Utopia by Thomas More Book Review

For years I have wanted to read Thomas More’s Utopia. I first heard about it when I watched the movie Ever After, with Drew Barrymore, as a kid. It wasn’t until around 15 years later, when I was in college, that I realized it was a real book. I thought it was fictional like the rest of the movie.

I can see why it has stood the test of time. I found it to be well organized and easily paced. The first half the book criticizes the governments and social norms of the day, especially England and Italy. The second half is the description of this fiction land of Utopia. 

I could not tell if this book was for or against communism. I felt it deterred me against communism. However, since they were trying to describe how if the rest of the world would follow the rules of Utopia, that life and the world would be a better place, I thought maybe this book is promoting communism. On further research, I found many people take away many different viewpoints on what More was trying to get across in this story. 

I feel a few different ways because we get mixed signals from More about things. I feel perhaps he had conflicting views, maybe of how politics and religions work with and against each other. I never felt swayed one way or the other by his story. I really felt like neither option was great. While part one explains some of the majour issues of the day, and the second half is supposedly demonstrating how to fix those problems, many of those would not work or would fail eventually. He keeps talking about how people’s pride gets in the way of a lot of decisions. It does. It keeps talking about how it is human nature. It would come out in Utopian nature given time. 

While this also made very sexist points, and I keep in mind the time period of the day, I also found it interesting that the only “manly” jobs women were fully capable of were ones that served the government and country’s needs, farming and military service.

Overall, I found this is a very interesting read, and I am glad I read it. It is not normally the type of story I would go for. I think this is a book to be reread, as I think every time you would get something new out of it or build upon the previous read. 

I think this is a book that would be interesting to read with others, as I think the discussions would be fascinating. 

Please let me know your thoughts if you have read Utopia. I am not a very analytical reader. These are just my opinions.