Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84is giving voice to the real More’s professional experiences. Yet in the book, the character “Thomas More” at times disagrees with Raphael’s opinion. Why might the character “Thomas More” express views different from those of the real Thomas More? We must remember that the author was living in the dangerous political climate of sixteenth-century England, in which the risk of losing one’s head was all too real. Thus, it must have been highly expedient for him that his fictional namesake decisively rejected Raphael’s argument for total com- munity of goods. This pattern repeats itself throughout the book. Whenever Utopia touches on politically sensitive subjects, the author sends the character “Thomas More” into the field to disavow anything that might seem subversive. It’s a device that allows him to safe- guard both his creative and his physical liberty. It is for this reason, perhaps, that at the end of the first part of Utopia the character “Thomas More” criticizes Raphael’s suggestion that private property is the root of all evil: “On the contrary,” answered I, “it seems to me that men cannot live conveniently where all things are common. How can there be any plenty where every man will excuse himself from labor? For as the hope of gain doth not excite him, so the confidence that he has in other men’s industry may make him slothful.” The foreign sailor shows great understanding for the fictitious “Thomas More’s” objection, but responds confidently on the basis of his own experience: “I do not wonder,” said Raphael, “that it appears so to you, since you have no notion, or at least no right one, of such a constitution; but if you had been in Utopia with me, and had seen their laws and rules, as I did, for the space of five years, in which I lived among them, and during which time I was so delighted with them that indeed I should never have left them if it had not been to make the discovery of that new world to the Europeans, you would then confess that you had never seen a people so well constituted as they.” Are you slowly growing curious about the commonwealth of Utopia? If so, then the refined literary strategy of the author Thomas More has caught you in its grip. The function of the entire first part of the book is to use contemporary political and social problems to make the reader hungry for more informa- tion about this alternative society. The book’s second part then offers answers that have much to say not just to the sixteenth century, but to the twenty-first as well. Here we find a portrait of a totally differ­ ent and new society: a “no place” (Greek ou-topos in a literal sense) but certainly also a “good place” (eu-topos). This society is not a Christian one. (No doubt this point was politically helpful to the real Thomas More, allowing him to disavow his book as a mere fantasy.) Nevertheless, we are confronted with “the paradigmatic and congenial draft plan of a society of community of property, which will more or less have an impact on all other considerations.” 3 Utopian society, we learn, is made up of communities of families who renounce money and private ownership. Markets do exist but are organized according to unfamiliar principles: Every city is divided into four equal parts, and in the middle of each there is a market-place. What is brought thither, and manufactured by the several families, is carried from thence to houses appointed for that purpose, in which all things of a sort are laid by themselves; and thither every father goes, and takes whatso- ever he or his family stand in need of, without 30 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2017