For example, Bellamy’s future utopia is one in which the nation’s workforce is organized as a true yet non-violent military of ranks and branches under a single employer, the nation itself. The possibilities described in this book are certainly fantastic, but for the sake of study are also worth noting.

This system draws out every man’s “natural” desire for hard work through the appeals of patriotism, brotherhood, and personal honor while, at the same time, expelling virtually all selfishness and crime by having already killed off “the root of all evil” (204), money. Leete describes (and at one point argues might be the Millennial Kingdom described in Scripture, 130) consists of a nation devoid of the need for money in which all manufacturing and business is organized nationally, the workforce army made up of every citizen exuding equal work for equal compensation in the form of non-transferable credit cards. The two spend the next week or so discussing the vast changes that have taken place in Boston and the United States (and really among a number of nations throughout the Western world), while Julian also slowly falls in love with the good doctor’s daughter, Edith. Leete after being found through excavation in the year 2000. Insomniac Julian West falls to sleep through hypnosis in his virtual bomb-shelter of a bedroom in 1887, only to be woken by the happily retired Dr.

This short review will look at the plot, the possibilities, and the problems of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward.

Of course, as utopian literature goes, this tale is as fascinating as it is misguided. I’ve felt drawn to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward from 2000 to 1887 for its promise to describe an economic and moral utopia achieved by mutual commitment to hard work and brotherly love.

“This is the tenth day of September in the year 2000, and you have slept exactly one hundred and thirteen years, three months, and eleven days.” (19)Īs generally happens whenever I feel compelled to read a classic, I finally found a friend who agreed to read with me a book that’s sat on my shelf for nearly two decades.

Edward bellamy books