Erewhon

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Erewhon, or Over the Range is a novel by the English writer Samuel Butler from the year 1872 . It is set in a fictional country that the narrator discovers. 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 . The novel is thus an example of the genre Utopia , in the form of a satire on society in Victorian England . (A similar inversion was used by George Orwell when he reversed the final digits of the year 1948 and made it the title of his novel 1984. )

In 1901 a sequel appeared under the title Erewhon Revisited .

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In the first few chapters, the narrator, a young sheep farmer named Higgs , describes the discovery of the unknown land that lies beyond the mountains that he can see from his farm. Curiosity drives him and he goes there against all warnings on a voyage of discovery.

Upon arrival, he was arrested for carrying a watch, which made him appear suspicious. As it turns out later, machines of all kinds are considered dangerous in Erewhon. It is feared that one day they could develop into independent living beings and take control.

In prison, Higgs can enjoy the attention of Yram , the guard's beautiful daughter (the names of the characters are also inversions of well-known English names, Yram is Mary ). However, she is annoyed when he explains to her after a while that he feels sick. Higgs only slowly realizes that illness is viewed as a crime in Erewhon , whereas moral misconduct is treated as an illness. This indicates how the usual standards of value are reversed in the novel, as if in a distorting mirror: That is the principle of satirical representation.

When Higgs is finally rehabilitated, he is sent as an interesting stranger to the capital, where he is to be introduced to the king. His supervisor there is the merchant Nosnibor (vice versa Robinson ), who has just recovered from a serious attack of embezzlement .

The novel ends with Higgs leaving the country in a balloon, not without first getting to know many peculiarities of this country.

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In this way, Butler makes fun of some aspects of contemporary England, not least the educational system. In Erewhon all children in schools, the need Colleges of Unreason ( schools of Unreason ) the hypothetical language learning. This was spoken hundreds of years ago, but no one speaks it today. Important books and treatises are still written in this language, and anyone who wants to make a difference in their work must be able to speak it. It becomes clear that Butler is criticizing the fact that Latin in England has long been viewed as an important element of higher education, especially in grammar schools .

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

Likewise already owning applies in this fictional country of a watch as a criminal offense, as a result of the industrialization of the people during the period in which they work done now in a lying between two exact to the minute times period had to place, creating a time-bound stress originated. (Your work was required just when the machines were running.)

Butler's novel stands on the one hand in the tradition of utopian literature from Thomas More ( Utopia ) to 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 .

literature

  • Hans-Peter Breuer: A critical and annotated edition of Samuel Butler's Erewhon . Unpublished PhD thesis, Stanford University, Stanford 1970.
  • Jan Jedrzejewski: Samuel Butler's Treatment of Christianity in Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited. In: English Literature in Transition. Vol. 31, No. 4, 1988, ISSN  0013-8339 , pp. 415-436.
  • Henry Festing Jones: Samuel Butler, Author of 'Erewhon' (1835-1902). A memoir. 2 volumes. Macmillan, London et al. 1919.
  • Joseph Jay Jones: The Cradle of Erewhon: Samuel Butler in New Zealand . Melbourne University Press, Carlton 1960.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The name of the narrator does not appear in the novel, only in the sequel Erewhon Revisited .