Missing Pieces Of A Utopian Puzzle Essay

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Missing Pieces of a Utopian Puzzle Looking Backward, written by Edward Bellamy in 1888, highlights the trials and tribulations that make up the social and economic systems of nineteenth-century society by writing an optimistic utopian type novel. On the surface, the novel is the story of time traveler Julian West, a young conservative Bostonian who was hypnotized in the late 19th century and awakens to a completely restructured society set in the year 2000. In lengthy conversations with Doctor Leete, the man who finds him, he discovers a vivid vision of a perfect future, one that was merely unthinkable in his own century. Doctor Leete shows him around the modern Boston landscape and Julian becomes instantly astonished to see a beautiful, clean and structured city with open spaces and striking public buildings. Bellamy’s novel proposes ideas that an economy based on publicly owned capital would solve many social equality issues. In contrast, Kirk Savage, author of, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America explores the harsh reality of a slave society during the post civil war era in terms of race, war, and monuments. Savage illustrates how this historic time period was told in a public space. The ideas displayed in Bellamy’s utopian system would struggle and ultimately fail to solve the specific aspects of the social, racial, and economic world that Savage realistically portrays. Savage examines the motives behind

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