’t buy paradise? The cruise ship continually circumnavigates the Earth but is only exclusive to those who can afford it. My utopia does exclude people but these strict guidelines allow for exclusion to only those rich enough to buy an apartment on the ship. As I ventured further, my research took me to www.Seasteading.org. This is a foundation created by Patri Friedman and other entrepreneurs to build floating cities and find new and innovative ways to govern communities. Once these communities find a successful form of government, Friedman would like to test these ideas on a larger-scale government. These floating communities seem to me like utopia on the high seas. Friedman’s goal is to rid countries of poverty and find ways to use the ocean’s resources such as kelp and seaweed as renewable energies. However, the downside to this concept would be that as the Earth’s resources are diminishing, we are looking to other sources which we will eventually diminish as well. This concept reminded me of the problems prevalent in Oryx and Crake.  Once the world’s resources are gone, there is no other planet Earth to take from. These are the dangers of trying to find utopia, there are consequences. As a larger scale project, I would include the suburbs, exurbs as utopia and would include towns built as safe havens for minority groups. For example, I would research further into the African towns and settlements Indian and Oklahoma Territories to find out more about their inception of utopia, their rate of success, and the strengths/opportunities of these towns (Obj. 3c.). The Seasteading communities and African towns would benefit the course to be discussed in more detail or included in the seminar’s Objectives as another version of intentional communities (Obj. 3a).

Overall my experience in Utopian Literature has been a positive experience and I have learned so much about dystopia’s opposite, utopia. However, I do not believe that there will ever be a successful large-scale utopia because it includes too many people with varying opinions who may not be working towards a common vision. The United States was founded upon the principle; however, we exercise our rights as its citizens to choose to be communal with our neighbors or not. The benefit of examining Utopian Literature is it offers suggestions to society on how to live better, smarter, and peacefully. Whether we want to comply is up to us but Utopian Literature is still a valuable resource that could offer helpful solutions for society’s ills.  

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. New York: Anchor Books, 2003. Print.

Callenbach, Ernest. Ecotopia. New York: Bantam Books, 1975. Print.

Gilman, Charlotte P. Herland. New York: Dover, 1998. Print.

Horace. “Horace on Literature: ‘To Entertain & Inform.’” Web. 10 June 2013. (accessed from Dr. White’s LITR 5439 website).    

The Seasteading Institute. www.seasteading.org 2 July 2013.

Twin Oaks Webpage. www.twinoaks.org 20 June 2013.