Content Category
Literary Criticism
Abstract/Description
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau attempt to create a Utopian society in their works The Blithedale Romance and Walden, but neither of these authors were able to create a successful and sustainable Utopia. Both works indicate the difficulties in creating a Utopia by focusing too much on the individual or too much on the group. The individual in Walden cannot create a sustainable Utopia because he does not rely on society, whereas the Utopia in The Blithedale Romance focuses so much attention on the group that the individual becomes separated from the society. Both of these works suggest that it is only through an acknowledgement of both the individual and the group that a Utopia could ever survive.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Location
B132 JFSB
Start Date
20-3-2015 8:30 AM
End Date
20-3-2015 10:00 AM
The Failure of a Utopia in Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance and Thoreau’s Walden
B132 JFSB
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau attempt to create a Utopian society in their works The Blithedale Romance and Walden, but neither of these authors were able to create a successful and sustainable Utopia. Both works indicate the difficulties in creating a Utopia by focusing too much on the individual or too much on the group. The individual in Walden cannot create a sustainable Utopia because he does not rely on society, whereas the Utopia in The Blithedale Romance focuses so much attention on the group that the individual becomes separated from the society. Both of these works suggest that it is only through an acknowledgement of both the individual and the group that a Utopia could ever survive.