Utopian literature through the time of World War II - Essay Example

Utopian Literature through World War II Utopia, by the very sense of the word, is the fantasy of a non-existent society and it could not have crept into literature as far it did without the help of its pivotal device called ‘science fiction’, which, in the words of Darko Suvin, is characterized by ‘cognitive estrangement’ (Claeys 135). Understandably, the literature produced through the period of World War II and after was more dystopian in nature than utopian, considering the pessimism generated (by the events in the contemporary world) among intellectuals giving rise to the portrayal of degraded societies as in H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine. Often, the pessimism manifested in the title itself like Chad Walsh’s From Utopia to Nightmare (1962), New Maps of Hell by Kingsley Amis and The Future as Nightmare: H. G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians (1967) by Mark Hillegas. Utopian literature, its suggestive nature not withstanding, is interesting only because it reflects mankind’s worst fears at a crucial point in history and not because it contains anything that has the potential to make the world a better place. The dystopian predictions of doom by a host of writers, from John Brunner to Margaret Atwood, never came true. It is worth recalling here, however, that Ray Bradbury’s apprehension (that television would kill books) in his 1953 iconographic work Fahrenheit 451, was not entirely misplaced. Behind what appears to be ridicule, the shades of fear and anxiety about the future of mankind are evident in the terrifying vision of future presented in the haunting novel 1984 by George Orwell (which, in turn, owes its plot to another dystopian novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin), his other allegory Animal Farm, Kurt Vonnegut’s apocalyptic musings on war and today’s follies in Slapstick (or Lonesome No More!), published in the last quarter of the twentieth century, deal with the same concerns that Aldous Huxley had attempted to address in his Brave New World which was published almost a decade before World War II commenced. Utopian literature is by and large characterized by the ideas of war and peace as much as capitalism and communism in juxtaposition. Bertrand Russell’s famous essay Knowledge and Wisdom was obviously inspired by the horror witnessed following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It points out how knowledge can be harmful unless it is combined with wisdom by the example of a scientist who “studies the composition of atom from a disinterested desire for knowledge and incidentally places it in the hands of powerful lunatics” (Yardi 103). Interestingly, Lost Horizon written by James Hilton in 1933 prophesies a devastating war that engulfs most parts of the world in less than a decade. In the classic, Hilton envisions a utopian civilization with Oriental character in a remote monastery, Shangri-La, in the Himalayas where wonderful people live. The faith of the Shangri-La monks is a combination of the features of Christianity and Buddhism, the motto being ‘everything in moderation’: the rule is moderately strict, only moderate obedience is expected and people are moderately sober, moderately chaste and moderately honest. The book, for most part, is a deep meditation on noble ideas like pacifism and philosophy, instead of being a mere adventure story. Shangri-La people teach us that exhaustion of passions is the key to the beginning of wisdom and that the most impossible things in life become possible if we believe in them. Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1957) portrays a massive nuclear war and the resulting radioactive dust marking the end of the world. Another post-apocalyptic masterpiece The Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham, with its ever-present threat of walking plants and blinding comets, is more like a horror novel than mere science fiction. Without any mention of nuclear warfare, this book still deserves to be labeled apocalyptic for its story is centered on rebuilding the society after a devastating event that is as scary as one can imagine. The Chrysalids (1955) by the same author portrays a nuclear holocaust followed by the rise of a telepathically endowed race of human beings (Waknuks). It is a story of a society of the future with a setting from the past. Waknuks bear resemblance to the abnormal kids with paranormal talents in the 1953 classic More than Human by Theordore Sturgeon which sees a future in mutation. Homo gestalt, the composite being, is the next stage in the evolution of Homo sapiens. The extra-sensory powers of the constituent members of Homo gestalt are exercised symbiotically to love and to be productive (Diskin 25). The Dreaming Jewels or The Synthetic Man (1950), another science fiction by Sturgeon, also deals with similar questions – what it means to be human and what it would to mean to be more than human. Incidentally, Sturgeon was the winner of the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1985. In The Black Cloud (1957) written by Fred Hoyle, mathematician and astronomer, the invading alien is in the form of an enormous cosmic gaseous cloud that appears to be sentient and moves towards the solar system (Bhelkar 93). It is capable blotting out the sun and causing the extinction of all life on the planet. Barefoot in the Head – A European Fantasia (1969) by Brian Aldiss presents a psychedelic-saturated near future world. The marathon journey of its characters across a Europe ravaged by bombs explores the long-term effects of unwise short-term actions for military purposes. James Graham Ballard produced an entire tetralogy, The Wind from Nowhere (1962), The Drowned World (1962), The Drought (1964) and The Crystal World (1966), all dealing with environmental disasters and doomed worlds. It is an interesting connection in their themes that the doom is caused by the elements of nature – air, water, fire and earth in the same order. The anticipation of Risk Society made literature go for themes that focused more on preventing the worst from happening rather than on moving towards the better. Despite the dystopian fears about the possibility of nuclear war, there were, however, a few science fiction works grounded in optimism like Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants (1953) which concludes with the utopian escape to Venus. The protagonist in Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 2000 – 1887 (1888), like Rip Van Winkle, awakes after more than a hundred years of sleep to see the United States as a socialist country. While a majority of books of the utopian cult favored socialism, there were a few like Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957) and Fountainhead (1943) which argued for objectivism and individualism. Arthur C Clarke’s Childhood’s End (1953) presupposes the existence of aliens, other forms of intelligence in the universe. It introduces to the reader Overlords from the planet NGS 549672 who invade the earth, but without aggression, with the mission of ending war, hunger, disease, adventure and armed forces and forming a world government. Thus, “Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopias – boredom” (Clarke 75). Ira Levin’s literary artistry cannot be overrated, but he may certainly be considered an expert in the technique of weaving conspiracy theories, as illustrated by the core secret conspiracy in This Perfect Day which, however, is quite different in nature from the satanic conspiracy in Rosemary’s Baby, the male chauvinist conspiracy in Stepford Wives and the neo-Nazi conspiracy in Boys from Brazil. Look magazine described This Perfect Day as a cross between Brave New World and Dr. No. Unicomp, the computer that runs the world is like Big Brother, the enigmatic dictator of Oceania in 1984. Yet, Levin seems to be influenced as much by communism as by Christianity. He includes Marx and Christ among the four heroes on whom the way of life in the future totalitarian state is based; the other two are fictional. The influence of dystopian science fiction genre continues to be powerful to this day as is apparent from the depiction of Zion, the last human city, in the film The Matrix. B. F. Skinner seeks to make his otherwise abhorrent Walden Two (1948), a direct piece of World War II period, naturally satisfying to all its inhabitants by way of ‘contingencies of reinforcement’ and ‘non-punitive’ techniques. Even in Skinner’s utopia, “in the long run man is determined by the state” (Skinner 257) and democracy is not necessarily the best government; it is “merely the better in a contest with a conspicuously bad one” (fascism). The book, which is in no way a science fiction, leaves behind the question that confronts Professor Castle: “Would we be better off if we followed a science of behavior or if we dumped it in the ocean?” just as Nikolai Berdyaev, Russian philosopher, wonders how we could avoid “the actual realization” of Utopias. Without that anti-utopian question, Walden Two would not come under the dystopian category. Nevertheless, the book, without itself being a science fiction as such, suggests that the idea of a utopian society raises the level of mankind’s awareness of the effects and importance of science and technology and their role in bringing about social transformation. If Gulliver’s transportation to the worlds of fantasy was by the sea, in the twentieth century, the journey is in the space. The utopianism in James Baldwin’s famous short story Sonny’s Blues is extremely subtle. It is an account of Sonny’s attempt to escape from the dystopia (of 1960s), to break the walls of alienation and to find the path to emancipation. In the process, he rejects the two false paths that offer access to utopia namely religion and heroin. Eventually, using his creative energy, he finds the third path, music, which is true and genuine. Unlike the utopias depicted in science fiction, Sonny’s Blues avoids escapist fantasy and estrangement. What makes the short story an all-time literary masterpiece is its intense human touch and its bold rejection of false utopias. It captures effectively the emotions of Sonny and his brother, the narrator, their alienation, fear and hopelessness in their growing-up years in Harlem (Carroll 309). The story sensibly throws light on how a section of the American citizens was excluded from the American Dream. These are the people who have blinded themselves to the dystopia they live in by the escapist fantasies of Hollywood. Jean Paul Sartre’s play No Exit was published in 1944, when World War II was reaching its end. Through three characters in hell that has no torments or torturers, the theme of the play deals with a number of issues like freedom, responsibility, faith, self-deception and more importantly, identity crisis in an imperfect world. Through Garcin, the play concludes, “Hell is – other people!” It echoes Sartre’s belief that one is made by the choices one makes. The moment we begin to seek others and their approval, we begin to jeopardize ourselves, thus creating the existential dilemma. Like Garcin, Inez and Estelle, we doom ourselves to be in hell together forever. The play’s dystopian message is that human relationships are inherently frustrated by needs that cannot be met (Panza et al. 349). Utopia is all about dreams and so is the 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. The title contains an allusion to one of the poems of Langston Hughes (author of the short story On the Road). It concerns an impoverished African-American family’s struggle against poverty, harsh living conditions and oppressive circumstances. Each family member has an individual dream and is frustrated waiting to realize the dream. As the play ends, they all discover that the key to their happiness and prosperity lies in integrating their dreams into one overreaching dream of the family. The play also suggests that in dealing with racial discrimination, they stay united and assert their dignity. It ends on an optimistic note with the indication that one day, we shall overcome. Lorraine Hansberry was the first African-American woman to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the Best American Play. On the other side, there also developed a different kind of utopian vision in Germany following the Nazis’ coming to power. The Nazis’ desire to dominate the world openly manifested in reactionary and fascist utopian literature. Eurofrika: The Power of the Future (1938) by Titus Taeschner was a racial science fiction novel, expounding Germany’s expansionist ambitions and Germans’ victory over the ‘subhuman’ Jews and their allies. Even Hans Dominik, a mainstream science fiction writer thitherto, migrated to the style of glorifying Nazi nationalism and made German engineers heroes in books like Order from the Dark (1933). That Nazi perception of science was based in ancient magic and not in rationality was yet another indication of Nazis’ self-destructive ideology (Stoehr 192). It may, however, be pointed out here that the same atrocities by Nazis also inspired one of the victims of Hitler’s Final Solution to produce The Diary of Anne Frank. The term utopian literature has the indication that it is produced with the intention of making the readers aware of the flaws in the existing system and to make them think so that they look for alternatives. Quite on the contrary, in most cases, it was the result of disappointment, despair and disillusionment resulting from the misuse of technology on the one hand and totalitarianism gaining ground on the other. A debate on utopia or dystopia is bound to sound intellectual, but all said and done, it is just another extension of man’s quest for more security and materialistic satisfaction. Works Cited Bhelkar, Ratnakar D. Science Fiction: Fantasy and Reality. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2009. Carroll, Aileen M. 150 Great Short Stories. Portland: J Weston Walch Publisher, 1989. Claeys, Gregory (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Clarke, Arthur C. Childhood’s End. Ballantine Books, 1953. Diskin, Lahna F. Theodore Sturgeon. Mercer Island: Starmont House, 1981. Panza, Christopher and Gregory Gale. Existentialism for Dummies. Hoboken (NJ): Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2008. Skinner, Burrhus Frederic. Walden Two. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2005. Stoehr, Ingo Roland. German Literature of the Twentieth Century: From Aestheticism to Postmodernism. Suffolk: Camden House, 2001. Yardi, V. V. (Ed.). The Other Harmony. Hyderabad (India): Orient Longman Limited, 1996. Read More