58 pages • 1 hour read
Thomas MoreUtopia
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1516A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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Raphael Nonsenso
The main character of More’s novel is Raphael Nonsenso, a Portuguese sailor whom More and Gilles meet in Antwerp near the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
In the original edition of More’s work, Raphael’s last name appears in Greek as Hythlodaeus, which means “dispenser of nonsense” (xii). As a former associate of the famed Italian traveler and merchant Amerigo Vespucci, Raphael is described as perhaps one of the most well-traveled people in the world and is frequently compared to Ulysses. He is a foil to the pragmatic and moderate approach to social problems we see exhibited in More. Raphael, by contrast, is a radical and an uncompromising idealist. He insists upon solving social problems by attacking them at their systematic root.
Raphael has a keen mind and remarkable powers of memory whereby he recounts tales of the foreign cultures and lands he encountered in his travels around the globe. By seeing various alternative forms of social organization, Raphael has also developed a sense that a new form of social order, one that is radically different from the status quo in late medieval Europe, is possible. Raphael thus represents a potential value of multiculturalism. Understanding different cultures can help us think critically about our own.
Seeing how different the world might be if private property were eliminated as in Utopia, Raphael is filled with thirst for justice. He argues that European society is devoid of equity: “Now will anyone venture to compare these fair arrangements in Utopia with the so-called justice of other countries?—in which I’m damned if I can see the slightest trace of justice or fairness” (110). He believes he has found the ideal society in Utopia, a purely egalitarian, communist society that is organized to maximize human freedom from want and suffering. Still, Raphael expresses doubts as to whether Utopian politics could take hold in Europe given the stubbornness and vanity of monarchs and their courtiers (20-21).
Thomas More
Thomas More (1478-1553) was an English attorney who served as chancellor under King Henry VIII. A devout Catholic, More was executed for refusing to support the king’s break with the Catholic Church and establishment of the Church of England.
While More is the author of Utopia, he also appears as a character within it. Along with Raphael, he is one of the more developed characters in the work. As we see from the letter that opens the novel, More is an active individual with a range of professional and social responsibilities that keep him busy. Further, as we see throughout his conversation with Raphael, More is an even-tempered and highly practical person. Raphael, for instance, rejects Gilles’s suggestion that his far-ranging knowledge would be useful at court by claiming that kings and other courtiers would never accept his advice. More’s response is evidence of his practicality and political moderation:
If you can’t completely eradicate wrong ideas, or deal with inveterate vices as effectively as you could wise, that’s no reason for turning your back on public life altogether. You wouldn’t abandon ship in a storm just because you couldn’t control the winds (42).
In other words, More represents the voice of practicality and political moderation. He sees value in small, obtainable adjustments rather than demanding radical ones he thinks are less likely to succeed. Additionally, More’s Catholicism commits him to a view of human sinfulness that makes a perfect society impossible. As he writes, “Things will never be perfect until human beings are perfect” (42). Raphael understands systematic social problems as the causes of individual vices and frailties, but More sees matters in the reverse.
Peter Gilles
Peter Gilles (1486-1533) was a historical figure and friend of Thomas More, whom he met in 1515. He was the chief secretary of Antwerp in the Netherlands and appears as a fictionalized character within More’s Utopia. Like most of the characters in the novel, More does not provide Gilles with a vivid personality or an arc of complex character development. Nor do we come to understand any of his views on the feasibility of communism as pursued in Utopia. Like More, however, Gilles is an important character in establishing the novel’s framing device and in situating it within a broader literary tradition.
In the book’s opening pages, for instance, is a fictional letter from Gilles to another Dutch statesman named Busleiden, who served in the royal court of the Netherlands. Since his letter is addressed to Busleiden in familiar terms, we see that Gilles is well connected even at the highest levels of government. In the letter Gilles reiterates More’s earlier claim that he is simply recording conversations held with Raphael. He also notes that “More’s a bit worried because he doesn’t know the exact position of the island. As a matter of fact, Raphael did mention it, but only very briefly and incidentally, as though he meant to return to the question later—and for some unknown reason, we were both fated to miss it” (12). Throughout these remarks More weaves together a broad characterization of Gilles with an exposition of the framing device of the novel.
The letter also reveals that Gilles is a man of great learning. More demonstrates this through Gilles’s invocations of classical Greek literature to contextualize the novel. Although More’s Utopia purports to be a record of an actual place, it is properly understood within the context of a long philosophical tradition that has speculated on the nature of the ideal society for centuries. Gilles’s letter helps situate the novel within this tradition by making explicit classical allusions: “At present, very few people know about the island, but everyone should want to, for it’s like Plato’s Republic, only better—especially as it’s described by such a talented author” (11). Gilles also insists that Raphael’s travels constitute a more wide-ranging and profound journey of discovery than that of Ulysses, the hero of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey.
