Emotionless

Natalie Wilson

Dr. Jacobs

GB II

30 March 2019

Emotionless

Utopia is a book written by a man named Thomas More that is about a perfect society. More explains what this place is and how the civilization works. Everything in Utopia is described as beautiful and perfectly practical. However, if you go deeper, one will realize things are not as good as they seem.  People are given no options on how they get to live their life and do not have a problem with it. People there do not have normal human reactions to certain situations. Things that are normally important and bring forth emotion, do not have the same effect on the people in Utopia. The people of Utopia seem to have no issue or seem to question how things are in there community.  The society expressed in Utopia may be functional and good on the outside, but really there is no sense of humanity, personal opinion or choice, or emotional connections between anyone that lives there.

One of the best things Utopia does for its people is to provide unity and conformity. They created all the same languages and traditions and replicated towns to the tee. This can seem like a good idea by giving people the access to speak to everyone fluently and bringing everyone together through alike traditions and culture. Although this sounds like a great deal because everything is exactly the same, everything is exactly the same. For example, “There are fifty-four splendid big towns on the island, all with / the same language, laws, customs, institutions. They’re all / built on the same plan, and, so far as the sites will allow, they / all look exactly alike.” (Pg. 50) No one is given personal expression. No one has the right to choose what they do. No one gets the choice of where they live because there is no point in choosing. The people of Utopia somehow do not seem to have a problem with this. Nobody seems to question why things are the way they are. Everyone just goes along with it.

Another way Utopia enforces unity and receives no opposition is within their public land and households. First of all, the land the people live and work on is not considered their own. “No town has the slightest wish to extend its boundaries, for they / don’t regard their land as property but as soil that they’ve got to cultivate.” (Pg 50) So the people are told to live in these places and work on them but do not get to claim them. Within these towns, everyone is given a household. “Each house has a front door leading into the street, / and a back door into the garden. In both cases, they’re double / swing-doors, which open at a touch, and close automatically / behind you.” ( Pg 54) The reason that the government does this is “So anyone can go in and out - for there’s no such / thing as a private property.” (Pg 54)  Every home is open to everyone. One owns nothing for themselves. Everyone is being deprived of a sense of pride and no one has an issue with it.

The utopian society is upheld by work; specifically farming. For example, “Well, there’s one job / they all do, irrespective of sex, and that’s farming. It’s part of / every child’s education.” (Pg 55) Children are taught one other trade besides farming and are usually what their parents do. If a child wants to do something besides farming or their parent's trade, they get adopted by another family who practices it. A child must leave their family and live with a brand new one just to be able to choose what they want to do every day for the rest of their life. People in Utopia think this is normal. The fact that these kids must leave their parents for a job and their parents being okay with it is crazy. It is like there is no emotion or personal connection between anyone, not even family.

There is quite a bit of evidence that shows that even though Utopian society is standing and work well, the inside is corrupted. It is corrupted with manipulation and control. The civilization is designed to control people by setting up in a way where no one feels anything for anyone and where they are given no choice for hardly anything. They have also made it to where no one questions how the government runs things. Utopia decides how the public's day to day life is run every step. Although the idea of Utopia appears as a great way to fix everything wrong with the world,  it would ruin any chance of freedom and should not be created.

Works Cited

More, Thomas. Utopia. Penguin Books, 1965.