Jessica Myers

06/30/2015

A Literature of Ideas

While reading the assigned utopian fiction, I can feel myself begin to be drawn into the aura of peace and joyful living. I am lulled by the idea of always finding pleasure in work (that idea appeals to the workaholic in me). And then my mind begins to question the parameters of said utopia. How would we really live in plastic tubes? Wouldn’t we suffocate and die? How would I feel if someone told me I could only have ONE child? Would I be satisfied with just that one? Would I be okay with enslaving people for breaking the rules? These questions begin to plague me and all the peaceful feelings are replaced with feelings of frustration and angst. Then I go to class, and we begin to discuss and question the literature, and I really begin to understand and appreciate it as a “literature of ideas.”  Although a utopia is unlikely to ever come about in actuality, the genre allows for the exploration of possibilities and their potential effects on society. At times, utopian literature does lack the excitement of a true novel, yet it creates the opportunity to have controversial conversations without sparks flying.

People have been debating and discussing ideas since the beginning of time. They become much more intriguing when you create some type of scenario with them. Kristine Vermillion points out in her essay “Problem Solvers on Steroids” that “a work of literature can go places sermons and lectures could never go – providing a space for interaction that might otherwise be completely unattainable.” I think this is why Jesus told parables. They gave people more to think about and discuss instead of just giving them a lecture about what he wanted them to know. Stories make things more applicable than listening to a theoretical lecture about it. Vermillion also claims that utopian literature “has way more effect than any reading of Jane Austen could ever provoke.” Those are strong words to someone who is an Austen lover. However, Austen’s novels follow a formula: don’t be fooled by the suave charming one; marry the quiet reserved one. Vermillion is right in pointing out that utopian literature forces us to think about and question the way we view the world. Next, we feel compelled to verbalize something about those questions and ideas, which lead to discussions of “literature, genre, and literary conventions along with religion, politics, economics, race, and sex.”

Utopian literature also gives a place to discuss what won’t work and where our society might be leading us at the present moment. Katie Parnian explains that “one person’s utopia could easily be another’s dystopia in that the societal needs and desires are not similarly matched to every ideal system of perfection.” It is good to be aware of what ideals others hold as important and realize that not everyone can agree. Therefore, perfection cannot be achieved. She goes on to note “Since the richness and diversity of human individuality and needs prohibits any society or government from satisfying everyone, the most workable definition for a feasible utopia would be the ideal system of values, attitudes, and personal philosophies that one lives their life in accordance to.” This literature helps us to realize which ideas of human individualism are most important to us, and which ones we would potentially be willing to sacrifice, if any. Not only does the reader question the world of the utopia, but they “question the world around them and foster critical thinking skills.” This literature helps us to develop our thinking and opinions. It challenges us to not just walk around like zombies and accept whatever someone tells us as truth but to push and prod at that idea, until we truly understand it, true or not.

Utopian literature gives authors a forum to express their ideas and draw the world’s attention to areas where they feel need improvement. Jenna Zucha points out that “Even though the utopian society has yet to be obtained in its complete form in reality, many of the ideas proposed in such texts, when removed from context, have the ability to function in the real world or at least as an attempt for human progress.” This literature is not just a place for people who are blogging about life’s little irritations or their feelings that day. It has a unique “function as a platform to describe the horrible aspects of reality while offering a means to discuss change.” It is also not pop-fiction where it will cause a sensation today and be forgotten tomorrow. This literature expresses ideas and concerns that we as a society still wrestle with today. Zucha concludes, “Utopian literature is popular and continues to grow as a genre because people need to exhaust all possibilities of what might function as a perfect world or ideal community as a means to survive and progress.” People need to have the ability to process and explore ways to better society, and utopian literature gives them the ability to discuss and debate the functionality of the ideas presented.

The feeling of frustration begins to fade as I realize that the purpose of utopian literature is not to fix the world in any set way. The purpose is to expose problems and explore potential solutions: a literature of ideas. I would even say that these authors want us to expose problems they create in their utopia so that we could further better it and make it a greater utopia. Because we are reading stories, the worlds the authors create become more relatable. We are no longer reading some random person’s mad rants on an online blog but are faced with the struggle of wrestling through scenarios, where we may not agree with decisions that were made. We must look at where our actions and decisions as a society are leading us. Sometimes it may seem a little silly to think that we would regress to only using candles, but are our decisions leading up to some “event” that might end the world the way we know it? It is worth our time to look at these ideas and struggle with them, before we are faced with them in reality and are blindsided by the outcome of our poor decision-making.

Jessica Myers

06/30/2015

Utopian Paradox

“If you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this but that you first make thieves and then punish them?” I first heard these lines from Thomas More’s Utopia while watching the Cinderella movie, Ever After, where Danielle, who plays the Cinderella character, quotes Utopia to the prince to free her friend from being shipped off to the America’s for thievery. It always intrigued me how this moment sparked a fire in the prince to make his country the best it could possibly be. By the end of the movie, he marries Danielle, and together they live happily ever after, while also creating a utopian kingdom using the principles she learned from reading Utopia. This last idea only recently became a realization for me as I’ve become familiar with the concept and conventions of the utopian genre.

A utopia is a paradox in that it is all at once “no place,” a “good place,” and potentially someone else’s dystopia and therefore, a “bad place.” It is “no place” because you are reading a work of fiction, and the author has created this place to reflect how he/she believes the evils of the world should be remedied. It represents a “good place” because everyone who lives here should be satisfied, happy, peaceful, and fulfilled. Finally, it also represents a potential dystopia because if someone living in this “perfection” feels oppressed by restrictions set in place for that civilization to be a utopia, then it becomes a “bad place” for them. It’s a place that seems to follow the paradigm that once you think you’ve figured it out, everything falls apart.

Utopian literature treads the fine line between instructing and entertaining by persuading the reader of a potential way to make the world a perfect place but at the same time, capturing and holding the reader’s interest, so they won’t put down the piece and think “this will never work.” Thomas More’s piece Utopia was the first of its kind and was set up more like a travel narrative combined with a tract or essay. This style enabled More to criticize the evils of current culture by pointing out the positive features of Utopia from the safety of a far off, fictional land. However, this piece lacked much action or conflict and felt more like a lecture on how society should be organized. As the genre evolved, later authors incorporated more action and/or conflict to move the story forward. In Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman did two main things to further the genre, which were to create adventure and add conflict. The adventure and conflict mostly center around the character of Terry. He is the one who takes his friends on the adventure to discover and explore the land where only women dwell; he plans and executes their escape; and at the end, he causes their expulsion by trying to force himself on his wife, Alima. Not only does he lead the adventures, but he also creates conflict by arguing with the men and the women about differing opinions between America and Herland. These arguments lead to discussions and questions regarding America. Then the women take this moment to compare American practices with how things are done in the “oasis of perfection,” causing the men to question and rethink their beliefs on how society should exist. They even become embarrassed of certain elements of American social norms. This examination also leads readers to question their own society. Is the way of life they see in the fictional world of the utopia really better than the current situation? Or would it feel more like a dystopia, as Terry feels it is, because there are too many restrictions or disagreeable practices? Here the story contains more elements of a tract than a novel.

Characterization is one more unique aspect of this genre. Although the narrator is a fairly well developed character, the characters that the narrator comes into contact with typically lack depth of characterization. They have more of a “we” mentality and less individual characteristics. This is particularly seen in Herland with the women as a massive unit. When they explain their traditions, they always refer to themselves in terms of “we.”  We are introduced to six women characters, and although we learn their names, we really don’t learn anything that sets them apart as individuals besides their age and which men they interact with the most. This lack of characterization is especially noticeable in Anthem. Although this is actually a dystopia, the society Prometheus describes was originally a utopia. Rand’s use of the term “we” throughout the first eleven chapters of the book strongly emphasizes this mentality of thinking about the needs of the many over the needs of the individual. In both of these pieces, we know much more about the narrator and their opinions about the society they are encountering, than the ideas and opinions of the individuals they are interacting with. However, the individuals who interact with the narrators as guides in pieces such as Herland or Ecotopia are established as experts so that the narrator can trust what they are being told and use the information to develop their ideas and/or opinions about the utopia they are visiting. Lastly, the narrator usually makes the decision to emulate or join the society they have been visiting. They must decide whether this new place is going to give them more happiness than their previous home and accept the changes and/or sacrifices of individualism that go along with that decision. In More’s Utopia, Raphael becomes more of an ambassador to tell the world about the land of Utopia, but in Herland and Ecotopia the narrators make the decision to stay and live in that land as their home. Unlike Van, Terry only wants to escape Herland since it has become his own personal dystopia. Terry only feels restricted and miserable in this land and by the end will agree to anything as long as he gets to leave.

Another element that is crucial to the development of the story is dialogue. Although the dialogue appears in different forms, it is essential for promoting the ideas of the author and the criticisms of society. In Utopia, the dialogue is similar to the dialogue found in Plato’s Republic where one person makes a point or asks a question and the other lectures him about his ideas on that topic. The structure of dialogue in utopian pieces further developed with Gilman, when she has her characters conversing and arguing with each other about what they believe and comparing one culture to the next. Ecotopia includes dialogue between characters in Will’s diary entries, where he goes into great detail about conversations or arguments with the different people he meets throughout his stay. This dialogue also typically focuses on the conversations of the narrator and the “guide” who leads them through the utopia and explains the utopians’ way of life and the reasoning behind living in that manner. Usually, the narrator gradually finds himself agreeing more and more with the utopians' ideas of the best way to run a society. Therefore, one downside to these conversations is that normally the utopia is always seen in the best light in comparison to how society currently functions. It is difficult to “hear” the negatives when the narrator’s home society is being made to look quite evil and menacing in comparison. There is also not much discussion of how those that are “different” or disobedient are handled. Punishment, the elderly, and people with special needs are never really discussed or touched on. They are overlooked completely or briefly mentioned, but never really fleshed out in detail.

Typically, the utopian location is discovered by an outsider who is then led on a journey while learning about this society’s rules and culture.  Utopias are normally set in some type of garden area or an area that includes lush gardens peppered throughout.  The location has also been secluded from outside influences due to a catastrophic event. In Utopia, Utopus forces the people to dig a canal creating an island and cutting the land off from surrounding nations. The women of Herland are cut off from society when an earthquake fills in the only outlet allowing access to the valley where they were living, which happens to be surrounded by mountains. Ecotopia is isolated by the Sierra Nevada Mountains on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, which separates them from the rest of America after they secede. This garden exudes peace and tranquility, and therefore, these locations are, for the most part, weapon free and considered very safe. Not only are utopias typically located in gardens, but the people typically live in some type of communal dwelling. Individual property is seen as unnecessary since there is normally a shortage of space and resources. The community wants to meet the needs of all people equally, but at the same time take care of the environment that they live in so that they can sustain their mode of living. However, this isolation from other societies and influences could become a strain for people who want to learn more or experience other cultures but lack the ability to leave because they are trapped. Although Utopian and Ecotopian leadership do keep up with politics outside of their own countries, the common people have little to no access to other areas around them. Herland thirsts for more knowledge outside of the mountain cocoon that has formed around them but has never had the ability to leave. This problem is not addressed in these novels, but that may be because dissension is downplayed to emphasize the perfection of “the garden.”

An additional feature of the genre is the utopians' distinctive work ethic. They find joy in work and it is not seen as drudgery. Although there are some exceptions, work is also used as the economic wage to provide food and shelter. For instance, the women of Herland work hard to provide for their family. Some women take care of the children; some work in the forests; and some contribute more efficient systems of getting work accomplished. All of these areas help the overall growth and economic stability of the nation, and therefore, are counted to them as work. They are not required to go out and earn some type of salary and then come home and care for their individual family. That individual burden is dispersed throughout the community. This creates the desire to work for the sake of others and for the joy of accomplishing something rather than to bring home a paycheck. This seems to give the individual a sense of fulfillment by coming together as a community, and a sense of worth because of what they are contributing to the community as a whole. This feeling is also developed when the women are able to pursue areas that interest them and eventually “specialize” their education in those areas. This work ethic also removes the need for competition because everyone is working cooperatively to bring about the greater good of the whole rather than just that individual. Yet, in some utopias this can become less attractive, such as in Anthem, when Prometheus was assigned to be a sweeper, instead of his desired job of being a scholar. Although these people were working for the betterment of their brothers, Prometheus was miserable because his only passion was to explore and discover the world around him. This idea also seemed less attractive in a place such as Ecotopia, where the work week was shortened to 20 hours and created a huge loss of jobs. Those who lost their jobs were then given the “opportunity” to work labor jobs to tear down structures no longer desired by the controlling government. Although Will presumably kept his job as a journalist, he may have found life in Ecotopia a little less endearing, if he found himself taking apart gas stations. It would be hard to find joy in work that did not appeal to the worker even if it was for the “greater good.”

Each author has created their utopia with its own rules which help to create structure and peace. However, the price of these regulations is the loss of certain individual freedoms. This can be seen through the way utopians choose to educate their children. They begin forming and molding their behavior from a young age. Through this process, the utopians begin controlling how children perceive, think, and respond to situations. This is seen through both Herland and Ecotopia where children are taught through games and exploration. They experience learning through fun self-directed activities rather than long classes sitting in a school room. Teachers function as facilitators rather than the only source of knowledge.  This system also encourages them to work cooperatively with others when they need help to accomplish a task and fall within a set mindset of community rather than one of individuality. Although education allows for many rules to be instilled into utopian children, there are still regulations that structure general utopian society. Punishments such as banishment or enslavement (Utopia) and the inability to procreate (Herland) are briefly mentioned, but not many details are given about what this looks like in actuality. Even in Ecotopia, there is a brief uncomfortable scene when Will is frightened into destroying names of some dissenters found in Ecotopia. Nothing happens to Will, but it is clear that he is not free to share that information with others, and that those dissenters were not truly free to disagree with the government of Ecotopia. Although we never find out what happens to the Ecotopian dissenters, in Anthem we are really given the opportunity to see what punishment could look like in a utopia. Disobedient children are locked in basements and given positions within society that make them unhappy. Once they become adults, they are flogged for disobedience, and if they commit a serious enough crime, they could be burned alive. These are the punishments given for threatening the potentially perfect lives of utopians.

One of the final and more disturbing qualities of utopian literature is the idea of eugenics and population control that is sprinkled throughout. Eugenics can be found in Herland when the women leadership choose to allow some women to be mothers and others not to be mothers. This allows them to breed out undesirable qualities by disallowing those qualities to be passed to the next generation. Herland also has population control. Originally, women would have five daughters, but when resources become too scarce, they were limited to having only one baby per person. Population control is also seen in Ecotopia due to a fear of overpopulation. Will reports that a “three-stage program was adopted.  The first stage … aimed at providing absolutely all women with birth-control devices. Abortion upon demand was legalized; its cost soon became very low, and it was practiced in local clinics as well as hospitals. … this program reduced the number of births to a few tenths of a percent below the number of deaths” (67).  Again, since Ecotopia has limited space and resources available for its citizens, authorities put together a system to lower the rate of growth to avoid overpopulation. Anthem represents population control and eugenics through Prometheus’s description of the “Time of Mating” at the “City Palace of Mating” once per year. He recalls that “each of the men have one of the women assigned to them by the Council of Eugenics. Children are born each winter, but women never see their children and children never know their parents. Twice have we been sent to the Palace of Mating, but it is an ugly and shameful matter, of which we do not like to think.” This depiction of sex as an “ugly and shameful matter” is not seen in Herland or Ecotopia because the former’s citizens are parthenogenetic and the latter are libertine. Nonetheless, it is concerning that population control or eugenics could potentially lead to such a limiting and cold outlook on sex and sexuality. It takes away the ability to choose who you want to be with, how often you want to be with them, and why you are with them. Although these leaders are trying to continue the perfect population and at the same time, control the number of the population, the control is making something that was once enjoyable into something that is a chore and degrading. Ironically, this system is proven to not be very effective, since Prometheus does not fit in with the expectations of society and eventually rebels and begins his own utopia at the end.

  Bearing the elements of a utopia in mind, I feel the author’s take one crucial element for granted: human responsibility. It is clear that people do need some type of government structure to develop rules and regulations for people to follow. Otherwise, people would live in anarchy and there would be complete chaos. However, which is worse complete chaos or complete structure with rules and regulations you may or may not agree with? Who decides what structure this power should take?  Plus, these rules you may or may not agree with also bear consequences when they are broken or disobeyed. Who determines the severity of the punishments? These authority figures also gain their power from the people. What keeps them from taking advantage of the people’s trust and thirsting for more power and control? How do they determine what is good, right, and just for everyone?  What keeps the utopia from rotting from the inside out? Utopian ideas seem noble and good when they are discussed theoretically, but once you start holding people to these ideals, how long will the peace truly last? I really appreciate what Margaret Atwood said in her interview with The Progressive, “And human beings are not perfect. . . . We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that.” I would love to believe that a perfect society was possible, but the human element is just too volatile. Until something changes what and who we are at our very core, then a utopia will remain “no place” that is a potential “good place”. It will continue the cycle where we finally think we’ve figured it out, and then realize that something has gone very wrong, and finally, everything unravels. Our utopia has now become a “bad place,” continuing the paradoxical cycle of utopias.