62 pages • 2 hours read
Erewhon
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Chapters 26-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 26 Summary: “The Views of an Erewhonian Prophet Concerning the Rights of Animals”
The narrator explains that the Erewhonians developed civilization some 2,500 years prior to the point at which the narrator arrived, and the course of their development was much the same as that of Europeans, moving from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Once their civilization had developed a bit, an old prophet claimed that an unseen entity instructed him that eating the meat of any animal is wrong, just as cannibalism is wrong. His followers agreed, and laws were passed to prohibit the consumption of meat unless an animal died of natural causes or suicide. Afterward, the rates of natural deaths and suicides among animals increased, as people arranged for their dogs kill animals, which was considered natural, or claimed that the animals had killed themselves. Eventually, this meat was common enough that there might as well have been no law against it, but a pandemic occurred which the priests blamed on the practice of eating meat. As such, the prior laws were overwritten to ban all consumption of meat outright.
The narrator then includes a story about a sick young man who is tempted to eat meat when his doctor tells him that doing so is the only way to recover his health. The man eats steak, and despite his remorse over breaking the law, he feels better the next day. He continues this practice, but he is ashamed, because he thinks his fellow students would never eat meat. Meanwhile, the other students are also eating meat in secret, and they think that the young man would never eat meat. In the end, the young man is caught buying meat, and, before he can be sent to prison for this crime, he dies by suicide.
Chapter 27 Summary: “The Views of an Erewhonian Philosopher Concerning the Rights of Vegetables”
The narrator presents the argument of a later philosopher who disagreed with the prophet who championed vegetarianism. The narrator notes that the true goal of this second philosopher was to convince people to eat meat, but he writes as though the philosopher’s argument were in earnest. The philosopher argues that although people cannot understand the language or thoughts of plants, they, too, descend from a common ancestor to humanity. As such, plants are as alive as animals, and killing them for food is as great a sin as killing an animal. Using the example of a rose bush and a rose seed, the philosopher demonstrates how a rose must be intelligent by virtue of its repeated practice of growing from a seed into a bush, then into a seed again. In fact, the philosopher claims, each rose is the same in terms of personality or soul as all its ancestors, since there is always a continuous line from seed to bush to seed again, and the process of growing from seed into bush reflects the plant’s memory of prior growth.
This logic is forceful enough that the Erewhonians are forced to acknowledge it, and the philosopher claims that they must eat rotting fruit and vegetables but nothing else. The Erewhonians send the decision to an oracle, or a fortuneteller. Many people knew that one of the philosopher’s family members was a servant to the oracle, and this may have influenced the prophecy that the so-called oracle delivered. The prophecy stated essentially that people must sin to some extent, and that the matter of food is critical. The people, then, must either eat or be eaten and kill or be killed, implying that they should eat as they need to or die. The conclusion is that Erewhon decided to revoke the laws against eating meat, allowing everyone to eat whatever they chose. The narrator closes the chapter by saying that the Erewhonians are quick to accept someone else’s reasoning in order to avoid thinking for themselves.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Escape”
As the narrator is translating the texts whose contents are summarized in the previous chapters, he is also working to construct a hot-air balloon to make his escape from Erewhon. During a drought, the narrator approaches the queen to propose that he use a balloon to accost the air god to bring rain. The queen acquiesces, mostly because she wants to see the balloon ascend. The king does not believe that the narrator can accomplish this task, and he plans to bring the narrator to court on charges of having the measles and of bringing a watch into Erewhon. However, the king allows the narrator to try the balloon, and the narrator promptly plans to sneak Arowhena onto the balloon with him. By bribing Arowhena’s maid and one of the queen’s guards, the narrator manages to get Arowhena into the basket of the balloon on the morning of his ascent, but there is a commotion coming from the Nosnibors’ home. The narrator quickly orders the guards to release the balloon, and they rapidly ascend and catch a trade wind.
The trade wind carries them over the mountains, and the trip is frightening, as they do not always know where they are, if they are moving, and where they may land when the balloon inevitably loses its lift. After more than a day of travel, the narrator discovers that they are over the ocean, and there is no sign of land around them. He begins dropping objects from the basket to decrease the weight and keep the balloon in the air, but this strategy ultimately fails. They land in the ocean and are frightened, but they eventually spot an Italian ship that rescues them.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Conclusion”
The captain of the Italian ship is Giovanni Gianni, and the narrator notes that Gianni can vouch for the means of his and Arowhena’s rescue. They lie to the captain, saying that they were a party of 10 or 12 people, but the others drowned before they could be saved. After moving to another boat, they continue to lie about who they are and make their way to Melbourne, Australia, from which they travel to London. They visit the narrator’s family, but his mother is dead and his sisters are married. Since his sisters do not seem interested in a reunion, the narrator and Arowhena return to London, where the narrator becomes a writer to sustain them.
The narrator then details his plans for a return to Erewhon with multiple large ships and weapons. He fears that they may be attacked by other Indigenous populations, or even by the Erewhonians themselves, especially since he left on such poor terms. Along with the plan to come prepared for violence, he lays out a scheme to either convince Erewhonians to come work at sugar plantations in Queensland, Australia, or to force them to do so if they resist. In the narrator’s mind, there are enough Erewhonians to provide a constant stream of labor for the English colonies, and he doubts that the unethical means of bringing the Erewhonians to the colonies will be questioned, given that imperialists’ use of forced labor in Polynesian communities has not drawn any negative interest. The plan also assumes that the transported Erewhonians will be converted to Christianity, but the narrator’s primary concern is the money that he will make from the venture. In the end of this chapter, the narrator provides instructions on how to invest money in the expedition back to Erewhon, and he provides a postscript noting that he saw Chowbok in London. Chowbok claims to have found the lost tribes of Israel, which irritates the narrator, but the narrator is proud that Chowbok seems to have converted more fully to Christianity.
Chapters 26-29 Analysis
This section of the novel includes the last two translated Erewhonian documents, as well as the narrator’s escape and plans to return to Erewhon as a conqueror. The documents, one from a prophet and the other from a philosopher, develop the theme of Social Behavior Versus Civilization’s Rules by demonstrating that civilization’s laws cannot fully contradict “common sense,” or deeply ingrained social customs. In the prophet’s treatise, the narrator recounts the argument against eating meat, which occasionally extends to eggs and milk, which are largely in line with vegetarian and vegan practices in the real world. However, because the laws against eating meat run counter to the common beliefs of the Erewhonian citizens, they find creative ways to circumvent these laws and acquire meat anyway. Similarly, the story discusses how two sets of beliefs operate in society, embodied in the dominant conception of Common Sense and Duty. The narrator frames Common Sense as being “easy, genial, and serene” (205), aligning it with instinct or what feels natural, while Duty, the “rival” of Common Sense, is “austere,” “grave, but yet so kindly” (206). These two forces could be similarly described as cultural and legal structures, wherein the ideologies with which people are raised often feel more correct than the legal ideologies that are enforced in the world around them.
As for a comparison to sex and sex education, the allegory lies in the common acceptance among youths in the story that eating meat is acceptable but needs to be kept a secret, with shame and suicide following only when the young man is exposed. It is also likely that the idea of purchasing meat, as the young man does, could be viewed as a representation of sex work, as misogynistic terms like “meat” have commonly been used to indicate women, or, specifically, women as sex objects. The following chapter on the philosopher plays into this structure of Common Sense and Duty even further by exposing how Duty can be expanded beyond reason, which allows the people to return to Common Sense without guilt. By stretching the restriction to the point of making all but rotting fruit and vegetables illegal, the philosopher forces the Erewhonians to either eat meat or starve to death, and of course, they choose the former with the sanction of the oracle.
The final chapters deal primarily with the narrator’s escape, which can be seen as a representation of English society escaping outdated Victorian values, but the predominant theme of the final chapter is Imperialist Thought and Satire. The narrator, on returning to London, promptly plans to return to Erewhon with weapons so that he can essentially enslave the Erewhonians or force them into indentured servitude. In imperialist thought, such motivations are often rationalized as an attempt to provide enough labor for the dominant economy or to convert Indigenous populations to Christianity to save their souls. The narrator references both motivations, but Butler’s true satire lies in the narrator’s frequent references to his own monetary gain through these imperialist tactics. For example, after asserting that the plantations in Queensland “are in great want of labour” (228), the narrator comments that “it is believed that the money this realized would enable us to declare a handsome dividend” (228), bringing the true motivation back to his own desire for money. In the end, even the novel as a whole is framed as an advertisement for investors to give the narrator money to fund his expedition back to Erewhon by founding the Erewhon Evangelisation Company, Limited. This fictitious construction is meant to parody the imperialist efforts of enterprises like the East India Trading Company, which functioned as a real-life vehicle for imperial trade.
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