Jacob Haghnazadeh

California State University Northridge Professor Florian

Course English 114 A
26th February 2013
Pitch for Utopia
The novel called Utopia by Thomas More shows his ideas of what can be considered a
perfect society. Even though the ideas in this book may not be so perfect, the ideas created by
More, helped shape our modern society today. The biggest idea from the book in slavery in
Utopia vs the United States current prison system. Although both of these concepts may seem so
far apart, they are derived from the same idea.
Even though Utopia is built to be a perfect society, human flaws are inevitable. Utopia is
built for its citizens to live one of the most comfortable lives. Every person is given the essential
items that they need, in return everyone does their share for the community. It seems to be a fair
agreement. The community believes that is every person is given all of the amenities they need
to be able to live a comfortable life, there wouldnt be any need for stealing or major crimes.
Although the community believes no one has the need to steal, the officials know how to
take care of anyone who does. The city of Utopia has created a slavery system for anyone who
still feels the need to commit a crime. Every slave throughout the city has been captured only
through prisoners of war or criminals. The slaves have never been bought or traded for. The jobs
of these slaves is to do work for the community throughout the city. The community believes
that this is the best way for these men to serve their sentence is by improving the community.
The ideas incorporated in the city of Utopia have shaped our prison system today.
Although the United States has thousands of prisoners, none of them are considered slaves but
their overall purpose of being in jail is the same as the slaves; to serve the community for the
actions they have done. Prisoners are not their by choice. No one can be bought or traded to be a
prisoner, you must be sentenced their by your own actions just like Utopia. The United States
believes that the prison system is the solution to fix humans who have broken the law.
Utopia and the American prison system share multiple similarities. As already stated,
both systems are created as a solution for citizens how have wronged the systems. Both systems
have an extreme called the death penalty for prisoners who are believed they cannot be fixed.
Although the Utopian society takes this idea to a different extreme by executed people who are
caught just for steeling, the belief is based off a similar idea.
The Utopians and the American prison system may have extremes but they both reward
good behavior. In a modern day prison people are sentenced to serve a specific time according to
the crime they have committed. Utopia may not have a specific time table of when they let out
certain people from slavery but they do allow people who have proven themselves worthy to be
released.
Overall by looking at the structure of these methods of dealing with punishment for
citizens are nearly the same. The biggest concept though, which will be elaborated later on, is the
concept or greed. Both systems believe by creating a strong punishment for thieves, it will
eliminate greed from the system, Greed has been around since the creating of humans but these
communities believe they can try to stop humans from acting on it.