Insert Clever Utopia Title Here

Right off the bat, Thomas More gave me a kind of annoying vibe. His letter to Peter Giles had quite a few humblebrags and he's super shady about Raphael. Literally (used in the literal sense not the figurative one) within the first paragraph he's saying that Raphael is "hurried and impromptu" in his way of speaking, as well as speaking with "careless simplicity".

Thomas also talks for like a paragraph about how he's so busy doing so many things for other people, if Raphael had not been so simple, and were his job more difficult than just transcribing Raphael's story, he would not have been able to finish. Okay Thomas, we get it. That being said, he clearly respects Giles' opinion; on page 24, he's telling of how he questioned his children's tutor on something but if Giles concurred More was comfortable changing his opinion on the matter, a seemingly big step for such a pompous guy. (I'm not sure if this is actually how More feels or if he's projecting a character?) 

I also respect the fact that More asks Giles to contact Raphael and make sure that nothing is wrong or forgotten. It seems that while More is arrogant and condescending, he also really cares about the work he's putting out into the world which is a great quality to have. 

actual video of Thomas More

Another thing: oh my god this title. "Utopia: The Best State of a Commonwealth, The Discourse of the Extraordinary Character, Raphael Hythlodaeus, as Reported by the Renowned Figure, Thomas More, Citizen and Sheriff of the Famous City of Great Britain, London" [sic]. That's all I have to say about that. 

Book 1 didn't really pull me in. This introductory letter grabbed me more than Raphael's monologue did. However, from what I gathered, Raphael thought that being in service to kings was no better than being a slave to them and would rather not be involved. He has some great one-liners which would make for nice sound-bites. 

Examples: 

• "Almost all princes prefer to occupy themselves in the pursuits of war rather than in the honorable activities of peace" (32)
• "It is only natural for everyone to like his own brainchild the best: the crow is delighted with his chick, the ape pleased with his cub" (33) 
• "...it is never safer to follow a wicked purpose than to repent it" (42)

So, it is safe to say that Raphael goes against the grain, and as many others have pointed out in their blogs this week, that he dislikes the "sheeple" in society. 

I wikipedia'd More and found out that, "More insisted upon giving his daughters the same classical education as his son, a highly unusual attitude at the time." That's irrelevant to this blog post but I think it's awesome. So maybe he's not so annoying after all. 

Politics...Evil sheep ruling the world.

    So Raphael has some pretty strong political beliefs. He knows what he wants to see in a perfect society and what he does not want. He also has plenty of examples that help him prove his point about a belief. I guess that comes from his age and wisdom as well as all  of his travels and how he was able to see how other societies worked and did not work. 

    His idea that no matter how good a policy is it will always look insane to someone who sees the world differently is spot on. That idea is still relevant now. If people have a different view and idea of how the world works it will be hard to get them to abandon that idea. 

       I also liked how he did not think that thieves should be getting the same death penalty as murders. Yes they committed a crime but the crime is not that bad that they need that severe of a punishment. Killing them off also really doesn’t realistically stop people from stealing. To stop someone from stealing you would have to find the root of the problem, the reason why they are stealing, and try and fix that. He says that the reason why some have resorted to stealing is because of sheep farming. They are being run off of their land and have no choice but to beg, since they aren’t needed as farmers since their land is being used for something else.

 

      Sheep really do get a bad name due to the practice of enclosure. When Raphael mentions how sheep used to be mild and content but now they are so greedy and wild that they devour men, all I see is a demonic sheep. I just imagine a secret gathering of sheep plotting on how to kill off the humans. That is a really creepy thought to have enclosure compared to it seems like he has a problem with the idea of landowners using their power to fill their pockets and starve the little guy.

Exactly Who's Utopia is This Going to Be?

Before I dig into the political meat of Book One, I'd like to point out something subtly noted in the letter Thomas More sent to Peter Giles. Basically, More admits he didn't ask the first thing most cognitively functioning human beings ask when a location is described to them, "where is it?" Even more conveniently, Raphael Hythloday forgot to mention it, which makes no sense considering the first chapter of Book Two is literally titled "Geography of Utopia." I cheated a little and flipped forward to see how specific the geography gets otherwise, and let me tell you, it's pretty specific. It just makes me wonder - why was the detail of Utopia's exact location left out? I know More actually coined the term Utopia in reality. Was he trying to metaphorically announce that Utopia didn't exist but could exist anywhere?

Sidebar: I just Googled "Raphael Hythloday" (to make sure I was spelling it correctly because I was too lazy to pick up the book) and according to some website called Grade Saver, "Raphael" is the name of a Biblical angel, but "Hytholoday" means "peddler of nonsense." What the heck? Why would More choose this name for the fictional man who's sole role is to explain things that are apparently not nonsense?

Anyways, I read through all of Raphael's political stances, ideas, concepts, solutions, or whatever you'd like to call them, and agreed with some but disagreed with others.

Agree: Capitol punishment is practically pointless because it eliminates the criminals, not crime. In addition, the punishment of death won't stop a thief who steals to put food on the table for his family. The system almost manufactures these kinds of thieves, then blames them, and why should they be punished with the same intensity as murderers?

Disagree: Private property should be abolished and replaced with communal property to create more prosperity. I disagree with this because I study psychology and I understand that private ownership is considered a right to individualistic people, and you would definitely decrease prosperity if you took it away from those who have had it and told those who didn't get a chance to have it that they never will. More also disagrees with Raphael but claims that communal property would leave no room for prosperity because the people will have no incentive to work, then they would disrespect authority. Well, I also disagree with More. There are plenty of societies in history we can look at who have abolished private ownership, and prosperity wasn't dead and gone, it was just equalized among members of society.

I might have this backwards or entirely wrong, but Raphael sounds consistenently liberal throughout Book One while his opposers sound conservative. I wonder if Raphael's/More's Utopia is going to be more liberal than conservative, especially since More wrote himself as a character who expresses disagreement with Raphael's ideas. Isn't Utopia different for every single person anyways?

Remember: Utopia is defined as an "imagined place or state of things"...DEFINED as IMAGINED...

Utopia by Thomas More.

Sheep Hater

          For a work of fiction, Moore seems greatly concerned that it be factual in nature. It seems strange to me though since Utopia doesn't really exist why he needs to add information such as where it exists on a map to the story. I'm also a bit confused on why the theologian says he wants to go to Utopia. Does he not know that it isn't real? 

          I find it interesting how when talking about Raphael's travels, he mentions how Raphael didn't talk about the mundane things that were everyday occurrences but how he talked about "...well and wisely trained citizens..." who were "...not to be found everywhere." The use of the word trained makes it sound to me that Moore thinks citizens and civilization should be robotic, like a well oiled machine. This is concerning to me because people are not robots and never will be. Is this the kind of society he envisions for Utopia? 

          When Raphael was discussing England's problem with thieves, he brings up a couple of interesting points. One is that due to sheep farming, people are being run off of their land and have no choice but to beg, as their services as farmers aren't needed once they are off the farmland and have no other skills to offer. It seems to me that Raphael has a real problem with capitalism in the sense of the big guy squashing the little guy. I don't know if this means he believes in a society similar to socialism. Another point he brings up is that since all of the land is being taken over for pasture, whole towns are destroyed, "...leaving only a church for a barn." I see this as Raphael finds it important to have spaces within towns for citizens to better themselves such as a library or a park. I find it interesting that he starts off the passage not by attacking the sheep farmers but by saying how terrible the sheep themselves are, those greedy little man eaters. What does he have against sheep?

How Raphael imagines the sheep.

The Utopia Tales

So, the story all begins with a man- who is revealed to be none other than Thomas More himself (not sure if that was supposed to be immediately obvious, I didn't pick up on it until one of the other characters called him 'Mr. More') as the main character (I guess the guy never got past his self-insert fan fiction phase)- traveling to Flanders.

Hi-diddly-ho!

Admittedly, my mentioning of this has no real purpose aside from making these bad jokes. Onto my real point.

Somewhat early in the story, More is conversing with another pair of characters, Raphael and Peter.

Further adding to my 'self-insert fan fiction' theory. (I'm sorry for being terribly unfunny.)

As they talk,  Raphael begins to tell a story about time he spent hanging out with the Archbishop of a little place called Canterbury. Now, where have I heard that name before...?

Oh yeah, right.

One night when dining with the Archbishop, an english lawyer who was also dining with them 'who took occasion to run out in a high commendation of the severe execution of justice upon thieves'. Raphael and the Archbishop then have a bit of a debate, in which the Archbishop laments so heavy a punishment on so simple a crime and Raphael defends the killing of lowlifes such as those. They discuss this for quite some time, as Raphael explains that, in essence, killing these people does good for the world as it keeps crime low, prevents food shortages, and stuff like that; if problems like unemployment can't be solved, crime will only rise as people struggle to provide for themselves, so it is vain to lament the death of these people for they do not benefit society. (Or at least, I think that's what he's saying. There's a lot of long-winded fancy talk in this book.)

What I'm getting at is that it seems as though Raphael is trying to teach the Archbishop a lesson by lecturing him about feeling sorry for the thieves. And of course it's not just any Archbishop, it's the Archbishop of Canterbury, that place we just read a book about people going to while also telling stories with morals and such. Much as people like the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner did in the Canterbury Tales, trying to teach the others a moral or a lesson of some kind, Raphael appears to be doing the same thing to the head honcho of the very place all those characters were traveling to.

It seems to me almost like a comedic jab at the Canterbury Tales and Chaucer. I'm not certain if there's a point to it, though- is it just for fun, or is it mocking? Is it some sort of commentary on the Canterbury Tales by More, or just a reference? Or am I just looking too far into things and seeing a reference to other works where there is none? I'm not certain. I feel like there's more to it, but I'm having difficulty reading into it, and I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts on the matter.