Walden Two: Human Nature, Morality, and Society
This essay examines B.F. Skinner's 1948 novel Walden Two as a utopian vision rooted in behavioral engineering. Drawing on the novel's characters and arguments, the paper explores three central themes: morality, politics, and freedom. It contrasts Skinner's fictional community with modern Western society, questioning how right and wrong are determined without formal religious institutions, how political participation relates to personal autonomy, and what genuine freedom means when the environment itself is scientifically managed. The essay situates Walden Two within the broader utopian literary tradition while critically engaging with Frazier's methods and claims.
- Introduction: The Utopian Tradition: Utopian fiction and Skinner's motivation for writing
- Morality in Walden Two: Religion, ethics, and values contrasted with W2
- Politics and the Social Contract: Government, taxes, and political participation in W2
- Freedom and Self-Determination: Defining freedom and individual choice in W2
- Bibliography: Primary and secondary sources cited
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay grounds its literary analysis in direct textual citations from Walden Two, anchoring each thematic claim to specific chapters and passages rather than relying on vague generalizations.
- It productively contrasts Skinner's fictional community with recognizable features of contemporary Western society, making abstract concepts like morality and freedom concrete and relatable.
- The opening epigraph from Karl Marx is strategically deployed — it frames the paper's central tension between power, freedom, and social design, and is revisited meaningfully in the Freedom section.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates thematic comparative analysis: each section isolates one dimension of society (morality, politics, freedom), presents how modern society handles it, and then contrasts that with Skinner's behavioral model. This parallel structure keeps the argument organized and ensures every analytical point is grounded in both the primary text and real-world context.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a broad contextualization of the utopian literary tradition before narrowing to Skinner's Walden Two. Three body sections — Morality, Politics, and Freedom — each follow a consistent pattern: describe a real-world condition, introduce Skinner/Frazier's counter-model, and offer brief critical reflection. The conclusion is embedded within the Freedom section rather than appearing as a standalone paragraph, lending the essay a somewhat open-ended quality appropriate to the novel's own unresolved tensions.
Introduction: The Utopian Tradition
"The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best." — Karl Marx
Throughout history, people have expressed dissatisfaction with the state of the world and have continually sought ways to improve it. Along the way, various fictional societies called "Utopias" — a term derived from Thomas More's book of the same name, written in 1515–1516 — were created in an image of perfectionism. These utopian communities, all somewhat different in form and often ultimately oppositional in function, nevertheless shared one thing in common: each boasted that it alone was founded on consummate judicial and moral principles, with the ultimate result of effortless happiness and true freedom for all its citizens.
B.F. Skinner admits that when he wrote Walden Two in 1945, it "was not a bad time for Western Civilization" (Skinner, 1979). This was an era that had not yet confronted the daunting confusion and helpless anxiety of a world decimated by hate crimes, industrial pollution, melting polar ice caps, the greenhouse effect, AIDS, or Hepatitis C. Yet Skinner was still compelled to write a book outlining what he believed would be a perfect society — one in which behavioral engineering is used to manipulate the environment and the people within it, guaranteeing a comprehensive and idealistic community based on moral and legal standards so high that freedom for every citizen is assured. Skinner himself notes in his Preface to Walden Two that "the dissatisfactions which led [him] to write Walden Two were personal" (1976). Either way, like masses everywhere in every era, he was unhappy and searching for a resolution — even if only a literary one.
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