Erewhon

Erewhon is a novel by English writer Samuel Butler from the year 1872. He plays in a fictional country that discovered the narrator. The name of this country, Erewhon is an anagram of the English word nowhere ( nowhere ), which in turn is a free translation of the Greek- term Utopia. In the novel, so it is an example of the genus utopia, in the form of a satire on society in Victorian England. ( A similar reversal also used George Orwell, as he turned the 1948 final digits of the year and made ​​it the title of his novel 1984. )

1901 appeared a sequel under the title Erewhon Revisited.

Content

In the first chapters the narrator, a young sheep farmer named Higgs, the discovery of the unknown country which lies behind the mountains, which he can see from his farm. He is driven by curiosity and he goes contrary to all warnings on the expedition there.

Upon his arrival he is immediately arrested because he wears a clock with him, which makes him appear suspicious. As it turns out later, machines of any kind in Erewhon are considered dangerous. One fears that they could develop one day into independent creatures and take control.

In prison Higgs can escape the attention of Yram, the beautiful daughter of the overseer, enjoy (even the names of the characters are inversions known English names, Yram is Mary ). You will, however, indignantly, as he explains to her after some time, he felt sick. Only slowly recognizes Higgs, that disease is considered in Erewhon as a crime, whereas treating moral wrongdoing as a disease. This indicates at how the usual standards of value are reversed in the novel, as if as in a distorting mirror: This is the principle of the satirical representation.

As Higgs is rehabilitated, it is sent as an interesting stranger in the capital, where he will be presented to the king. His supervisor there is the merchant Nosnibor (reversed Robinson), who has just recovered from a severe attack of embezzlement.

The novel ends with the fact that Higgs leaves in a balloon the country, not without previously know many peculiarities of this country.

Assessment

In this way, Butler makes fun of some aspects of contemporary England, not least through the educational system. In Erewhon all children in the schools, the colleges of Unreason (schools of Unreason ) need to learn the hypothetical language. This was spoken hundreds of years ago, but today she speaks no longer a man. Important books and treatises are nevertheless still written in this language, and anyone who wants to get ahead in business, they must master. It is clear that Butler so critical of the fact that Latin in England has long been regarded as an important element of higher education, especially in the Grammar Schools.

Religion also refers Butler in his satirical criticism by equating the giant banking houses of his time with churches in which financial transactions are more important than worship.

Also in this fictional country already owning a clock is considered a criminal offense, as due to the industrialization of the people of the period in which they were doing work, now had to put in a period between two exact to the minute points of time period, thereby providing a time -bound stress arose. ( Their work was then asked exactly when the machines were running. )

Butler's novel is thus the one hand, in the tradition of utopian literature of Thomas More ( Utopia ) by HG Wells ( A Modern Utopia ), on the other hand, in the satire of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels to George Orwell's Animal Farm.