In The Temptest Gonzalo dreams of a Utopian society. The island would be a better place. A plantation would exist on the island where no one would work and all the women would be pure and innocent and everyone would be equal and live off of the land (Act 2, Scene 1). A fantasy, a dream, a vision, that deep down everyone wished could come true. The reality is that a Utopian society could never exist. Ultimately Gonzalo gets mocked for his vision by the other lords on the island. A utopian society is not a realistic vision because people are greedy and always want more. There will never be a time when everyone is equal because as the human race, we would not allow it to happen. There needs to be one leader who has an idea of what paradise is and they need to install fear into the citizens to make them fall into line with their ideal. Ways we have seen in the past of this totalitarian society starting to come to life through mass murder. Gonzalo dreams of a society of peace and happiness, but that is one that is not possible with fear and conflict first.
A totalitarian society aims to create a fantasy and Utopian society like the one Gonzalo hopes for. In chapter 11 Desmet describes the many flaws in a Utopian society and why it has never managed to work. On page 175, Desmet says that Nazism is an example of a Utopian society. Hitler decided what paradise was and therefore everything he did to get there was in a sense justifiable. He controlled all human reasoning, not God or Priests, but a person was glorified. The idea of everyone being equal and happy in society sounds like a fantastic idea, but the means of getting there and achieving it are not. For nazism that meant killing off everyone that did not fit into their ideal image. Zuboff continues to talk about the dangers of a totalitarian society. One leader being in charge and creating the society that they want and believe is right creates terror, and in the case of Stalin and Nazism, mass murder. In order for the people and citizens to behave and believe what you want them to you have to create such fear and terror in them that they stop believing everything they did previously and conform to the one belief the leader is pushing on them. On page 359 Zuboff states, “This craftwork requires the detailed orchestration of isolation, anxiety, fear, persuasion, fantasy, longing, inspiration, torture, dread, and surveillance.” One could never truly obtain the Utopian society that Gonzalo dreams of because he would need to enforce his vision onto everyone else through fear and torture which ultimately is not what his vision entails. He was mocked by his fellow lords because they understand that this fantasy is merely a fantasy and one that is yet to possibly come true.
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