Utopian Visions in Love in the Ruins Love in the Ruins Essays

Utopian Visions in Love in the Ruins

Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins presents a society that is a direct satire of our 21st century American society. Percy takes what he considers the negative elements and situations from our society, and reproduces them, distorting them in order to point out the negativity of them. It seems, then, that the society presented in the novel would be distinctly distopian. However, the view that Percy gives us includes many different segments and views of the society, some of which are very utopian. Some of these mini-utopias are actually in the society, but many more are only dreams of the characters. This is an accurate reflection of our society; there are many situations that are utopian for certain people, and every one of us creates utopia in our minds from time to time.

Paradise Estates, where Thomas More lives, is aptly named. Paradise is a place where everyone gets along well, the liberals and conservatives, the unbelievers and Christians, the Northerners and Southerners. The distribution is not even, there are minorities, but the majority groups are open to the customs of the minorities. Paradise Estates is community at its best. It is not an intentional community, but rather everyone is free to do what they want and there is love and respect and little argument.

Intentional community does have its place, however. The Honey Island Swamp is home to a variety of people, including guerrillas, college dropouts, draft dodgers, radicals, and beats. Some of these people, such as Chuck, came from the town, and have given up city, home, family, career, and religion to live in an intentional community. Chuck's community is different from the community of Paradise estates in that there is common ground that holds the community in place, rather than respect for differences. Chuck's community holds ideals of free love, freedom, peace, and God expressed everywhere. This community is very similar to many of the contemporary utopias that can be found in America today.

Normally hospitals are not utopian, but this was not the case for More. More considered his time in the hospital to be "the best months of my life" (p. 90). In his fellow patients, More found love that he was not finding in his life outside of the hospital. Also, while in the hospital, he had the time and resources to do the breakthrough work for his lapsometer, which was his passion at the time. The hospital for More was a place where he could do something he loved all the time, and receive love and acceptance from the people around him.

More, however, had many, many different visions of Utopia throughout the novel. For example, on page 288: "What does a man live for but to have a girl, use his mind, practice his trade, drink a drink, read a book, and watch the martins wing it for the Amazon and the three-fingered sassafras turn red in October." Indeed, these ideals made up the basis of his more specific visions. Room 203 in the Howard Johnson motel became the setting in these visions, and More actually made significant progress with the room, attempting to turn his visions into reality.

Many of More's visions focused around Lola, the cellist he was in love with. These visions include various elements, such as listening to Lola play her cello, drinking, working in the garden, working on his lapsometer day and night, and being a happy man. More also envisions a utopia including Moira, another woman he is in love with. This vision more directly relates to the motel room, since Moira was the woman he was originally planning to stay there with. This utopian vision includes all of the necessities needed to live for months with love, music, and reading. Whether or not these situations are actually utopias is debatable. They share key elements with the euthanasia of the Happy Isles: being happy all of the time, and never accomplishing anything aside from personal satisfaction.

In the epilogue, we find that, five years later, More has indeed made a utopian life a reality. However, the utopia is unlike any of his visions. It includes Ellen, the third woman he loved, but he did not have any specific visions that included Ellen. He is married and has children, and still works at his medical profession. He is poor, but he has more time for thinking. He has quit drinking, and includes jogging in his daily regime. Earlier in the book, we found out that More would prefer fornication to a serious relationship, and that he does not feel any guilt for his sins. Here, he is devoted to his wife, and is finally forgiven from his sins when he feels guilt.

More's utopia was completely unexpected by him as little as five years ago. He always had utopian visions, but the utopia that was reality was different. It is important to keep visions of utopia in our minds. They give us hope and something to work toward. Even if we never reach the utopia we dream of, it can put us in the right direction for improving our lives.