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I<\/p>\n
Utopia as a sustainable world<\/em><\/p>\n Morris\u2019s News from Nowhere<\/em> places heavy emphasis on utopia as a sustainable world\u2014a \u201cgreen\u201d world. Our narrator, Guest, speaks of going from an old, broken down, rather aesthetically displeasing London into a world where all is bright and neat and beautiful. There is no \u201cbig city\u201d atmosphere, clogging the minds or smogging the air, and where there were once cities there are now flourishing gardens. \u201cIt is now a garden, where nothing is wasted and nothing is spoilt, with the necessary dwellings, sheds, and workshops scattered up and down the country, all trim and neat and pretty\u201d (pg 61). This quote speaks of the reclamation of an \u201cill-kept, poverty stricken farm\u201d surrounding villages fashioned much in the way of fortresses. The citizens of Nowhere realized that the world, life, does not revolve around people\u2014the society became ecocentric<\/em>, implying the awareness that the world was not created solely for humans; humans are simply a part of the world that was created.<\/p>\n In Martin Delveaux\u2019s article from 2005, he explains how Nowhere is a \u201cbioregional utopia,\u201d meaning that it and the people within it do not distort the earth to meet human demands. There is an understanding of a certain coexistence between Man and Nature\u2014the \u201cback to nature, back to the land\u201d philosophies from Morris\u2019s era, which state, basically, that people live \u201cin harmony and with sensitivity toward nature,\u201d and also that there is a prevalent \u201cdissatisfaction with urban-industrial society\u201d coupled with a \u201csympathy for things rural and natural.\u201d This desire for \u201cthings natural\u201d is evident throughout News from Nowhere<\/em>, and, being a utopian depiction, one may conclude that Morris wanted to emphasize the idea that, in an ideal world, mankind would live sustainably within the means of what nature can provide, and not beyond them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n II<\/p>\n Capitalist & monetary systems as a societal detriment<\/em><\/p>\n Even at a glance, it is obvious that a running theme within News from Nowhere<\/em> is that capitalism and monetary systems are detrimental to an ideal world. The people of Nowhere have no dealings in money, and they question Guest when he tries to offer any form of payment for the services or goods with which he is provided. They, the Nowhereians, work because this is where they derive their daily pleasure; no person does a job he or she does not want to do, and there are no shortages of work. The society\u2019s system is based on the Marxist principle that it is \u201cfrom each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.\u201d In the novel, Old Hammond explains:<\/p>\n The wares which we make are made because they are needed: men make for their neighbours\u2019 use as if they were making for themselves, not for a vague market of which they know nothing, and over which that have no control: as there is no buying and selling, it would be mere insanity to make goods on the chance of their being wanted (pg 82).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n People work as they are able in order to produce goods that are needed and necessary\u2014nothing is made which has no demand. There is no economy to sustain, and no reason to produce beyond the demand of the people. Through this, we, the audience, can identify Morris\u2019s distaste for the current state of economical systems and exchanges, threaded as an unavoidable theme within his novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I Utopia as a sustainable world Morris\u2019s News from Nowhere places heavy emphasis on utopia as a sustainable world\u2014a \u201cgreen\u201d world. Our narrator, Guest, speaks of going from an old, broken down, rather aesthetically displeasing London into a world where all is bright and neat and beautiful. There is no \u201cbig city\u201d atmosphere, clogging the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2418,"featured_media":108,"parent":104,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-139","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/scalexan-vsf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/scalexan-vsf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/scalexan-vsf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/scalexan-vsf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2418"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/scalexan-vsf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/scalexan-vsf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":766,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/scalexan-vsf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/139\/revisions\/766"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/scalexan-vsf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/scalexan-vsf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/scalexan-vsf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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