Erewhon

by Samuel Butler

Book Overview

Setting out to make his fortune in a far-off country, a young traveller discovers the remote and beautiful land of Erewhon and is given a home among its extraordinarily handsome citizens. But their visitor soon discovers that this seemingly ideal community has its faults--here crime is treated indulgently as a malady to be cured, while illness, poverty and misfortune are cruelly punished, and all machines have been superstitiously destroyed after...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140430571
• ISBN13: 9780140430578
• Release Date: November 1970
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Biting social satire

This satire still has all its teeth, despite being over 125 years old. The plot has its protagonist setting out to explore regions that have not yet been explored - i.e., explored by Europeans, i.e. explored by anyone who counts. He finds the remarkable country of Erewhon, with its many odd ways. Most of those odd ways exaggerate the social ills that Butler saw in his own society. The Erewhonians are overtly fascinated with physical beauty and health, to the point of treating ugliness or disease as criminal offenses. (Our own fascination with looks differs not in kind but in degree, and maybe not such a large degree.) Theft and embezzlement are treated as minor quirks, more like habits to be broken than real crimes. (Well, our business pages read like a police blotter most days.) Butler skewers the church, by redrawing it as a sort of bank. It's an odd bank, though. Everyone feels they should do business there, but very few do except so they can be seen doing it. It has its own currency, but a currency that can't buy anything and that even its own cashiers treat casually. The Erewhonians all hold it to be the most wonderful of institutions, but hold it in complete disregard in their day to day activities - does this sound at all familiar? He also takes on vegetarians, an anti-machine sentiment that seems to have gone out of fashion, and especially higher education. That last, or UnReason as he calls it, is his primary target of ridicule. I'll let you read the details for yourself, but the points that Butler attacks are still a part of modern academia. In fact, those malfunctions of purpose have spread out of the universities and into our grade schools. Butler's worst exaggerations are saved for the protagonist himself, however. The last chapter has the hero escape from Erewhon. He intends to return with a team of missionaries who will convert that nation of heathens, to the greater glory of god and gold. He is quite specific in the armament that will be used to ease the process. He also details how the Erewhon nation would be turned over to slave-holders for enforced religious instruction (and to turn a quick buck). Butler takes on the very worst of The White Man's Burden, and sinks it under its own miserable weight. This is a brief book, but very worthwhile. It stands well next to Gulliver's Travels as a partner in satire. It also works well against utopias like Shangri-La, by taking the same premises and working them in the opposite way. I recommend this classic to any thinking reader. //wiredweird

Samuel Butler gives form to the modern dystopian novel

Following in the tradition of Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," the English novelist, essayist, and iconoclast Samuel Butler published "Erewhon" privately in 1872. The title is an anagram of "Nowhere," which is the literal translation of the word "Utopia," the title by which Thomas More's 1516 work has commonly become known. "Erewhon" is arguably the first anti-utopian or dystopian novel, anticipating the later and better known works such as Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and George Orwell's "1984." Whereas More and other utopianists are primarily interested in attacking society's ills and making the world a better place, the anti-utopians engage primarily in either satire of the society in which they live or in making dire predictions about the dismal fate that awaits humanity. Butler is most decidedly in the former category, since he proves in not only "Erewhon" but also his more famous work, the semi-autobiographical novel, "The Way of All Flesh," that his main concern is in attacking the complacency and hypocrisy he saw infecting Victorian society.Like More's island of Utopia, Butler's Erewhon is a remote kingdom, not to be found on any map, which is discovered by the narrator of the novel (biographers of Butler have assumed it is modeled on a part of New Zealand, which anyone who has viewed the "Lord of the Rings" movies can attest has some spectacular landscapes). Cut off from the rest of the world, the citizens of Erewhon lives according to their own rules and dictates. Butler breaks from the tradition of creating an idealized world that goes back from More to Plato in favor of a more realistic society. In Butler's world there is still money, and both the rich and the poor still exist; there is even a monarchy in charge. It is when we notice strong parallels between Erewhon and the members of Victorian society that we start to see Butler's true purpose.Hypocrisy is rampant in Erewhom, where citizens think nothing of agreeing with things they do not believe in and their friends know that they are doing so. While the citizens pretend to worship deities that are the personification of lofty human qualities such as love, justice, and hope, they really worship a goddess, Ydrgun, and the Church of England is transformed into the sytem of "Musical Banks." As Butler hits his stride in this novel he creates a topsy-turvy world where illness is treated as a crime (there are no physicians in the country) and criminal behavior, such as theft, are seen as minor weaknesses in character. Unlike Francis Bacon's utopian work "The New Atlantis," where science was seen as the salvation of humanity that would correct all ills and provide all necessities, Butler's world has outlawed machinery because they might one day become the masters rather than the servants of humanity. Clearly Butler was no more enamored of the Industrial Revolution than he was of Victorian society. In many ways this is the section of "Erewhom" where Butler makes his

Greatest Accident of My Life

I was browsing the library and just happened to come across Erewhon. The picture on the cover of the book looked nice and it seemed like a nice novel about imaginary travels. I was in the mood for something adventurous, so I took it home and read it. It turned out to be one of the best books of my life, making me feel as if I'm not totally alone in the world with my opinions. Samuel Butler had a wonderful way of taking the society he lived in and disguising it in a satire. Sometimes you have to really search, but you'll see that it's still there. I'm probably sounding very confusing, so I'll have to give an example. The Musical Banks represent the Christian Church. This took me a while to figure out. The Musical Banks are large decorative buildings with many frills and much impressive architechture. Inside there is singing. You take your money into this bank and give it to the attendant, who will, in turn, give you a second type of currency. This second currency is completely useless, but you must carry it around and go to the bank often to have any respectibility in society. Many things take a while to soak in completely, but once you do you will find yourself jumping up and down and screaming "I got it I got it!" Or maybe I'm just slow---either way- this is a really great book that's well written. It can get dull at points when Butler begins to babble, but for the most part it's very interesting. It's 2:00 AM or something so if what I'm writing doesn't make sense, you'll know why. I also recommend Butler's, "The Way of All Flesh."

The most brilliant satire of the 19th Century

I have just reread Samuel Butler's Erewhon, a book described by Lewis Mumford as having 'a sunny malice'. Personally I don't find anything malicious in this tale. He does stand just about every taken for granted convention of Victorian society (and the world still) on its head, and has great fun doing it, but the end result is to force the reader to think long and hard about much that is usually accepted without thinking.In Erewhon, criminals are considered to be ill and are 'treated' by 'straightners' who make them well, whereas those who have physical illnesses (or suffer bad luck) are considered criminal and are tried and punished. Thus an embezzler will be treated for his 'illness' and the party who was robbed will be tried in the Court of Misplaced Confidence. The consistency with which Butler carries through with this conceit is impressive and consistently entertaining, and this is only one of the 'curious' conventions of Erewhonian society.My favorite part of the novel is the section that purports to be a classic text from the College of Unreason, 'The Book of the Machines'. Modeled on Darwin's writings, this text explains how machines are on an evolutionary track that will surpass and then come to dominate their human creators. The detail of the argument is impressive (the discussion of 'vestigial organs' in machines is hysterical and accurate), and no matter how far fetched it must have seemed in 1872 when the book was published, it seems much less a satire and more a serious fear today.This is a book of great intelligence and wicked humor. As a simultaneous mind stretching exercise and laugh generating experience I can think of few novels of any age that are its peer.