Although told primarily from the limited first-person vantage of More (who also appears as a character ), the work is mostly presented as faithful recollection of the words of a character named “Raphael Nonsenso.” In the original text Raphael’s name appears in Greek as “ Hythlodaeus,” meaning “dispenser of nonsense.” For these reasons, it remains unclear whether More is primarily satirizing communist views or capitalist and monarchist views, or both. The book shifts, for instance, between fictional documentary evidence like poems and letters to More’s recollection of his meeting with Raphael. More begs Raphael to speak more of Utopia, and he. Note: The characters of More, Giles, and Morton all correspond in biographical background to actual historical people, Sir Thomas More (author of Utopia ), the Humanist thinker Peter Giles, and former Chancellor of England Cardinal John Morton. The complex, multigenre framing allows More to cultivate some distance between his views as an author and the philosophical and political positions espoused in the book. He then begins speaking of a country, Utopia, which he thinks is ruled very well and is a perfect country. More combines various elements from philosophical dialogues (such as Plato’s Republic) and New World travel literature (such as the pamphlets of Amerigo Vespucci) to frame the discussion. Slaves were either criminals who had been convicted for serious crimes, or prisoners taken in battle, or foreigners who subjected themselves willingly to slavery in Utopia because they were under the death penalty in their own country or because of a life of unendurable poverty and drudgery in their homeland.

Utopia describes an ideal island nation from which the novel receives its name. Next, Hythloday moves to a discussion of Utopian society, portraying a nation based on rational thought, with communal property, great productivity, no.

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