Scholar Inger-Anne Søfting writes, “The term utopia was coined by Thomas More in his book by the same title from 1516 and it etymologically signified a place which was a non-place. The term dystopia, or anti-utopia, is associated with More’s term utopia through contrast; dystopia is utopia gone wrong and dystopian spaces are associated with disease and destruction.” Thomas More brings to life the term utopia in his book Utopia, where themes like society and class, wealth, power, and exploration are shown. Unlike Utopia, The Road shows a dystopian place where themes such as violence, good versus evil, isolation, and exploration are portrayed. Even though, The Road and More’s Utopia hold differences in their way of living, good versus evil, and individualism, they both hold a sense of strength and skill and hopefulness.
Thomas More was an interesting man who created a “new world exotica”, his utopia. In More’s Utopia everyone spoke the same language, had the same habits, and obeyed the same laws throughout the entire land. In this land, everyone works and has a special skill that they contribute to their community. Families share what they produce in a large, common warehouse and everyone takes what they need, this system prevents greed from being a problem in Utopia. Nobody in Utopia has land ownership and there is no social class. While this may seem ideal, the mindset of the people in utopia is, nobody owns anything, you don’t fear losing anything. This mindset can be either negative or positive. Since there is no land ownership and everyone does the same thing in utopia, there is no social class, preventing the citizens from trying to become better than their fellow citizens. Not only do the people of utopia not have social class but they do not understand the value of wealth either. Materials like gold, silver, and diamonds are not valuable to them, they use gold to for chamber pots. While Thomas More explained a place of idealism, other authors write against his ‘utopian’ views and create a “dystopian” lifestyle.
When McCarthy wrote The Road, he wrote about a place of isolation, violence, and good versus evil. The Road is a dystopian place, a place where “disease and destruction” are present. The novel is set in a desert-like setting. Søfting writes “Its time is neither a distant past nor a remote future, and it thus breaks with the conventions of most dystopian texts, which are typically set in the future.” While the text is somewhat different than most dystopian texts, we can infer that McCarthy was either mocking More or going off the path of a typical dystopian place. In most dystopian texts, mortality is a common theme, and McCarthy does not veer away from that. Throughout the text, both the man and the boy experience death and sickness. The boy and the man come across many “bad guys” who are either trying to kill them, capture them, or have captured other human beings. At one point when the boy gets really sick, the man gets him to feeling better and they continue on their way with a cart of things they have collected. As the two are traveling, the man is shot with an arrow, so they make their way into a pine forest, where the man dies. The mans’ interactions with the boy can be seen as an attempt to prepare the boy to live in the world on his own but almost immediately after, a family appears on the road and they take the boy in. This is surprising because nowhere else in the novel do the man/the boy meet any good travelers. The novel ends on a note of hope, perhaps these small enclaves of compassionate people can survive and eventually rebuild a tolerable world.
More’s Utopia and McCarthy’s The Road have some differences that go along with one being a utopian society and the other a dystopian society. Yoran states “But the real achievement of Utopia is not its political and institutional structure, nor even its citizens’ love of learning, but the citizens themselves and their way of life.” Even though The Road ends on a note of hopefulness, the society and citizens in the novel are nowhere near as much of a community as those in More’s Utopia. More describes a place where citizens in the community work together to make the country a place in which they enjoy living. The citizens in More’s utopia work together to produce what they need and only take what is necessary. McCarthy describes a place where everyone seems to be against the other, everyone is on their own and isolated, and there is not an abundance of food. The citizens who live in McCarthy’s novel are not helpful to each other nor do they share their findings of food and necessities of life. While there are many differences with the two societies, there are also similarities between the two.
While there seem to be many differences in More’s Utopia and McCarthy’s The Road, a theme that pops up quite frequently is good versus evil. More does not write about good versus evil because in the society in which he created, everyone works together to create a place in which everyone wants to live. More writes, “Among [the Utopians] virtue has its reward, yet everything is shared equally, and all men live in plenty.”(1. 38) This alone shows how the utopian culture does not only show society and class but also how they share their wealth. This also shows how the Utopians are helpful towards each other and how they do not fight againt one another. This is extremely different in The Road because the theme of good versus evil seems to come up quite often. After the man kills someone, the boy asks his father, “are we still good guys?” the man replied, “yes. We’re still the good guys.” (120. 7-8). In this dialect, we can assume since there are “good guys” there are also evil or “bad guys”, this shows the concept of good versus. This, again, shows the concept of the dystopian society in which they live. Søfting states, “In The Road human beings are up against something much larger than themselves…” Not only does the boy ask his father if they are still “god guys” the idea of “good”, “bad”, and “evil” come up often throughout The Road and the main characters are often fighting off or going against someone.
Even though More attempts to describe an ideal society, an aspect in which his society lacks is, individualism. More’s utopia is a place where everyone does the same thing, everyone has the same houses, and wear the same clothes. Although married peoples wear something different than those who are single, all women and all men have the same clothes to wear. Everyone in More’s utopia everyone has the same basic skills because they all work the same jobs at some point in their lives. Another aspect in which some find interesting is the lack of individualism in the houses of the citizens. Every ten years the utopians all switch houses, this means that all the houses are the same and have the same material items. This means they do not have to lock their doors, if everyone has the same things, there is no reason they would need to lock their things up. Although it may seem like a downside of More’s utopia, it may be a positive because it would cause less conflict and nobody would care about having something better than someone else. While More’s utopia lacks individualism, McCarthy’s The Road does not frown upon individualism, it lacks individualism. The characters in The Road are all fighting for their lives, to stay healthy, and to find food. While the author does not describe a place in which they created that purposefully lacks individualism, The Road follows similar aspects of More’s utopia, but a less strict and planned out aspect.
Although it may be hard to believe, More’s Utopia and McCarthy’s The Road have similarities within their novel. The two novels contain strength and skill. Even though the characters in each novel had to wither work harder or not as hard as the other, they each had to work for what they had. In More’s Utopia, characters worked every day, produced food for the community, and shared their skills with the rest of the community. Although the characters in The Road used their strength and skills to work against everyone else, they each still had their personal skills that helped them in reaching their goals. In The Road, the man and the boy shared their skills with each other to keep the other alive and to stay healthy and continue on their journey. While they encounter some on their journey, most of the novel is written around the boy and the man, so when we compare them to the citizens in More’s Utopia, the two are very similar. The boy and the man share their findings with each other, they use their skills to benefit the other, and they work hard every day to continue on their journey. McCarthy writes, “In a pantry they came upon part of a sack of cornmeal that rats had been at in the long ago. He sifted the meal through a section of a window screen and collected a small handful of dried turds and they built a fire on the concrete porch of the house and made cakes of the meal and cooked them over a piece of tin. Then they ate them slowly one by one.” (130.1). This shows how the man uses the resources in which he has to create something for him and the boy to eat. Most would have walked away when they saw the rat excrement’s in the cornmeal but they were in need of food and the man was successful in his creations. This alone shows the skills and strength both the man and the boy have in this novel. Even though the community in which we are looking at for each novel is very different in size, they share similar qualities and this shows their goals are similar.
Both More’s Utopia and McCarthy’s The Road hold a sense of hopefulness in their pieces. While the hopefulness in More’s utopia was held mostly in the author, More, the hopefulness in McCarthy’s The Road is held within the characters. More was hopeful that the place in which he created was going to be successful and the people who lived there would go along with the way of life he had created for them. He was hopeful that the people who lived in this place would not go against the laws or religion created for them even if the way of life in utopia lacked individualism. McCarthy creates a society in which the individuals in the land are all fighting for their life, healthy living, and food. By the end of the story when a family comes across the boy and saves his life by taking him in, it gives the reader a sense of hopefulness. Not only do the readers feel this but also throughout the story when the boy and the man would come across a place where they found food and shelter, they would become hopeful. Although both More and McCarthy use hopefulness in different aspects of their writing, each of them shows a special interest in including the thought of hopefulness.
More and McCarthy create two different types of societies in their works, they each hold different and similar views but create two very different places in which their characters live. Even though, The Road and More’s Utopia hold differences in their way of living, good versus evil, and individualism, they both hold a sense of strength and skill and hopefulness. More creates a place of idealism in his mind, a place where everything is perfect, at least for the creator of the place. McCarthy creates the opposite society as More does. McCarthy creates an anti-utopia, a place where utopia has gone wrong. While McCarthy and More have created opposite societies, they each have different values that they include and their societies, surprisingly, have similar aspects.