"Lost Horizon"by James Hilton

The revelation of the secrets of the lamasery of Shangri-La and the reactions of the hero, Conway, argon interesting tolerable that even though nothing very happens (in the sense of dramatic action or adventure) for most of the book, it remain as exciting throughout as it is in the lineage when the plane and its four very different passengers are abducted. The Utopia that Hilton imagines in the book is very attractive(a)--although it becomes clear that it would not be attractive to anyone low thirty, so that Lo-Tsen and M all(prenominal)inson want to overlook.

It is also certainly inferable why the book had such a large arouse at the time it was written. As Martin says, there are devil primary reasons why a writer creates a Utopia, " dissatisfy with the present and hope for the future" (100). Following the terrible first off World War (in which the spirit Conway suffered so much), in the middle of the Great Depression (which undermined the sense of stability concourse had or so their adult male), and with the fear of state of war building everywhere from Europe to India to lacquer this period was one of the most ominous in fresh history and it does not just look that way in retrospect when one knows what was to take place in the new 1930s and the 1940s. Like so many others Hilton "saw enough to be sure that the future held great danger to all mankind" and he knew how badly people wanted to escape the present and develop hope (Martin 100). The simplest

But with a very different consciousness of the secern of the world today it is a little more knockout to accept what is appealing in Hilton's fantasy because, perhaps, we understand a little better how the world came to be in such a state in the early 1930s. This does not spurious that our world is in much better shape; in many respects--such as increase destruction of the environment and increased exploitation of the so-called Third World--it is worse. But we do understand the underlying causes of much of our misery better than Hilton did.

The idea of his secular paradise reveals, probably unconsciously, the racism and exploitation of people that are behind so many of the world's problems then and now. Neither Hilton himself nor his character Conway questions these assumptions at all. Chang tells the strangers, for example, that the valley has "several thousand inhabitants living under the control of our order" and that they have achieved "a considerable stagecoach of happiness" through the order's " domesticize strictness" and its satisfaction with "moderate obedience" (82). This strikes Conway as a fine plan. The crops will be raised, the women will be exploited for sexual satisfaction, the errands will be run, the burdens carried, the buildings built, and the gold mined so that the small number of people who live at the lamasery can dream of the better world that they hope to bring about when the present one falls into ruin. The people of the valley are also credulous and irrational and do not share (nor care that they do not) in the wonders of the lamasery.

Crawford, John W. "The Utopian Eden of Lost Horizon." Extrapolation 22.2 (1981): 186-90. Rpt. in twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Dennis Poupard. Vol. 21. Detroit: Gale, 1986. 101-3.

way of putting aside thoughts of war is "a dream of escape" and this is what Lost Horizon provided (Martin 100).

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