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Looking Backward: An Exhibit of Edward Bellamy's Looking BackwardMain MenuLooking Backward by Edward BellamyOverview of this ProjectOutlining the Project's ScopeBoston 1887The Stagecoach AnalogyBoston 1887The Solution to the Labor IssueThe Knights of LaborUnited in BostonBellamy's BostonThe Utopic Boston of the Year 2000Utopic BostonUtopic CharacteristicsThe Capitalist America of TodaySourcesLooking Back: The ProcessEvan Ratermanne97ecf582f14fa0f3b0bf648c3d332c456e68ce4
Final Thoughts on Looking Backward
12017-04-30T20:03:56-07:00Evan Ratermanne97ecf582f14fa0f3b0bf648c3d332c456e68ce4170897plain2017-05-01T03:40:37-07:00Evan Ratermanne97ecf582f14fa0f3b0bf648c3d332c456e68ce4There are many connections to be made from Bellamy's Looking Backward to America of today, and that is where the real value of the text lies. The fact that the conflicts of society outlined in Bellamy's novel are still relevant and looming in the present-day United States, 129 years later, implies that Bellamy expresses very real underlying problems concerning capitalism, government, and the individual in the face of modernity.
In the final pages of Looking Backward Julian has a dream in which he awakes again Boston of 1887. Entirely unsure of what is going on, having been certain he was in the Utopian Boston of 2000, Julian questions the reality of his experience before once again awaking in Boston of 2000, revealing that the dream of being back in 1887 Boston and dreaming up the Boston of 2000, was just a dream, and he is, in fact, in Utopia. It is easy to read this as simply challenging the reliability of the narrator, but after long consideration of the novel I began to see it a different way. It wasn't about whether or not the Utopian Boston was a dream or not, the value of the novel still holds either way, it was a choice, a deliberate choosing of the societal values of Bellamy's Utopian Boston over the counter values of 1887 Boston. Bellamy's novel is a real commentary on issues of his time, and in his ending, in Julian West's complete acclimation into the Utopian Boston of 2000, he prods his readers, the individuals of his society, to do the same. To acclimate themselves to the values of that society, and suggests that if they do, they will find themselves in much the same experience as Julian West, feeling the evils of once-accepted ideologies to be but a far-off dream from the Utopian haven that has taken its place.
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1media/Flag.jpeg2017-04-30T20:03:04-07:00Evan Ratermanne97ecf582f14fa0f3b0bf648c3d332c456e68ce4The Capitalist America of TodayEvan Ratermann15plain2017-05-01T04:16:28-07:00Evan Ratermanne97ecf582f14fa0f3b0bf648c3d332c456e68ce4