Valdovinos 1

Juan Valdovinos
Professor Florian California State, University of Northridge
English 114 B
27 February 2014
Utopia Response and Pitch
The Introduction of the story starts of somewhat different with a character, More, who is a
fictional character, sending a letter to Peter Giles and hopes to hear a response from his writing. The
writing then goes into book one and a meeting between Thomas More and Peter Giles, who talk to
Raphael Hythloday, a Philosopher and world traveler. Hythloday talks to the two men and discusses to
them (change this) about the 5 years he spent living in this island and wants to spread the word of this
Ideal Utopian Society. He has spread the word all over Europe and says that Europe is nothing like this
place. Hythloday goes into great detail of how people lived and how everything worked in this society to
Peter Giles and More over lunch (like they went to lunch to talk about this). He explains that this utopian
island is perfect in the way of uniformity. Everything is done a certain way and tells them everything in a
possitve way.
This is where my topic from the essay will begin. Hythloday talk about all the positive stuff but
fails to talk about some flaws in this utopian society. How can a place so uniformly perfect have such
things as slaves. All the citizens are seen in an egalitarian way but the slaves fail to be as equal as them.
Though Hythloday talks about this island of utopia in such great matter he fails to talk about some flaws
in this perfect society. I have looked up other places and have found some communities who also
considered themselves Utopian. Amana colonies have taken on western culture and the idea of this
Utopian society and community. Though there are various communities within the colonies each tend to
have a difference, but do share the idea of communal living in a utopian society. With these colonies I
have found I will compare them with the Utopian society of the book and distinguish flaws within the so
Valdovinos 2

called perfect societies. I will also head towards finding the fall of why these utopian places fell (it
doesnt make sense I know)
This being said my goal with this paper is to compare and contrast the ideas of the Utopian island from
the book and the utopian societies from modern time. I will also talk about flaws in each society and
why each Utopian society fell and cannot be perfect as a whole because no matter what, each place has
a flaw.