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What Is Bellamy's Looking Backward

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In Bellamy`s Looking Backward, Julian West falls into a hypnosis induced sleep for one-hundred and thirteen years. He wakes up in the twentieth century in the same place but a completely different century. In this essay I will analyze some of the literary genre discourses Bellamy uses in chapters nineteen through twenty-four. Bellamy discusses how crime was considered an illness and that the people that committed a crime needed medical attention. Another scientific discourse Bellamy use is the physical health between the nineteenth century and twentieth century. In chapter nineteen Bellamy explains the new legal system, and on how crime has become an illness. "Dr. Leete explains to Julian that there are not any jails now a days. All cases of Atavism is treated in hospitals" (150) . Dr. Leete explains to him that the classless society and the giving of riches or wealth have reduced crime. There was no need for police officers, lawyers, or prisons. Why was there a need to commit a crime if you …show more content…

"Riches debauched one class with idleness of mind and body, while poverty sapped the vitality of the masses by overwork, bad food, and pestilent homes"(165). The wealthy in the ninetieth century did not really care too much for physical education, and the poor would just work and work just to make a living, so their health would decline or get worse. In the novel West was really fascinated on how healthy the twentieth century was. "The labor which is required of all is limited to the period of greatest bodily vigor, and is never excessive: care for one's self and one's family, anxiety as to livelihood, the strain of a ceaseless battle for life"(165). Since the twentieth century was physically healthy, did they have doctors ? Did they need doctors ? What happened if one`s health got bad ? Insanity and suicide was very common in the ninetieth century rather than the twentieth

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