Erewhon Revisited

Erewhon #2

by Samuel Butler

Erewhon, set in a thinly disguised New Zealand, ended with the escape of its protagonist from the native Erewhonians by balloon. In the sequel, narrated by his son John. Higgs returns to Erewhon and meets his former lover Yram, who is now the mother of his son George. He discovers that he is now worshipped as "the Sunchild." He finds himself in danger from the villainous Professors Hanky and Panky, who are determined to protect Sunchildism from him. With George's help Higgs escapes from their clutches and returns to England.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Classics, Science Fiction, Satire, Utopia, British Literature

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 24, 1901

About the author

For the author of Hudibras, see Samuel Butler.

Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works, including the Utopian satire Erewhon and the posthumous novel The Way of All Flesh, his two best-known works, but also extending to examinations of Christian orthodoxy, substantive studies of evolutionary thought, studies of Italian art, and works of literary history and criticism. Butler also made prose translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey which remain in use to this day.

See also: Samuel H. Butcher, Anglo-Irish classicist, who also undertook prose translations of Homer's works (in collaboration with Andrew Lang.

Reviews

[Ed Erwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

What if Jesus (or some other religious figure) came back, saw his followers, and said "Wait! That's not what I meant!" This book explores that question. But, in 1901, you can only do that with satire.

Higgs left the hidden land of Erewhon at the end of book 1 in a balloon. When he returns he finds that a church has sprung up around this miracle of the Sun Child returning to his heavenly father. Eyewitnesses report having seen horses magically flying alongside him -- actually birds -- and have preserved some of their holy poop. The religion is based around badly remembered versions of things Higgs said on his previous visit, some of which were Christian sayings.

"Can you not see how impossible it is for the Sunchild ... could have made the forgiveness of his own sins depend on the readiness with which he forgave other people? No man in his senses would dream of such a thing. It would be asking a supposed all-powerful being not to forgive his sins at all, or at best to forgive them imperfectly. No; Yram got it wrong. She mistook ‘but do not’ for ‘as we.’ The sound of the words is very much alike; the correct reading should obviously be, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, but do not forgive them that trespass against us.’ This makes sense, and turns an impossible prayer into one that goes straight to the heart of every one of us.”

(I've not read book 1 but a proper Erewhonian would start at the end and work backwards.)

Parts of this are funny. It is like a rough sketch for a Discworld novel. And I suspect Pratchett was inspired by parts of this. (Example: there is an Erewhonian bird with a song that sounds like "More Pork". Could this be the origin of Ankh Morpork? There also seems to be a bit of the idea for the "thieves guild". '...honesty does not consist in never stealing, but in knowing how and where it will be safe to do so.” “Remember,” said Mr. Turvey to my father, “how necessary it is that we should have a plentiful supply of thieves, if honest men are ever to come by their own.”') But Pratchett is a much more entertaining writer. This thing drags in many places, repeating stuff we've already been told 3 or 4 times. (I had to force myself to finish this, even though some parts were very funny, other parts were dreary.)

Some of the bits I like: When children are too good, they can be sent to a "deformatory" to learn to lie a least a little.

“Then how can you expect your child to learn those petty arts of deception without which she must fall an easy prey to any one who wishes to deceive her? How can she detect lying in other people unless she has had some experience of it in her own practice? How, again, can she learn when it will be well for her to lie, and when to refrain from doing so, unless she has made many a mistake on a small scale while at an age when mistakes do not greatly matter? The Sunchild (and here he reverently raised his hat), as you may read in chapter thirty-one of his Sayings, has left us a touching tale of a little boy, who, having cut down an apple tree in his father’s garden, lamented his inability to tell a lie. Some commentators, indeed, have held that the evidence was so strongly against the boy that no lie would have been of any use to him, and that his perception of this fact was all that he intended to convey; but the best authorities take his simple words, ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ in their most natural sense, as being his expression of regret at the way in which his education had been neglected. If that case had come before me, I should have punished the boy’s father, unless he could show that the best authorities are mistaken (as indeed they too generally are), and that under more favourable circumstances the boy would have been able to lie, and would have lied accordingly.

Higgs decides not to try to hard to correct or replace the corrupted religion because, thinking back on his own Victorian England: "... those who in my country would step into the church’s shoes are as corrupt as the church, and more exacting."

I can't resist more quotes:

If he would develop a power of suffering fools gladly, he must begin by suffering them without the gladness.

and

He had earned a high reputation for sobriety of judgement by resolutely refusing to have definite views on any subject ...

and

Our sense of moral guilt varies inversely as the squares of its distance in time and space from ourselves.

and

It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

and

“He said, ‘Cursed be they that say, “Thou shalt not serve God and Mammon, for it is the whole duty of man to know how to adjust the conflicting claims of these two deities.”’”

and

... it is obviously better to aim at imperfection than perfection; for if we aim steadily at imperfection, we shall probably get it within a reasonable time, whereas to the end of our days we should never reach perfection.

and

Sisyphus, again! Can any one believe that he would go on rolling that stone year after year and seeing it roll down again unless he liked seeing it? [...] If he had greatly cared about getting his load over the last pinch, experience would have shown him some way of doing so. The probability is that he got to enjoy the downward rush of his stone, and very likely amused himself by so timing it as to cause the greatest scare to the greatest number of the shades that were below.

and

... the horrors of the inquisition in the middle ages are nothing to what he depicted as certain to ensue if medical men were ever to have much money at their command.

This could be a 5-star book if half the text were edited out.

[Amelie · Rating 3 out of 5]

i accidentally read this instead of erewhon… why didn’t the audiobook say that it was just erewhon and not erewhon revisited???

[Inmemoriaeorum7 · Rating 3 out of 5]

O carte mai puţin reuşită, în comparaţie cu primul volum "Erewhon", o continuare palidă din punctul meu de vedere. Paradoxal acest sequel, este mai alert, mai expansiv, dar îi lipseşte precizia şi rafinitatea detaliilor, ceea ce pentru mine este destul de important.
După 20 de ani de la descoperirea acestei lumi, Higgs decide să realizeze o nouă expediţie de recunoaştere, să vadă cam cum mai stau lucrurile, dacă mentalitatea locuitorilor s-a schimbat(în bine sau rău). Întors în Erewhon, Higgs descoperă că locuitorii au renunţat la vestimentaţia lor "tradiţională", adoptând straiele pur europene(în special cele de tip britanic), precum şi faptul că purtarea ceasului a devenit o obişnuinţă şi nu o interdicţie. Din discuţia purtată cu "profesorii" Hanky şi Panky, Higgs descoperă că oraşul Coldharbour şi-a schimbat numele în Sunchildston, dar şi faptul locuitorii săi preluat modelul calendaristic pe care-l cunoaştem cu toţii(unde o săptămână are 7 zile).
Noul Erewhon s-a schimbat şi din punct de vedere al credinţei/religiei, locuitorii au făcut din zeii aerului, timpului, spaţiului, justiţiei, subordonaţi ai Soarelui, răsturnându-şi sistemul de valori, unde au pus în centrul atenţie concepţia "the Sunchild"(sunchildism). Acest Sunchild(fiul al Soarelului) este proiecţie astrală, divină, a lui Higgs, deoarece în momentul în care acesta a fugit din Erewhon cu ajutorul balonului, ridicându-se spre Soare, erewhenieni au văzut în el o fiinţă mistică, supraomenească.
De asemenea locuitorii Erewhonului au construit un altar în cinstea zeului Higgs creând astfel un cult fals, ignorant, corupt; unde aceştia au asociat unirea naturii erewhoniană cu cea a Soarelui.
Întoarcerea "zeului" este sincronă cu trecerea în Noului An, într-o nouă eră a lumii erewheniene, astfel ziua de duminică, 7 decembrie, devine omonimă cu "XX.I.1"
Scopul lui Higgs este acela de a îndrepta această pseudocredinţă, intrând în conflict cu Hanky şi Panky, care sunt protectorii "sunchildismului".
În finalul romanului Higgs reuşeste să fugă din nou din Erewhon cu ajutorul fiului său George, care era un fel de grănicer.

[MisterFweem · Rating 5 out of 5]

I look at this book as a peek into what I call the "Fear the Man Who Knows" syndrome. You get a person who becomes recognized for some achievement, be it politics, science, scholarship, or what have you, and either he or she begins to think they're experts (Experts, Bob!) in every subject under the sun, their devoted public and/or the media think the same, or, worse of all both the person and the public/media complex believe it. So whatever they say is golden, even if it's basically a Poo-Poo Platter.

Here Butler presents us with a journey back to Erewhon, where protagonist Higgs sees a society that has corrupted what he said and turned it into a religion -- something he certainly didn't intend. An element of the one-footed man and the land of the plum puddings is there in that the strict followers of Sunchildism -- the religion some invent to follow the mangled sayings of Higgs -- wear their clothing backwards because the dummy on which they displayed Higgs' clothing was worn out and ambiguous to begin with.

I'm babbling now. But go read this one. Interesting study on belief where none was intended in the first place.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Higgs, the narrator, visits Erewhon after twenty long years and is flabbergasted to find out that his getaway in a balloon has been taken as an enormous marvel. A religion has matured around it. Higgs himself is worshipped and revered as the progeny of the sun. A magnamnimous shrine is on the verge of being dedicated in his honour.

Professors Hanky and Panky have ingeniously utilized the gullibility of the commoners and the Musical Banks have adopted the new religion of 'Sunchildism'.

Horrified at the waywardness he has done and driven to extreme anxiety by the outrageous sermon preached by Hanky at the dedication, Higgs divulges himself, but is quietly led away.

A conference follows to decide the future course of action about the new religion.

Eventually Higgs is taken out of the country.

A pleasant read for a quiet afternoon, I’d say. Of course you must read the first part ‘Erewhon’ to make sense of happenings, completely.

[Kirt · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I finished Erewhon Revisted, the sequel to the satire I had read earlier. I liked the sequel better, though you really need to have read the first book to enjoy it fully. Regardless, the storyline is more engaging, albiet at the expense of the satirical issues, which are toned down but still very much present, mainly benig concerned with issues of religion. I felt much more human sympathy for the characters this time around...

[Tricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was interesting and is amusing (I would not call it funny). It follows on after to Erewhon.

The original author returns to Erewhon where it is now illegal for outsiders to come in (on punishment of death). What happens is a series of events that is amusing and a bit far fetched (as it should be in a satire).

[Sancho · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an ok novel. It tells the story of a man named Higgs who left Erewhon, a fictional land, on a balloon. John, his son, tells the story of his return after many years. Higgs finds that he is now worshipped as the "Sun Child," that a whole mythology has been created since his departure. Although he is the returning god, he faces danger when professors Hanky and Panky, who are the protectors of "Sundchildism," realize his presence and the threat it represents for all this charade that they have mounted, and specially to the power they have gained over the Erewhonians.

This does not seem like a fictional story, at all. It is just a novel-like description of how religions actually emerge in the real world: some clever and/or delusional person takes advantage of people's credulity and naivety to gain power over their minds and actions.

[Celia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better then the first book thought you need to read it to understand what is happening in this book. It is very suprisingly sentimental. The hero of the first book returns to Erewhon to ind out he has been made a god. Butler is his most effective in making fun of religion.

[James Tidd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book's sequel, Erewhon, which is set in a thinly disguised version of New Zealand, ended with the escape of the then unnamed protagonist from the natives by balloon. In this sequel, which is narrated by his son John, the reader is told that the hero's name is Higgs. Higgs returns to Erewhon to meet his former lover Yram, who is now the mother of his son George. Higgs discovers that he is now worshipped as 'the Sunchild', his escape having been interpreted as an ascension into heaven, and that a temple of Sunchildism has been built and is to be dedicated to him. He finds himself in serious danger from two Professors, Hanky and Panky, who are determined to protect Sunchildism from him. With George's help, Higgs escapes from their clutches and returns to England.

[Burak Emiralp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Samuel Butler'ın Erewhone'a İkinci Ziyaret adlı romanında ilk romanın kahramanı Higgs'in aradan geçen yirmi yıl sonra Erewhon'u iyice merak etmeye başladığını ve oraya tekrar gitmek istediğini öğreniriz. Bu sefer kitabı oğluna yazdırır. Higgs, Erewhon'a gittiğinde orada bir oğlu daha olduğunu öğreniriz. İşin ilginci Higgs'in oradan balonla kaçışı, dinsel bir değişime yol açmış. Güneşin Oğlu olarak adlandırılan Higgs'in artık kutsal bir kişi olarak algılandığını farkederiz.

Erewhon'a Dönüş ilk kitap kadar güzel olmasa da, hikayeyi tamamlayıcı öğelere sahip olmasından dolayı okunmasında fayda bulunuyor.

Distopya sevenler kaçırmasın…..

[Dermot O'Sullivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This reads like Butler cashing in on the success of the original, with none of its mischievous satire. Higgs goes back to Erewheon after twenty years and describes how the country and its beliefs have evolved. There are the nuggets of common sense scattered through, as in all of Butler's work, but Erewhon Revisited has little else of interest. Oddly, it has something that appears nowhere else in Butler - sentimentality. The genius of say The Way of All Flesh is that sentimentality is wholly absent.

[Allan Purves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a great concept

[Philip Shecter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Erewhon - 3 stars
Erewhon Revisited - 3.75 stars

[Arjun · Rating 5 out of 5]

EREWHON is a novel we enjoyed reading because the novel leaves us in the full flow of so many imagery like the balloon and the statues. The Samuel Butler masterpiece is a good read because the novel has a detailed introduction station how long it consumed Butler to write each line and paragraph.
The Erewhon classic is a revised book and well appreciated by readers like myself to appear as a page turner. The conclusion for this book is that the novel has merit by the revision for our sake and that Butler who is a prolific writer is not second to anyone that is writer. The Erewhon is a place like Malgudi where people are strange and butler writes his way through that finished work until the last page meeting our soaring expectations.

The novel is true to conclude as a work to good read after reading. This review holds true that a novel can be a learning experience to learn English by developing reading skill and being satisfied when finished.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Higgs has done well writing religious tracts, and he has encountered again the aged native, Chowbok who engages missionary societies in England with his efforts to bring the Gospel to the unwashed masses in his native land.

The land of Erewhon has undergone a massive cultural shift because of his influence, and in twenty years has become an entirely fresh canvas on which has been painted an entire society.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/537851.html[return][return]It's a classic lost world/utopia satire, first published in 1870 (though this is the revision of thirty years later). The writing is stodgily Victorian in places, but it is enlivened by Butler's na

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

bought this by accident when actually looking for the original erewhon.. doh.. will give it a go still though

[Rianna Dumitrescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

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