Problems with Utopias: Change is Normal

These posts were made in connection to my novel His in Herland, a tribute/critique of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland. A young man from history, Alim, lives in Herland. Terry, the original villain, wants to get him out.   

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In the epilogue, I needed to figure out, "How would Alima Asytanax adapt to his new environment?"

The problem (from a writing point of view): I didn't think he would have any trouble adapting at all. Truthfully. (Oh, no, where's the conflict!?) My students from outside the U.S. adjust fairly quickly to life in the U.S., those who come from rural areas and refugee camps and those who come from cities in Africa, South America, Russia, and South Korea. They complain about winters in the Northeast. Otherwise, American modern life in a small city is not that big a deal.

For Alim, there would be some adjustments, of course. But what would they be?

I wrote The Translator.

Eugene: I agree that human beings evolved to adapt. It's literally in our genes. If anything, unless we actively swim against the tide and (purposely) give ourselves culture shock, we adapt faster than we expect. Language aside, the foreign isn't as foreign as we often want it to be.

The stumbling blocks are usually the mundane day-to-day stuff, not the National Geographic stuff. Like how the plumbing works. Or the sheer density of human activity.

In Non Non Biyori, which takes place in the sticks, pretty much anybody from anywhere else is exotic. So the hometown girl once treated as remarkable because she attends school in a nearby city now finds herself upstaged by the new girl who moved from Tokyo. Tokyo!

A common trope in anime and manga is the alien who shows up in Tokyo and almost immediately fits into daily life. This trope is not without precedent. In the mid-19th century, after 250 years of isolation, the Japanese government sent delegations all over the world and the rest of the world sent delegations to Japan.

I've always thought it's a good model for how an alien invasion would actually play out.

It seems that anime and manga became ubiquitous practically overnight (though it took half a century). Publishers figured out pretty quickly that they didn't have to flip the page order in manga. K-drama caught on even faster.

Kate: Your comment about "mundane day-to-day stuff" reminded me: during my study abroad in England, I got irritated because British stationary stores sold A4 size paper rather than 8-1/2 x 11, and the A4 wouldn't fit well in my notebook (and I'm used to America, which even back then sold every paper size). A peer commented that it was the first time she had seen me behave in an insular fashion (everybody else kept complaining about the weather) but it was the first time I actually felt inconvenienced. I didn't make the mistake of bringing only shorts, short-sleeve shirts, and sandals for a stay in England in July. Different currency was a given. Bank holidays were irritating but not that big a deal. The underground was fun! I adored the ability to buy little cheeses at Sainsbury rather than blocks of the stuff (and I loved the pastries). The dinky kitchen in our flat was cute. Ribena, though gross, was interesting.

But paper of the wrong size? Ahhhhh.

Taking the above into account, Alima's epilogue stresses his ability to adapt. Life may get overwhelming--and then there's the unfamiliar plumbing.  Otherwise, life is life.

Utopias are static environments. Human beings, however devoted they become to routine or perhaps because they are so good are turning anything into routine, are not. 

Note about image: One of my previous versions of His in Herland took place at the same time as the novel. Terry stowed Alim in Herland and went to fight in World War I. Alim and many of the women helped wounded soldiers who found themselves near Herland. Terry eventually returned, flying his tattered plane the last few miles after a dogfight to crash-land near Herland and be taken in. He survived.

I retained the image (from a previous post) since my point still stands: Alim is willing to take on a supposedly more dangerous, less apparently streamlined world when he leaves Herland. 

Utopias are the equivalent of magical thinking: a desire to pretend that the weirdness and randomness and uncertainty and "we don't know the future" nature of life has been "handled," put in its place, rendered innocuous, non-threatening, manageable, unsurprising. 

Alim abandons that pretense.

Epilogue

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding