LOOKING BACKWARDTHEME s Flashcards
Alienation
Alienation
Julian West experiences time travel, not space travel, so he does not awaken to a world of aliens. Nonetheless, he finds himself in a different world, for the Boston of 2000 is as foreign to him as another planet might have been. Nationalism has transformed America into a culture foreign to that which West knew in his own time. He feels alienated as all strangers do and asks Edith, “Has it never occurred to you that my position is so much more utterly alone than any human being’s ever was before that a new word is really needed to describe it?” He then calls himself a “strange uncanny being, a stranded creature of an unknown sea.” But in his dream that takes him back to the nineteenth century, he realizes that he has become estranged from that time, too. Knowing that Edith’s love will cure his loneliness, he then gratefully embraces his new life in the better world of 2000.
COmmerce
Commerce
Related to the discussion of industry, Bellamy details the exchange of goods and services. He describes the local stores in each ward, the district warehouse, the delivery system and so on. Bellamy’s theory was that if business were nationalized, the lack of competition would eliminate greed and the procurement of goods would be much simpler and more convenient
GENDEr roles
Gender Roles
When Bellamy advocated equality for all citizens in Looking Backward, he included women. At a time when Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were publishing The Revolution, the rights of women was certainly a topic that would concern a man like Bellamy. However, his forward thinking was cemented in nineteenth-century attitudes, and his attempt to be fair remains severely chauvinistic. Nonetheless, for a book written in 1888 to give women occupations outside the home and equal wages is truly striking.
Human rights
Human Rights
Bellamy promotes the cause of human rights throughout his book. He summarizes his philosophy when Dr. Leete tells Julian West,
The title of every man, woman, and child to the
means of existence rests on no basis less plain, broad,
and simple than the fact that they are fellows of one
race—members of one human family.
It is accepted in Bellamy’s 2000 that if you are a human being, regardless of nationality, race, disability, or gender, then you are entitled to full citizen benefits, an education, and freedom from want.
Industry and Labor
Industry and Labor
The first inquiry that Julian West makes about the new century in which he finds himself is “What solution, if any, have you found for the labor question? It was the Sphinx’s riddle of the nineteenth century.” The Industrial Revolution brought great wealth to a few tycoons and misery to many laborers. A utopian novel not only pictures how things could be, but also, by contrast, points out how bad things actually are. Bellamy’s intent in Looking Backward was not just to dream of a better future but to cause his contemporaries to think about solutions for the problems of the times. Consequently, most of the book is devoted to discussions of the industrial “evolution,” the Industrial army, the assignment of labor, and the equal distribution of wealth.
INNOvation
Innovation
Since Bellamy used a futuristic novel to promote his nationalistic ideals, he needed to make predictions about the year 2000 other than the social and economic state of affairs that were his primary concern. After all, nationalism would not appear successful if there were not also technological advances and other innovations resulting from the creative freedom his utopia allowed. Although Bellamy did not approach the accuracy or imagination of Aldous Huxley or Jules Verne, he made some amazing predictions, including credit cards, skyscrapers, piped-in music, speaker phones, and mass broadcasts.
Love
Love
While Looking Backward is undeniably a treatise on social reform, Bellamy makes his long lecture palatable to the reader by weaving in a love story. On one level, the book is a romantic novel about a young man who loses love when he is strangely transferred from one century to another, only to find love again in the person of his sweetheart’s namesake and great-granddaughter. Besides romantic love, this book espouses the theme of love for humankind. Bellamy believed that people are capable of sincerely caring about each other’s welfare, and so, in his utopia, people willingly sacrifice personal gain for the benefit of all.
MORALITY
Morality
Among the many superior facets of Bellamy’s fictional twentieth century is the morality of its citizens. In addition to being from a long line of New England preachers, Bellamy was extraordinarily sensitive to social justice issues. Naturally, then, his utopia is a culture of honesty and compassion. All citizens are equal, the disabled and the criminal are treated with dignity and understanding, and there is no greed or envy. Bellamy’s idealistic book advocates that humans are basically good and decent and will subjugate individual desires for the common good.
PERfection
Perfection
What distinguishes utopias from other imaginary places in literature is the supposed state of perfection achieved by government and society. Bellamy tries to sell his plan for perfection by repeatedly using phrases such as “perfect organization,” “the system is certainly perfect,” “a paradise of order, equity, and felicity,” “heaven’s vault,” and “golden century.” Furthermore, the question and answer dialogue device Bellamy uses allows West to present problems from the nineteenth century and always have them answered by the Leetes with the “simple” solutions that the superior twentieth century society has devised.
RELATIONALTIME
Relational Time
Julian West is not a time traveler in the sense of using a time machine or manipulating temporal physics to transport himself from age to age. Nor does he continue to age as he sleeps, as Rip Van Winkle did. He stays thirty years old during his 113-year trance. Bellamy wanted to write a book that described wonderful possibilities for the future, and West’s trance was the means Bellamy devised to move him from 1887 to 2000. For its time, Looking Backward was a futuristic novel. Now that time has passed 2000, it is a study in the relationship of time, civilization, and social/technological evolution.
SOCIal classes
Social Classes
In the first chapter of Looking Backward, Bellamy provides the parable of the coach as a means of describing the differences among the social classes of his time. Thus the heart of Bellamy’s concern for society is established and carried throughout the book as he explains how a nationalized system of commerce and a moral concern for each other could eliminate class divisions. He reiterates the abuses of the class system at the end of the book when he dreams of returning to the nineteenth century and once again observes the disparity of life between the squalor of poverty and the excesses of wealth.
SOCialism/communism
Socialism/Communism
Bellamy was very careful not to use the word “socialism” when espousing his philosophy of government. Nonetheless, the “Nationalist” movement he started with Looking Backward was very closely related to both socialism and communism because it gave the state control over commerce, espoused economic and social equality for all citizens, and featured centralized government.
