The Strugatsky’s 1972 book Roadside Picnic ends with a single wish: “Happiness for Everyone, For Free, And Don’t Leave Anybody Out!” This statement was a little unexpected coming from Red. He’s a stalker, so you would think he would wish for something selfish, something that would benefit him and his family, but his mind changes with-in the last couple of minutes before his wish. So Red wishes for everyone to be happy. He just doesn’t want things to be miserable anymore. He doesn’t want his family to struggle to survive and he wants his daughter to be normal. So I think the only way for him to make things better is to just make everything perfect like a Utopia, but he sees it like a child hood dream full of colorful rainbows and peace, but in reality that’s not possible.
Leading up to his big wish, a lot was going through Red’s head. He started off thinking selfishly. He thought of money, his family, and just himself, but he began to realize that it would be impossible for only him to be happy. He realized that everyone was connected. If he wants to be happy, then everyone that surrounds him in his life needs to be happy
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too, and for them to be happy, people surrounding them need to be happy and so on. But Red and everyone in his life are miserable. The zone and the visitors made the humans feel like nothing. The visitors come to earth and don’t even pay attention to the human society. They just left their trash behind and they see it as “swag”. It’s like the analogy made in the book. The visitors are like humans stopping by a random camp site in the woods and the animals that are out of sight are the humans. After the visitors leave, the animals come out from hiding and see the left overs of a fire pit, left over trash, lighter fluid, and some old camp gear. In the eyes of the animals, the human junk is fascinating to them, but in the human’s eyes it’s just junk. The thing is, the humans had no idea that the animals were even there. The analogy shows that humans are irrelevant in the universe. All Red can do is try to make the best of this irrelevance. “Happiness for everyone…”, Red said, but would that really make everything better? Happiness for everyone is kind of like a Utopia. A perfect society. Perfect society’s, ironically, don’t contain happiness. Humans will never be able to live in a perfect society. Human behavior is full of failure. What would we do if we didn’t learn from our mistakes? How would we strive as a species? For there to be a good there must be a bad, and for there to be happiness there needs to be sadness. If there is always happiness, how would we know what happiness is? There would never be a right and a wrong. Everything would be right. There would always be success, and if there’s always success, you wouldn’t feel any gratitude or any satisfaction from accomplishments. Perfectness also takes away uniqueness. Taking away uniqueness, takes away a person’s individuality and their identity. That’s the beauty of mankind. We are all different in our own way and that impacts us in how we live. It creates competition, satisfaction, and love, and those three things are important to mankind. It’s what we live for. It’s what makes us happy. Hope is another thing. Hope is almost idealistic in some cases, but it’s what keeps us going. Every person is going to die one day, so what exactly is the point to living? Hope, that’s why we get up in the morning. We have the hope to be successful, hope to find love, hope to find happiness. Red could’ve killed himself a long time ago, rather it was right after the visitors showed up or being killed by the meat grinder before he made his wish to the Golden Sphere, but he didn’t. Something in him wanted to conquer the journey through the zone to find the Golden Sphere. Hope is what got him to the sphere, but what if the Golden Sphere’s magic was a myth? What if Red’s wish didn’t come true? I think it’s interesting that the realistic person that Red is, believed that his wish will be granted. For someone to be that cautious for one wish, means he believed it would work and him believing made him realize that his wish was way bigger than himself, but it did begin to stress him out. All he could think of was Archie’s wish before Archie was killed. It was selfless, idealistic, and stupid, but it was full of hope. I think Archie’s wish gave Red the idea that everything will be okay. It made him believe that nothing could go wrong. It gave him hope. So he used it. I guess the two main words I’ve been expressing in this essay have been hope and happiness.
Well, that’s what humans look for in life isn’t it? That’s why we take chances, leaps of faith, and take shots in the dark. We go through change and sometimes, it may be a struggle, but that’s what makes us stronger. It’s how we learn. Sometimes we’ll take desperate measures to get through the dark times. We will go through a “zone” or make our way past obstacles to get to what we need to make everything better. It may not be a “Golden Sphere”, but it will make good with what we have. We may be pointless little spec in the Universe, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy our lives and make do with what we have. It may not be a Utopia, but that’s okay. We’re human, things won’t be perfect and we will fail, but as long as we have hope, well find
happiness.
Even if the events in the people’s lives don’t change, if they change their outlook on life. Forget the bad times and relish in the good times, they might have a better quality of life. If we can all just stop fretting over what we didn’t do or what could have happened, we can just sit back, accept and enjoy life as it is. And Listen to the birds singing Poo-tee-weet.
The struggle between happiness and society shows a society where true happiness has been forfeited to form a perfect order.
All in all, Chris McCandless is a contradictory idealist. He was motivated by his charity but so cruel to his parents and friends. He redefined the implication of life, but ended his life in a lonely bus because of starvation, which he was always fighting against. Nevertheless, Chris and the readers all understand that “happiness only real when shared.” (129; chap.18) Maybe it’s paramount to the people who are now alive.
What would happen if an utopia wasn’t all that perfect on the inside? Judging by just the appearance of something may lead to a situation of regret and confusion.” The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson address the theme of religious and traditional symbolism.” The Lottery” demonstrates how something that seems so perfect on the outside isn’t all that great on the inside.
is introduced. This man is simply happy because he gets to experience nature every day. He states that “nature is good medicine” and that it is where his happiness lies. As well as the fact that he loves the tranquility of fishing and such, he also enjoys the company of his extended family. Material wealth doesn’t mean much to them it’s just the quality time with one another. Roy’s happiness kind of coincides with Ronaldo Fadul’s in Brazil. He “lives well” in his small house and enjoys nature while surfing with his children. He leads a very happy life and doles out to his children that they should “work to live your life in tranquility,” meaning you only need to work enough to be comfortable and do the things you love. It’ll lead to
The theme for this dystopian characteristic is this; one can still have faith even when they don’t have a whole lot to be hopeful for.
...s and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifically and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?(William James)
In Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, the narrator, Sal Paradise offers up to us what seems to be a very optimistic view on life. He is forever singing the praises of how wonderful his adventures will be and his high expectations for the future. To Sal, the novel is defined by youthful exuberance and unabashed optimism for the new experiences that he sets out to find. A deeper look into the novel, as well as a look at some of the critics who have written on it, reveals a much darker side, a more pessimistic and sad aspect that Sal simply fails to realize until the very close of the action. Whether Sal is hopped up on the optimism of jazz music, secure in his belief that he is off to find ‘IT,’ or just excited about the promises of a night out in a new city, he is consistently selling the reader on the positive nature of the situations. To be more honest though, On the Road is a novel in which Sal, and the people with whom he surrounds himself, find themselves steeped into a near constant cycle of enthusiastic optimism for the future, which is then followed by a disparaging pessimism for the situation’s reality. While Sal might note that he desires the freedom and happiness of the open road, Ann Douglas says that "this is the saddest book that I’ve ever read" (Douglas, 9). While Sal attempts to show a exuberant and triumphant story of youthful optimism, critics and the actual events of the novel alike seem to point towards the fact that this same optimism turns the novel into a pessimistic story showing the actualities of life.
This passage means that everyone are created, trained the same and none of them have their own life or own thoughts or emotions which is unfortunates. The utopia is trying to unify everyone. They scold people that are unique individuals and when they come across a different individual, the individual is sent to a psychologist and is mentally fixed. Also, the State wants people to just have fun and play games with people rather than people being mothers and fathers of kids and feel the pain. Marriage is frowned upon while people are encouraged to have erotic fun. The controller of a perfect society wants people to intercourse for their happiness and not for them to build a family. They are satisfied with the happiness they get from the things they use. This could state that the citizens in Brave New World are genuinely happy, this is more a result of ignorance and blindness rather than a truly fulfilling sense of bliss. However, one person in Brave New World tried to consent his individuality in the society and he end up to be a dangerous citizen. The person that object his individuality was Bermard Marx who’s an Alpha plus and does not believe in the promiscuous nature of his society. He feels isolated from the rest of society because he attempts to do dissimilar things from
...g means and live their lives in eternal joy and therefore a utopia. However, since anyone can decide whether he sees it as the former or the latter, this can serve as a means of exploring oneself for the reader. After all, Aldous Huxley just showed the world a possible scenario of future and it is up to the world whether they will see it as a warning or a warm invitation.
Huxley implies that by abrogating dreadfulness and mental torment, the brave new worlders have disposed of the most significant and brilliant encounters that life can offer also. Most remarkably, they have relinquished an abstruse deeper joy which is intimated, not expressed, to be pharmacologically out of reach to the utopians. The magical foundation of this assumption is dark. There are clues, too, that a percentage of the utopians may feel a poorly characterized feeling of disappointment, an irregular sense that their lives are trivial. It is suggested, further, that assuming that we are to discover correct satisfaction and importance in our lives, then we must have the ability to contrast the great parts of existence with the awful parts, to feel both euphoria and despondency. As vindications go, it’s a great one.
Many people value the tangible over the complex. However, viewing the world solely through this definite lens is an oversimplification. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We explores this flaw in a society founded solely upon its government’s definition of the “ultimate happiness.” To reach utopia, it eliminates inefficiency, crime, and despondency, by promoting state-led happiness. Despite these admirable goals, the One State’s methods sacrifice freedom, individualism, and, ironically, happiness itself, ultimately failing its mission. Zamyatin explores the emotionless routine within the One State to assert that happiness cannot exist when controlled and rationalized.
to the fact that not everything is as well as it seems and that this
The relationship between a father and his son can be articulated as without a doubt the most significant relationship that a man can have throughout the duration of his life. To a further extent the relationship between a father and a son can be more than just a simple companionship. Just like a clown fish and a sea anemone, both father and son will rely on each other in order to survive the struggles of their everyday lives. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Gabriele Muccino’s The Pursuit of Happyness both depict a story between a father and son using each other as a means of survival when faced with adversity. When placed in a tough situation father and son must create a symbiotic relationship in order to survive. Upon the duo of father and son can creating a symbiotic relationship, it will result in a mutual dependency on each other. This theme of paternal love is omnipresent given the bond between the two characters.
We might not have the same opinions, paths, and ways of living; but we all, millions of people around the world, share the same purpose of life: Being able to say “I am having a good life!” What we mean by “good life” is living in pure happiness and having a wonderful peace of mind. The difference between us is that each one of us chooses a different way in his pursuit of happiness. Some find it in stability with a big house, a family, and a good paying job. Some find it in adventure and wildness, travel, and taking risks. While others don’t really have specific criteria or an organized plan, they just believe that happiness comes with living each day as if it was the last, with no worries about the rest. Personally, I find it in trying to be the best version of myself, in staying true to my principles, and in the same time in being able to make my own decisions; which reminds me of what George Loewenstein said “Just because we figure out that X makes people happy and they're choosing Y, we don't want to impose X on them.”