Utopia, Dystopia or Anti-Utopia? by Choloe Houston

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In the book Utopia the country of Utopia is a true commonwealth where there is no private property or financial classes. Utopia is a fictional country with a society in which everything is shared equally and there is no want.
In Utopia, “Among [the Utopians] virtue has its reward, yet everything is shared equally, and all men live in plenty” (More 1.38).By creating a place that has no money or private property More undermines the institutions of Tudor England by getting at the problem of social injustices having to do with private property (Brayton).Stevenson says, “With radical simplicity the Utopians avoid the ills of Europe: all private property is abolished. Pungent descriptions of crime, poverty, unemployment, ostentatious luxury, and idleness in Book I give way in Book II to Hythloday's eulogy of a country which is literally a ``commonwealth,'' where there are no beggars, no gentlemen, no money”(Stevenson). The main tension in the book Utopia is from the disagreement about everything having to do with private property (Phillips).
In Utopia there are many well thought out solutions to problems such as taxation, food shortage, stability of marriage, religious tolerance, and greed (Bender).Primary education is provided for everyone. Also, every citizen must work on the land for at least two years to prevent food shortages (Forward).Utopians only need money for emergencies such as war because they can take all they need from shops at will. They even use gold to make their chamber-pots (Forward).
Houston says, “Utopia is organized entirely along rational lines: there is an absence of sin; children are brought up in common; a system of slavery operates; and one city is exactly the same as another, so that the Utopian is everywh...

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... Web. 13 Jan. 2014.
Houston, Chloe. "Utopia, dystopia or anti-utopia? Gulliver's Travels and the Utopian mode of discourse." Utopian Studies 18.3 (2007): 425+. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 13 Jan. 2014
More, Thomas. Utopia. New Haven: Yale UP, 1964. Print.
Phillips, Joshua. "Staking Claims to Utopia: Thomas More, Fiction, and Intellectual Property." Material Culture and Cultural Materialisms in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Ed. Curtis Perry. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001. 111-138. Rpt. in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 140. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.
Stevenson, Kay Gilliland. "Utopia: Overview." Reference Guide to English Literature. Ed. D. L. Kirkpatrick. 2nd ed. Chicago: St. James Press, 1991. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.

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