More's Farce
by F.R.R. Mallory
October 3, 2006

When we venture into Sir Thomas More's, Utopia, we are warned right from the onset that Utopia, from the Greek ou not, no + topos place, is 'Nowhere' (Merriam-Webster). By naming its narrator Raphael, (one of the four archangels of the Old Testament-whose domain is to guard human spirits), Hythloday, which is a combination of Greek words meaning "a skilled purveyor of nonsense" we immediately know that what we will be told, is a fiction. More goes on to tell the reader how to decode this meaning when he mentions that Raphael, "...is particularly learned in Greek" (More 507). Nonsense is described as "...language or an idea that is absurd" (Merrian-Webster). More intends for the reader to know that this story is a farce.

More launches his tale by establishing impressive credentials for the character who acts as recipient to the traveler's story, a character by Mores own name. He uses this device both to establish narrative distance for the More character while at the same time promoting a pretense of historical truth. This frame allows More to stage the delivery of the Utopia story by presetting specific conversations and opinions. Since these are offered in advance of the story it becomes fair to say that More intended these conversations and opinions to inform the Utopian story itself. He begins by exploring the distinctions between being in service or serving a King. It becomes important to remember at this point that the very first sentence of Book 1 From Utopia is to describe More's service to the King of England. Servias (in Latin) actually means slave. More, through Raphael, describes being in service as, "...a way of life so absolutely repellent to my spirit" (More 509). Why are we told this? More considered himself, "the king's good servant" (More 506). Since More has designed Raphael as an unreliable story character this would tend to invert the meaning, suggesting that Raphael's failure to offer good counsel in service to the public is 'repellant'. More continues by arguing his point further (not from Raphael) "...a people's welfare or misery flows in a stream from their prince as from a never-failing spring" (More 510). This, according to More, is why such counsel is critical. In this way More pre-suggests that the Utopia story, Raphael's experience as good counsel, is repellant.

More's description of Utopia is eerily reminiscent of modern day California prisons which spread out across the central valley farmland with large octagonal featureless buildings, whose residents are all similarly clothed in cheap fabrics, whose food is eaten by guard and inmate alike. Here are More's true slaves. They live in Utopian sameness, and routine, the endless tolling of the days as the inescapable system grinds away. Their governor is an inmate's judge, their senate, a jury of twelve-directing their lives from afar. The inmates have no money except the enormous amounts of invisible cash being spent on maintaining their enslavement. This too echoes the golden cuffs of Utopia. They have been brought to bear under the yoke of Christian morality translated into cultural law, forced to believe in the iron hand-sure, they can believe in any religion but they will live under Christian expression. "Still less will they count him as one of their citizens, since he would openly despise all the laws and customs of society, if not prevented by fear" (More 518).

...in Utopia no men are poor, no men are beggars, and though no man owns anything, everyone is rich. For what can be greater riches than for a man to live joyfully and peacefully, free from all anxieties, and without worries about making a living" (More 520).

When we return to More's farcical warning it becomes clear that this Utopia is indeed the language of the absurd, this is no place of ideal perfection but merely another expression of social and religious tyranny.

Work Cited

Merriam-Webster. http://www.m-w.com

More, Sir Thomas. Utopia. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. Vol 1. New York; W.W. Norton & Company. 2000.

 'Sir Thomas More and Utopia'. Goucher College
http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng211/sir_thomas_more__utopia.htm

Sir Thomas More
1478-1535

In 1935 Sir Thomas More was canonized by the Catholic Church as a Saint. I find that extraordinary. One of the historical translations I find the most difficult to reconcile, within myself, is to parallel contemporary men and women with the lives and procedural elevations of our ancestors.

Could I name a single man alive today whom I would consider sainted? It is true that Thomas More was deeply involved with his faith and that he moved within the highest circles of government attempting to advise and inform Kings in relation to their relationship with God and their secular choices. He attained this position, in part, by being born to wealth and privilege sufficient to allow him to study with the best and brightest of his day.

In considering parallels in the United States - do we have a religious or spiritual advisor to the President, if so, who would that be, how strong is their voice heard in the president's ear and to what degree does their influence trickle down into the daily life of American citizens?

In March of 2006, Reverend Herbert Lusk who presides over the Greater Exodus Baptist Church in Philadelphia, was sworn in to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA). Lusk, whose well known position against gay rights and absence of knowledge regarding HIV seemed to qualify him for this position had this to say at a recent Religious Rights Conference: “I want to say, first of all, be careful how you fool with the church. You mess around with the church, something stirs up inside of me! You be careful because the church has surviving power. My friends, you know this and know this well. Don’t fool with the church because the church has buried many a critic, and all the critics that we have not buried, we’re making funeral arrangements for them!”

Hardly language I would consider for a pending saint and quite troubling really in a presidential advisor.

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