Why does More present the traveler as a sensible reformer early in Book I, but not later?
In More’s Utopia, a curious traveler is presented to us in the form of a satirical character “who has seen what does not work.” He c
laims to have come from a land of no free market; a land where he has been made to see money as an enormous threat to social order. In the earlier pages of Utopia, this traveler is portrayed as a rational man with some extremely strange ideas; however as the book goes on, his ideas begin to seem more and more wild, some are almost unfathomable to the people which he speaks. He claims that in Utopia, people do not make war within (between) the cities, but that they are a people of peace. The only catch being, that it eventually becomes clear the traveler is simply describing a totalitarian society, fully equip with the welfare state and magistrates whom have omniscience. His tales become less sensible the farther you read, and More does this to emphasize the severity of the satire in the tale; whereas in the beginning it is harder to differentiate his honest ideas from the satirical ones.
