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Guy YedwabVictoria Anderson10/21/2006A Three-Edged SwordIn
 
“The Late Victorians,” Richard Rodriguez navigates utopian ideals and dystopian hells withease, trying to pin down whether or not San Francisco fits cleanly into either idea. As an old man, hedescribes in one sentence his hesitance toward optimism and yet at the same time his want to accept it,writing, “Though I am alive today, I do not believe that an old man's pessimism is truer than a youngman's optimism simply because it comes after.” (Rodriguez 312) He implies his age, referencing that heis 'still alive' as though that is not to be expected, and links himself to an old man's pessimism; on theother hand, he denies his belief that pessimism in necessarily the best sentiment. He does not, however,assert that optimism is the superior belief either; he merely sets up the discussion between the twoviewpoints for the rest of his essay. When he discusses his own views on the subject, they lean towardthe more pessimistic. Contrasting himself with the “lonely teenagers” (Rodriguez 312) who arrive inSan Francisco looking for Utopia, to whom “the city can still seem...[like] paradise” (Rodriguez 312),he writes, “I have never looked for Utopia on a map... the point of Eden for me, for us, is not byapproach but expulsion.” (Rodriguez 313). The only places which can be perfect are places which are perfect in our memory, but are no longer perfect now. This sets the stage for the format of the rest of theessay; each point of optimism and clarity is brought into sharp opposition as he hits terrible loss. For instance, he describes the Castro District at great length, describing the flourishing of a freer homosexual community. He ends his description thusly: “The Castro district, with its ice cream parlorsand hardware stores, was the revolutionary place. Into which carloads of vacant-eyed teenagers fromother districts or from middle-class suburbs would drive after dark, cruising the neighborhood for solitary victims.” (Rodriguez 317). Like the Eden Rodriguez describes, Castro is a place which at some point was imagined to be a perfect place of revolution and freedom, until the ideal is suddenly lost to
 
gay bashers; “the ultimate [of which]... was a city supervisor named Dan White...he murdered themayor and he murdered the homosexual member of the Board of Supervisors.” (Rodriguez 317). TheEden of a place of support for homosexuals is shattered, even up to the level of city government. Onecan even compare Dan White to Lucifer, who sat at the right hand of God until he suddenly fell fromgrace in an act of revolution and violence to the pit of hell.In the end, however, Rodriguez realizes that San Francisco is neither the utopian dream whichcontemporary liberalism would wish it was, nor is it an inescapable ruinous hell that one might fear itwould be. The good and the bad live side by side; it cannot be discarded simply because it iscorruptible. Luckily for Rodriguez, the forces of good and evil seem to be playing out in the worldaround him. However, Will Eno's play
Thom Pain (Based On Nothing)
tackles the slightly moredisturbed mind of an individual for whom the good and bad battle out within his own personality.Thom Pain has just left the woman of his dreams, his love; but even he must agree that things are not asthey seemed. “It was more complicated than this, our love,” he says. “Plus, I lied about all of it.” (Eno29). Things were not as they seemed, were not as beautiful as he wants himself and everyone else to believe. The truth escapes him as he tries to speak about it in alternately the first and third person,speaking about it alternately between positive and negative terms. “Good good times. Except for myrotten breath, bad leg, acid lack of wit, lifelong mistrust and other mental defects, everything was perfect.” (Eno 29). Ironically, he seems to be finding positivity even among his intensely self-deprecating view. Perhaps he has learned how to “love what is corruptible.” (Rodriguez 323). On theother hand, the complications get in the way of his perfect view on love. Referring to himself in thethird person again, he says, “He did not love too much, nor too well, but with too much sweat, shit, andfear, with too many long words, too many commas.” (Eno 34). Utopia is supposedly simple; yetunfortunately there is nothing simple about his love, however beautiful it may seem to be for him. Hesums it up perfectly in his statement, “Perfection, with an asterisk.” (Eno 30). Everything is perfectuntil you read the fine print, see the catch. Rodriguez loves the Victorian houses which the
 
homosexuals seem to have found safety in; still, however, there is the “kill faggots” written in chalk onthe sidewalk.Despite our want to boil things into black and white, good and evil, utopia and dystopia, thingsdo not break down that simply at all. Our dreams, however, are often written in these terms. And whenour art mimics our dreams, we can find entertainment in simplistic descriptions of good pitted againstevil. Science Fiction, in its original populist form, did cater to the good versus evil form.
Star Wars
,which defined the face of science fiction for multiple generations, pitted a small band of freedomfighters against a faceless tyrannical empire which used evil magic and destroyed innocent lives for itscold impersonal goals.
Star Trek 
, on the other hand, presented a utopian view of human society;mankind has conquered all of the divisions and hatreds and prejudices of the 20
th
Century and bandedtogether to explore the stars; not as conquerors and exploiters, but as scientists and peacemakers. GeneRodenberry put a Soviet on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, when the threat of Communismhad nearly led to a nuclear holocaust less than three years earlier; he put a black woman on the bridgewhen Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was still marching in Alabama and Mississippi to attempt to end theJim Crow laws which had segregated and disheartened African-Americans since the turn of the century.As a child, I immersed myself in the world of science fiction, because as a child, I sought thatsimplicity. Nowadays, I have (like Rodriguez), come to appreciate the corruptible without abandoningmyself to nihilism or pessimism. Neither view was entirely fulfilling; neither view really satisfied bothmy gut (which knows that there must be something better in the world) and my brain (which like theold men Rodriguez references has seen enough mindless sorrow to doubt). Then, one day, I read a passage of the book 
The Plague
, which I could feel rearranging the furniture of my mind as I read it.The passage describes what we readers would think is heroism and fortitude in the face of a terribledisease, among people who, like the people affected by AIDS in the church Rodriguez attends, showfortitude in the face of plague. Then the author begins a sidebar:“The narrator is inclined to think that by attributing overimportance to praiseworthy
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