LITR 5439 Utopias 2011 midterm samples

LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias

Model Assignments

Midterm Exams 2011

Omar Syed

Utopias are scarier than Dystopias

When I first heard about Dr. White’s course, I started thinking about the Utopian literature that I’d read in the past. I’d read Plato’s The Republic as part of a high school English class, along with Fahrenheit 451 as pleasure reading in high school, as well as The Giver, Gathering Blue and Messenger later in college, but hadn’t really lumped them into Utopian or Dystopian compartments in my mind. For me, they were merely novels that gave knowledge, much as any book gives knowledge. Utopias look at concepts such as eugenics and equality rather than fairness as positive, which in of itself and alone scares me. Dystopias on the other hand, show how frightening the world may become if such Utopian idealists have their way, a world where equality is forced upon people rather than any thought to fairness.

In terms of objective 2b, the idea of equality, while sounding rather rosy on the outside, is mind numbing on the inside, once we get inside the books. Regardless of how it’s presented in The Giver, Anthem, Utopia or Woman on the Edge of Time, the idea of everyone having equal share in a common property is simply boring. Perhaps Barbara Streisand said it best when she noted, “Imagine how boring life would be if we were all the same.” (http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/29617.html)

If objective 2b asks the question, “what problems rise from a utopian story that minimizes conflict and maximizes equality and harmony?”, then the answer is that the plotlines and storylines of Utopian literature have no conflict happening and thus have no driving force keeping the story going. For example, with Looking Backward’s Dr. Leete’s Disney-esque explanation of life in the new millennium, including his slight patronizing nod in chapter 14 to the waiter working at the dining hall, I was under the impression that it was unequivocally false, hollow and I’ll gladly admit that I was waiting for some seedy underbelly to poke its way out, causing Julian to run in sheer terror and horror. When no such thing happened, I was left despondent and unfortunately bored.

In short, Utopian novels usually deal with horrific aspects (at least to me) such as Plato’s idea of birth mothers and raising children away from their parents with no knowledge of their parents, an idea that was lifted by Lois Lowry for The Giver, and seemingly Ayn Rand for Anthem, as her protagonist Equality speaks of the Palace of Mating and Time of Mating as being shameful since these places and times mean that he doesn’t know his parents, and in fact, the mating ritual as it were is more akin to rape than anything borne of love. Dystopian novels, on the other hand, Among The Hidden, which deals with an America that has banned the birthing of more than two children, thus forcing families who chose to have three or more children to hide them from the world, had a retelling scene where 40 “hidden” children make themselves known to the government and are mercilessly slaughtered in broad daylight; as horrific as this scene is, it at least gives the hope that at least people can fight against this so-called Utopian future to build something better, as the series continues by showing how the protagonist third child in one family is adopted by a childless family and goes on learn how his seemingly Utopian community works, after being hidden from the world well into his teenage years.

In building that far flung future, Dystopian and Utopian novels alike also fit into various niches of literature, including science fiction, romance and the concept of a soliloquy versus a dialogue. To further explain the lattermost niche, Utopias form soliloquy, much like Dr. Leete’s explanations in Looking Backward, whereas Dystopias deal with more than one world view, thus allowing a dialogue between those two or more points of view which then interact with or against one another. The Giver, for example, would be a very different book if Jonas, for instance, agreed with what his father’s job required him to do in terms of releasing ill babies. However, because Jonas didn’t agree that releasing was good, we have that dialogue between Jonas and The Giver’s point of view, and the world view of Jonas’ community. To further explain, as mentioned in LaKisha Jones’ 2009 midterm submission "Non-Existence of the Individual in Utopias", “we learn that in utopian communities, ideal social and political states are constructed through collective efforts, and there is no said existence for “the individual” in these pieces.” Since Jonas in The Giver, Equality in Anthem, and Guy in Fahrenheit 451 all disagreed with the collective view of their communities, their individualism allowed them to converse, thus dialoguing, with the world view of their so-called Utopian communities. There can’t be a conversation or dialogue when someone’s just talking with themselves, much like the Koan quote of “Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?” by Hakuin Ekaku. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dan#The_sound_of_one_hand) One hand makes no noise and it needs something, be it another hand, a thigh or a table or other something with which to hit and make the clapping sound, so too can there be no dialogue between just one person, or in this case, one world view.

Another fear of Utopias stems from the Utopian convention of the concept of eugenics. In Looking Backward, for example, chapter 22 deals in part with Dr. Leete’s explanation that, “The number of persons, more or less absolutely lost to the working force through physical disability, of the lame, sick, and debilitated, which constituted such a burden on the able-bodied in your day, now that all live under conditions of health and comfort, has shrunk to scarcely perceptible proportions, and with every generation is becoming more completely eliminated.” Eliminated? In that scenario, those who are disabled, sick, lame, and debilitated would either be killed, aborted at or before birth or otherwise not be allowed to live.

The point being here that along with Looking Backward, other Utopian texts make the idea of eugenics sound highly attractive, let alone plausible, where as other Dystopia novels make the idea of eugenics seem horrific and closer to Hitler’s idea for a master race. For example, look at Equality’s remembrance of his community’s mandates in chapter 1 of Anthem, “We strive to be like all our brother men, for all men must be alike.” If everyone is alike, no differences mean (to a Utopian ideal) that there is no conflict, hence no wars, and perhaps as a result, no sorrow, pain or anguish over loss. However, that also leads to a far more superficial life experience, as referenced by the dialogue between Jonas and his parents in chapter 16 of The Giver where Jonas asks his parents if they love him. Jonas’ parents in turn, have no clue as how to process this question as love, to them, is an imprecise terminology and doesn’t fit into their superficial world view.

In terms of objective 1b, Utopian literature involves other genres, such as romance, and science fiction. The romance narrative or plotline between Julian and the two Ediths in Looking Backward, the romances we see between Van and Ellador, Jeff with Celis, and Terry with Alima in Herland. Even Jonas’ initial infatuation, crush or attraction to Fiona in The Giver might work as a romance if the romance was allowed to blossom, rather than having Jonas realize that Fiona finds no qualms with “releasing” or euthanizing and killing the elderly. All these love stories, despite how atypical they might seem, are part of the greater genre of romance and can be traced to modern reinterpretations such as the idea of a man risking time travel to save the mother of his unborn child and his unborn child from a killing machine, in The Terminator.

Time travel makes up a good part of science fiction and even in our Utopian and Dystopian novels, as seen in Looking Backward, and Woman on the Edge of Time; the idea of fantastic voyages to other realms, as seen in Herland, or feats of futuristic technology, as seen in Anthem, Fahrenheit 451 and The Giver. Julian in Looking Backward, and Connie in Woman on the Edge of Time, time travel to the far future, each seeing a glimpse of what may come. Often times, we think of The Time Machine, or Back to the Future as purely science fiction tales, but these books and films also show us how Utopian or Dystopian future life may be based on the actions we currently do today, in fact, Dr Emmet Brown in Back to the Future notes that, “Anything you do can have repercussions on future events” just as the characters in Woman on the Edge of Time furtively warn Connie that her actions and the actions of those living in the present (or the past) can have dire consequences on the future (or their present) and the future is shown as a time when women have given up their right to bear babies and men can nurse children, horrifying Connie (and myself). Thus Connie utilizes her time in the present and her actions in the mental hospital to stop the Utopian and Dystopian future from coming about.

Utopian fiction turns the idea of plot development on its proverbial head as there is no real action. In Looking Backward, Dr. Leete, for example, explains in chapter 22 to Julian that, “We have no national, state, county, or municipal debts, or payments on their account. We have no sort of military or naval expenditures for men or materials, no army, navy, or militia. We have no revenue service, no swarm of tax assessors and collectors.” Personally, with all those nos, there’s also no plotline and no driving force for me to read the novel. If there is no military, there is no war. If there are no taxes, there is no reason to work to pay those taxes. In short, there is truly no reason for people to do things in such a Utopia other than their pure desire to do so. This lack of driving force makes for a very boring story with no reason to continue with it.

Other reasons, including family issues, individual versus collective and soliloquy versus dialogue, make Utopian and Dystopian literature worth reading and give it both plot and structure. The bulk of Utopian and Dystopian novels take their view of family from Plato’s The Republic, where he noted that “All these women shall be wives in common to all the men, and not one of them shall live privately with any man; the children too should be held in common so that no parent shall know which is his own offspring, and no child shall know his parent" (Plato 119).( http://faculty.weber.edu/dkrantz/en4620ren/utopia_platolec.html) Plato’s idea of having “common” families is seen in The Giver and Anthem.

In The Giver, Jonas and The Giver talk about how the family structure in his community work, “As long as they're still working and contributing to the community, they'll go and live with the other Childless Adults. And they won't be part of my life anymore.” (124) and he makes the realization that, “So our children, if we have them, won't know who their parents-of-the-parents are, either.” (125) Jonas’ society and its views on childcare, family values and what is deemed equal for all is lifted straight from Plato’s Republic. This extreme focus on the nuclear family erodes any sense of true familial ties, heredity as well as erases all solidifying bonds between parents and their children, let alone through generations. If Jonas doesn’t know who his grandparents are, and as he concludes, neither will his own children, then he forms the corollary that the family system he is a part of, while “it works,” as the Giver notes, isn’t much in terms of genuine familial relationships at all.

Lack of genuine familial relationships can be seen for Equality and Liberty in Anthem, Equality notes that he “would not let the Golden One be sent to the Palace [of Mating]”because the Palace of Mating is nothing more than glorified rape and he doesn’t want her forced to have sex with someone she doesn’t love.

Being forced to have sex with someone they don’t love is how many would characterize part of the concept of rape. The loss of control as another person forces their will over another’s strikes fear in women, but also in men. That loss of control and to an extent, the concept of fairness, characterizes Utopian and Dystopian novels and that is the crux of what scares me. I would hate to live in a land where another’s will is forced upon me. Personally, I believe while the Big Guy Upstairs has a plan for all of us, we all have Free Will and can make our own decisions which in turn will affect our final destiny. Utopian and Dystopian literature take the idea and concept of Free Will and, like the adage about the baby with the bathwater, throw it away. The people of Anthem were told what to do from the moment they were born. If they were too smart, like Equality, they were berated; if they grew too tall or too strong, or were too weak, or were of too diminished capacity mentally, like Union, who is deemed to have only “half a brain” as Equality notes early in the novel, then they too were berated by the Council and the higher ups of the community. Jonas’ community runs on the same (ironic choice of words) mentality, where the idea of sameness is highlighted and aberrations such as Fiona’s red hair or Jonas’, the Giver’s and Rosemary’s blue eyes were either frowned upon, like Fiona’s hair, or seen as part of the bugs that can’t be worked out yet, as the Giver tells Jonas when Jonas realizes that the sled, apple and Fiona’s hair all have the color red, which Jonas can now see since he both has the power to “See Beyond” in terms of color, just as the Giver can “Hear Beyond” with music, as well as because Jonas had stopped taking the pills for the “stirrings”; it can be implied that the pills also numbed Jonas’ community’s peoples senses to hearing, touch, taste, smell and sight.

A world without the five senses or a muted version of the senses strikes me as horrific. We each have our own personal Utopias in our minds, in our imaginations, and in some sense, these mental images we store bear witness to what we’d like to be able to do, or in some small way, learn from the Utopias and Dystopias presented not only in the course, but in general. One of the things I’m interested in learning from this subject is how to appreciate and value each others’ differences, strengths, weaknesses and how to utilize those differences to help both each other individually as well as a community as a whole. A land where people simply do as they’re told frightens me to the core, and I’m quick to mock such an idea, much as Jonas does in one of the later chapters of The Giver, “I will take care of that sir. I will take care of that sir,” Jonas mimicked in a cruel, sarcastic voice. “I will do whatever you like sir. I will kill people sir. Old people? Small newborn people? I’d be happy to kill them, sir. Thank you for your instructions, sir.” (152)

Of course Jonas does this sarcastic mimicry as a reaction to and response to his realization of the horrific truth of both his father’s job as well as the demeanor with which loved ones like his father and Fiona go about their daily business, having believed that they are helping those who are old, weak, sick disabled and otherwise not fit for the Utopian community in which they live by “releasing”, euthanizing and killing them.

The idea of family life, friendships, love; these all stem from the idea I presented earlier, the concept of appreciating and valuing each others’ differences, strengths, weaknesses and utilizing those differences to help both each other individually as well as a community as a whole and this idea is closest to what I can mentally conjure up in terms of my own personal view of a Utopia.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine Books, 1987. Print.

Haddix, Margaret, Peterson. Among the Hidden (Shadow Children #1). New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, 2000. Print.