During this past week I have been reading the Utopian novel, Looking Backward, written by Edward Bellamy. The novel is an outlandish tale about a man named Julian West who lives in the year 1887. West somehow manages to sleep for over a hundred years until he is awoken in the year 2000. There West realizes that he has awoken in a completely different society than 1887. In this essay I will write about the least believable aspect of this novel in my opinion.
Personally, there are multiple things about this novel that are not believable whatsoever, but this novel is a complete Utopian fantasy afterall. So I will be writing about two aspects that I find the least believable in this novel. The first least believable aspect of this novel that makes my brain whirl with confusion is the fact that the main character, West slept for over a hundred years.
Now as someone who has somewhat of an understanding of science: how on earth did the author decide that the main character would be able to sleep for over a hundred years without aging whatsoever or dying from old age, without thinking of how confusing that is? Now, now I do understand that this novel is utopian and a fantasy, but still, why? Personally if I was the author I would involve some sort of time machine, etc. But I am not the author, and that is off the point.
The second least believable aspect of this novel is the fact that none of the other characters were shocked or bewildered by the fact that West had slept for over a hundred years, which is really unrealistic, and unexciting. Now if this sort of situation happened in real life people would be horrified, and consider West mad or crazy. But this novel is very unrealistic so this calm response is probably expected.
In conclusion these are the two least believable aspects of the novel: Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, in my opinion.
Note:
Writing this essay I avoided the temptation of ranting about how confusing and overall terrible this novel is. But I decided to add a little note about this novel, at the end of the page. The novel itself lacks a normal plot, there is absolutely no excitement or a rising action, and though I have not reached the climax yet, I doubt it shall not be anything special. Also the characters are dull, dry, and overall uninteresting. I shall conclude here though because I want to avoid going to hard on the criticism, but I do have to say that I dislike this novel very much, but that is my opinion, and who knows maybe if you read it you will like it very much.
-Dreamer
The Dreamer 