Erewhon, 2 (Chapters 13-24)
- Why do the Erewhonians approach death without excessive disappointment?
What has happened to the practice of erecting funerary statues? Against
what Victorian social pratices do you think Butler may be arguing?
- What are Erewhonian attitudes toward pregnancy and childbirth?
Do these differ from Victorian ones? Why do women conceal their pregnancies
from their husbands as long as possible?
- In the case of child death, on what grounds is the mother
excused? What acts do you think Butler is obliquely criticizing here?
- What is satirized in the chapter, "The Musical Banks"
(15). In particular, which institution do you think Butler has in mind?
What are the characteristics of "musical banks," who visits them, and what
kinds of coinage do they accept? What does he have to say about their architecture
and their music?
- What aspects of religion and/or its practitioners does
Butler seem to be satirizing? What seems intended by noting that new windows
have been provided, but the "money" itself has not changed? (i. e. church
doctrine)
- Are their officials able to obtain other occupations?
What does Butler think of the practice of buying "livings" for young children
for later use?
- Who are the Ydgrunites, and in particular, the high Ydgrunites?
- What does Butler seem to think about the probably of the
existence of a supernatural realm? (147, "while to deny the existence of
an unseen kingdom is bad, to pretend that we know more about it than its
bare existence is no better").
- In chapter 16, "Arowhena," what report from the hero's
country pleases the Erewhonian monarch? How does the narrator offend the
king?
- Why would the Nosnibors object to a marriage between the
narrator and Arowhena? What strict rules about the choice of a suitable
partner do they uphold?
- How does the narrator differ from Arowhena about the origins
and nature of religion? Why do the Erewhonians believe a strict faith in
the literal attributes of abstract qualities such as "justice" is necessary
for social order? (153)
- What is the point of Arowhena's analogy between her culture's
beliefs and his? Are the narrator's defense of the origins of Christianity
intended to be convincing?
- Why does Butler present Erewhonian "laws" of science,
enforced as matters of morality, such as that no two objects may occupy
the same space?
- What does the speaker belief to be the best means of finding
the "divine"? What actions will most likely obscure it?
- In chapter 17, "Ydgrun and the Ydgrunites," what aspects
of convention and conformity are parodied? Does conventionality have any
advantages? (157)
- How do the Erewhonians deal with conflicts between Ydgrun
and their ostensible religion?
- Of what form of afterlife are the Erewhonians able to
conceive? Why do some Erewhonians believe that the doctrine of a future
state was immoral? What do they think of his argument that many refuse death
from fear of the afterlife?
- What do the Erewhonians believe about the nature of birth?
Why do they hold children responsible for initiating their own existence?
What form of birth document do the unborn sign?
- What practices of his society/its religious institutions
does Butler seem to satirize in this chapter? Womihat were Victorian arguments
for and against infant baptism? What problems are caused for Erewhonians
by such birth contracts?
- In chapter 19, "The World of the Unborn," what do the
Erewhonians believe about time and the past? What do they believe are some
of the disadvantages of birth and the ensuing life? Are these disadvantages
common to all societies? Are some of the Erewhonian beliefs held in other
societies?
- In chapter 20, "What They Mean By It," what does the narrator
believe to the attitude of Erewhonian children and parents toward each other?
In the rare cases of mutual love, what has caused this affinity? (176)
- What does Butler believe are some economic causes of the
resentment of children toward parents? Do his statements apply with special
force to Victorian conditions?
- What does the narrator believe are causes of growing infanticide?
Could his remarks have applied to Victorian England?
- What does the narrator believe is wrong with British middle-class
education? What should be the proper goals of education? Does Butler's critique
resemble those of other Victorians, such as George Eliot in Mill on
the Floss?
- What does the narrator think of the Victorian view that
money and culture are opposed? Is the narrator's description of the Erewhonians's
reverence for wealth intended as serious or ironic?
- What is being satirized in the description of the Erewhonians'
experimentation with the rule of youth over age?
- In chapter 21, "The Colleges of Unreason," what are the
conventions which make it impossible for Arowhena to wed the narrator honorably?
Would these have resonated for Butler's audience, steeped in the Old Testament?
- Why do Erewhonians teach their children "hypothetics"?
Against which Victorian practices is this satire directed? What does the
narrator find to be the limitations of teaching a language used "in a very
different state of civilisation to what it is at present"? What does he
think of the practice of translating poetry into hypothetics? (191) What
Victorian school practice is here parodied?
- What do you think Butler intends by representing university
professorships of "Inconsistency and Evasion"? Which practices does the
narrator think would be scrutinized if Erewhonians subjected their practices
to reason? (187)
- In chapter 22, why do the Erewhonians endow a Professorship
of Worldly Wisdom but disregard originality and genius? How are student
papers judged?
- What do the Erewhonians believe about the desirability
of progress? ( 191) What surprises Butler about the effects of Erewonian
education? (192)
- What "common sense" do the Erewhonians exhibit in their
responses to art? ("The artist, they contend, is a dealer in pictures, and
it is as important for him to learn how to adapt his wares to the market,
and to know approximately what kind of a picture will fetch how much, as
it is for him to be able to paint the picture. This, I suppose, is what
the French mean by laying so much stress upon 'values,'" 193)
- What reaction does the narrator have when he visists the
Erewhonian colleges and their professors? (194) Are the writings of articles
always sincere in their beliefs, and if so, why not? (194-95) What aspects
of Victorian society is Butler noting/satirizing in this chapter?
- What does he learn about the history of the struggle between
the machinists and the anti-machinists? What is the present position of
machines in Erewhonian society?
- In chapter 23, what points are made by the pioneer anti-machinist?
What do you think Butler himself thinks of these arguments? May some of
his arguments apply to Victorian religious or scientific debates? Are any
of these issues still relevant today, say, in the debates about cyborgs
and artificial intelligence?
- In chapter 24, are some of the arguments made by the anti-machinists
similar to statements by Victorian contemporaries such as Caryle and Ruskin?
(205, 208-9) What Victorian social changes have prompted anxieties such
as those of the anti-machinists?
- What evidence seems to suggest that machines may be independent
or potentially controlling entities? (207) Are there potential perils in
the need for constant updating and obsolence? What point is served by the
discussion on whether machines can reproduce? (210-11) In all, what does
the writer find the most troubling aspect of machines? (213)
- How do Butler's discussions in chapters 22-25 relate to
wider Victorian social critiques of alienation and the subordination of
persons to factory profit/industrialization within Victorian society?
- In chapter 25, what is the symbology of the narrator's
loss of the original anti-machine manuscript? What did the author have to
say about pipes? What do the anti-machine people believe about the certainty
of the future, and what is this intended to parody? (free-will vs. determinism)
- What Victorian debates are parodied by the anti-machinist's
claim, "Could I believe that ten hudnred thousand years ago a single one
of my ancestors was another kind of being to myself, I should lose all self-respect,
and take no further interest in life"? (222)
- Are some of the arguments about the improvements of machines
at the expense of humans premonitory? (234) What do you make of the classification
of men according to horse-power? (225-26) What does this seem to satirize?
- In chapter 26, "The Views of an Erewhonian Prophet Concerning
the Rights of Animals," what excesses and consequences of prohibition are
parodied? How do Erewhonians come to avoid the prohibition against the eating
of meat? Do the forms of prohibition described apply to any other Victorian
practices, such as their views of sexual activity? What do you make of the
case of the man who hangs himself when caught secretly eating a mutton chop?
(232-34)
- In chapter 27, "The Rights of Vegetables," what views
are propounded by the pro-vegetable prophet, and with what possible motive?
What arguments does he make for the intelligence of plants? Might some modern
scientists or environmentalists agree with him?
- What advice is given to the Erewhonians by their oracle,
and what seems to be parodied in the oracle and its mode of interpretation?
What does the narrator think drives the Erewhonians to listen to "would-be
philosophers and faddists"?
- In "Escape," what threat prompts the narrator to attemp
escape? What do you make of the balloon escape? Does it reflect some contemporary
advances in air balloons or other aspects of aeronautics? Why does the narrator
throw away the books he has taken with him?
- What role does Arowhena play in the escape scene? Why
do you think she was included at all?
- In the "Conclusion," what account of their origins does
the narrator give to those who rescue him, and why? Why do you think he
was unwilling to tell the truth? What account of his death has been given
by Chowbok? (255)
- Are his sisters glad to see him? How does the narrator
make his living in London?
- What religious and social preoccupations does the narrator
express on returning home? Has he learned much from his journey? What actions
does he propose for the conversion of the Erewhonians by force? (256-57)
- What do you make of the fact that the narrator encounters
Chowbok as a missionary in London? That he attibutes the latter's conversion
to himself? Why do you think the book ends with a solicitation for money?
- Which aspects of the frame are satirical or distancing,
and what aspects of Victorian colonial practice do these satirize? Can you
compare the ending with that of other colonial fictions, such as Conrad's
Heart of Darkness?
- What do you think are some final meanings of the book?