Genre
Novel
Setting and Context
The action takes place in the 19th century and in the year 2000 and in both cases, the action is set in Boston.
Narrator and Point of View
The novel is written from a third-person point of view.
Tone and Mood
Tragic, comic, regretful
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is Julian West, and the antagonists are the aristocrats who oppose his ideas in the 19th century.
Major Conflict
The main conflict is an abstract one, between a communist society and a socialist one.
Climax
The story reaches its climax when Julian wakes up in the 2000s.
Foreshadowing
The positive changes that took place in the 20th century are foreshadowed by the frequent strikes that are organized in the 19th century by the common working people.
Understatement
Doctor Leetes claims that what motivates the people to work is a sense of duty and honor. This however is an understatement as it is later revealed that the workers are often rewarded for their individual accomplishments and that the state promotes selfless individualism.
Allusions
One of the first thing the author alludes through the Julian’s voice is the idea that private philanthropy is not the solution to the poverty problem in the 19th century and that it can only alleviate the problem temporary but not solve it completely. What he suggests instead is that the state is the only thing that can solve the problem and prevent it from happening again.
Imagery
In a perfect world, there is no need for an army to help control the population. In the world imagined in the novel, the 20th century is free of military forces and people choose to do good on their own because they feel morally obligated to do that. Thus, the image the author creates here is that of a world where everybody does the right thing not because they are forced by the law but because they want to.
Paradox
In the 19th century, a group of wealthy men tried to reform the society and resolve the wealth gap problem. Paradoxically however, despite wanting to help those less fortunate than them, they still believed that they were superior and that their superiority was the result of the wealth they managed to accumulate over the years.
Parallelism
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.
