Essay about Man's Quest for Utopia

Authors Johnson and Voltaire were both novelists of the eighteenth century who took the surreal world of utopia and used it to compare the world around them. Published within months of each other, both novels are noticeably similar with their biblical references and final critiques of modern Europe. Through these similarities two different stories unfold, both which involve the wonderous world of utopia. These imagined places of perfection begin to ask the question of what a person needs to be completely

In The Lord of the Flies, William Golding creates a microcosm that appears to be a utopia after he discharged from the British Royal Navy following World War II. After an emergency landing, Golding places a diverse group of boys on the island that soon turns out to be anything but utopia. The island the boys are on turns out to be an allegorical dystopia with inadequate conditions (Bryfonski 22). The boys reject all lessons they learned from their prior British society, and they turn towards their

striving to achieve utopia. The novel shows that the lifetime of one person is not enough to obtain this utopia as King Arthur has to past his ideas for the future generations. In Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, constructs the perfect utopia where the individual, love, and knowledge are practice unlike the other worlds. Looking Backward, and Once and Future King, did what the other novels did not; it strives for utopia and reaches it, at least for a time. Novels that reach utopia keeps and works the

from his extreme ideas, one of which was only caring for the Aryan race. Hitler wanted the Aryans, the whole, to succeed and live in a utopia. “His dream of a racially pure empire would tolerate no Jews” (Louis Bulow) or anyone of another race. Hitler goaded others to exterminate all those who did not meet his criteria and tried to conquer the world in his quest to do the best for the whole. Another example of a good idea gone bad when taken to the extreme is the hippie movement in the United States

In Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut investigates the negative impacts that can result from humanities pursuit of knowledge through literary structure, irony, and symbolism. Kurt Vonnegut, well known for his pessimistic attitude and writing concerning the flaws of human nature, focuses this energy into Cat’s Cradle. Using satire interweaved with poetry, Vonnegut is successful in challenging the merits of human progress. Vonnegut uses small poetic insertions throughout his piece to help communicate his

The Spiritual Quest in On the Road           A disillusioned youth roams the country without truly establishing himself in one of the many cities he falls in love with. In doing so, he manages with the thought or presence of his best friend. What is he searching for? While journeying on the road, Sal Paradise is not searching for a home, a job, or a wife. Instead, he longs for a mental utopia offered by Dean Moriarty. This object of his brotherly love grew up in the streets of America. Through

break apart from the British tyranny rule. In this poem, he commends this country as the “land of love and liberty” and hopes the paradise to “be [there] forever.” Even after praising all its beautiful natural landscape that gives hope for the perfect utopia, he contradicts the idea of freedom as he reflects some of Europe’s ideas. In the poem, he

Philosophy is an interesting pursuit. It causes us to search for truth, ethics and ask the question “why?” more often than we would otherwise. However, I have found that philosophy itself rather distracting. It leads to false answers to what might sometimes be false questions. It leads to radically held beliefs that can be destructive, difficult to understand, and often contrary to reality. Worst of all, it often answers questions that we as humans have no business answering with any certainty. I

Brave New World is a remarkable journey into the future wherein mankind is dehumanized by the progress and misuse of technology to the point where society is a laboratory produced race of beings who are clones devoid of identity only able to worship the three things they have been preconditioned to love:  "Henry Ford, their idol; Soma, a wonder drug; and sex" (Dusterhoof, Guynn, Patterson, Shaw, Wroten and Yuhasz  1).  The misuse of perfected technologies, especially those allowing the manipulation

Likewise, he will be left alone afterwards when he tries to retrieve it/her during his journey. Author Terence Martin speculates that Goodman Brown's journey into the forest is best defined as a kind of “general, indeterminate allegory, representing man's irrational drive to leave faith, home, and security temporarily behind, for whatever reason, to take a chance with one more errand onto the wilder shores of experience” (Martin 92).      It should not escape attention that