Introduction
Utopia is regarded as a place of ideal perfection, specifically in social conditions, laws, and government. Utopian features, therefore, include information, independent thought, and the promotion of freedom as coined from this (Claeys, 2010). It is an ideal place whereby the system is perfect, and the people, although not treated singularly, are brought together, and allowed to truly think independently and feel free without fear (Moyal, 2000). For the dystopias, it is all about challenging individuals to perceive the existing social and political climates from a divergent perspective (Booker, 1994) and even inspire action (Moylan, 2003). Dystopian are societies within cataclysmic degradation, battling the disintegration of the environment, oppression by the government and technological control (Moylan, 2003; Parrinder, 2000). The paper will assess the utopian features in the short story provided and compare that to the More, Utopia, and Morris, The News from Nowhere.
Summary
The short story talks of the perfect world the narrator lives in, given that individuals are given the freedom to choose what to do with their time. It talks of how time is infinite, and death is unavoidable, making time-limited for us. It creates a perfect world for the narrator, with the knowledge-creating peace and tranquility in a world of no grief, no stress, and no feeling of the unexpected. Since the narrator knows that she is soon to depart the world, she knows how and where she wants to spend her final moments and with who. She is also more independent in her thinking and feels free to pursue her dream of going to space; she drops out of school to pursue these dreams instead. The story talks of how the knowledge of the time one has left creates a perfect system whereby nothing is unexpected, thus creating a sense of peace. The narrator in the story shares the peace in having the freedom and independent thought of knowing how to spend your final times, i.e., around those that one loves. She plans to spend her last hours in space and draws plans with her best friend Matt as an accomplice. Matt works as a racetrack driver, which is fundamental to their plan, but he is not interested in going to space himself. They eventually steal a security badge after getting information from Matt’s racetrack colleague, Jeremy Bridges, who is also the main pilot of the spaceship.
The narrator’s description of her funeral illustrates how information, independent thought, and freedom from fear can lead to a utopian version of perfection. The story describes how the narrator plans for her funeral in the perfect way possible for her. The narrator shares the happiness and the ideal state of a setting whereby individuals are genuinely allowed to plan their own lives in their own time and have information on when and is they have time left. These utopian features make her utterly determined and fuel her with the determination she needs following the knowledge of how much time she has left and independent thought of achieving her dreams. She does not care whether what she does would be illegal or legal, or anything else, but to achieve her goal. Ultimately, she fulfills her dreams of going to space in the perfect way possible for her, better than she ever imagined. The famous spaceman even compares her to his son and vouches not to report her. Her determination inspires him, and he allows her to spend her final time with her family and not in jail. Upon landing back on earth, she is met by her parents and loved ones, who are happy to see her. Ultimately, the story is a utopia of the perfect ending of the narrator following the utopian features that enabled her to achieve this.
In More, Utopia, the author travels journeys as an England and King Henry VII ambassador. He talks about intellectual issues with his friend Peter Giles while not on his official errands. Giles introduces More to Hythloday, a bearded man who More’s initially assumed to be a ship’s captain, only to find out that he was a philosopher and traveler. While at dinner at Gile’s house, Hythloday begins to speak about the different encounters in his travels (More, 2014).
Hythloday describes the utopian societies he traveled to during his voyages in detail, such that More is convinced he would be an excellent counselor to the king. Even so, Hythloday is not up for it and shares the reason behind this. He tells the two of a dinner he once had with Cardinal Morton and his colleagues in England, where he shared utopian alternatives to England’s different ‘evil’ practices. The fellows contemptuously ridiculed his proposal until they received legitimate consideration by the Cardinal. In the story, Hythloday shares that there is no point in counseling a king who constantly expects his counselors to agree with his beliefs. Ultimately, he outlines that the Utopian policies are superior to the European policies, but the Europeans would find the common property policy of the Utopians ridiculous. After a lunch break, Hythloday shares how Utopia is grounded on rational thought. More views Hythloday’s descriptions as ludicrous, and as much as he would like to see some aspects of the Utopian society practiced in England, he doubts its practicality.
Similarly, Morris’s novel The News from Nowhere depicts a future whereby the production of the necessities of life, democratic control, and common ownership are grounded within a pastoral paradise. At the beginning of the story, the persona of the story wakes up at the banks of the Thames, finding himself centuries into the future. Interestingly, there is no capitalist system in this future; there is no private property, no industrialization, and most surprisingly, no money. The story shares a future whereby everyone in the society works in cooperation and takes great pleasure in their labor. At the end of the text, the narrator somewhat reluctantly returns to his own time and is determined to make such a future a reality (Levitus, 2010).
Comparison
The utopian features of information, freedom, and independent thought are consistent in all three texts. In the first text, these features enable the narrator to perfectly achieve her dream in a way that one would deem only possible in utopia (Claeys, 2010). In the second text, Hythloday describes a perfect society fostering information, rational thought, and true freedom. Lastly, the future that the persona describes in The News from Nowhere is a paradise where nothing else matters but upholding these features, not even money (Morris, 2002). In all these cases, individuals can truly think freely and independently, although the first text focuses more on the independent thought feature than the other texts.
Conclusion
All this stated, the expression of utopian features is approached quite similarly by various approaches; a perfect setting that upholds information, independent thought, and freedom. Although the authors in the three texts use different contexts to express these features, the end goal of a perfect system is consistent in all of them. The first text illustrates how being conscious of time can facilitate independent thoughts and freedom on how to spend it to achieve what one desires perfectly; the second talks of a society based on rational thought that is perfect compared to Europe’s system; and the final text describes a perfect future whereby true freedom is realized beyond money and capitalism.
