The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 12 April 1999
by Samuel Butler
Far away, into the interior of a remote colony, a lone traveller comes upon a previously unknown civilization that has abandoned all technology and lives in a culture of easy acceptance and strangely inverted values. Erewhon (Nowhere) prosecutes sick people as criminals and cares for criminals as sick people. Samuel Butler uses this fantastic culture to criticise the strict and arbitrary rules of the Victorian society he lived in (the book was first published in 1872 and revised in 1901). Starting out like the fantastical journey in Lost Horizon, or the futuristic prognostications of More's Utopia, Huxley's Brave New World and Bellamy's Looking Backward, the book becomes a treatise on the nature of human cultural acceptance. The Erewhonians are quick to accept the theories of any philosopher of "unreason" who comes along. They've rashly given up any technology later than the 17th century. They harshly punish people for their misfortunes. And the argument for vegetarianism is taken to new levels of absurdity. Butler uses this to critique Victorian reverence for previous generations, the tendency to prefer reason over instinct, and subtly proposes freedom of thought unheard of in his social class. The book doesn't have much of a plot, and Butler reveals his own class consciousness, but as historical document, it is quite a story. Many of the arguments against the advancement of technology will be familiar to modern readers, and in today's culture, may carry new weight. Some vegetarians, my find the argument against eating meat pretty reasonable as well.