News from Nowhere

Guest repeatedly notices the childlike qualities of the people he meets, even as he also experiences a sense of well-being that he associates with his own youth. He comes to believe that society has returned to a state of childhood, but for Dick, Clara, and Ellen, for example, their childhood never really ended because they do not strictly differentiate between childhood and adulthood. Children do not attend school; they simply learn skills and knowledge from books and elders in their own time as adults continue to do throughout life. Hammond acknowledges this by celebrating that “we have got back our childhood again,” and they refer to this idea that they have enough time to be imaginative as a “second childhood” (121).

Minor characters also exemplify childlike qualities. When Guest meets Boffin, he describes him as “happy as a child who just got a new toy” (26), and when he meets Clara, she grabs his hand “as an affectionate child would” (118). Later, in discussing their relationship with nature, he thinks to himself that “indeed these people [are] like children about such things” (244). For Guest, the only way to understand their enthusiasm for these topics is to see it as the emotion of a child. The people he meets, in contrast, simply find that level of pleasure in their lives. Evidence of their differing perspectives comes when Guest notes how strange and childish it is for them to have paintings of the Grimm fairy tales on the wall. In response, Clara, Dick, and Hammond defend their importance as pieces of art that represent and inspire imagination. Guest views reflections like those as silly, while their society respects and admires these qualities.

When he does feel at peace, Guest frequently compares his own feelings to those he only had when he was young. When he excitedly gets dressed in the morning, he says that it’s a feeling he “ha[s] not felt since [he] was a boy” (167). As he rides along with Ellen in a boat, he says he “fe[els] young again” (220). As Guest tries to understand the people in this new world as well as the unfamiliar, pure feelings he experiences on his journey, he makes sense of it using the happiness of childhood as a reference point. His romanticization of childhood, the only time he felt true happiness, emphasizes the effect of hopelessness that labor has on workers under a capitalist system.