Looking Backward

The most famous passage of Looking Backward is Bellamy’s coach metaphor in the opening chapter. West describes a “prodigious coach” that is dragged across difficult terrain by everyone except the very rich while the very rich ride comfortably as passengers and never disembark. The very rich get to enjoy life and then, because of inheritance law, pass on their seat to their children while “the masses of humanity” suffer (6). The outrage presented by the coach analogy is two-fold: It argues that the suffering of the masses is unnecessary because if the very rich did not ride as passengers, then everyone could walk beside each other without the effort it takes to pull their weight. It also illustrates how the very rich, despite this fact, continue to hold fast to their place as passengers. They are too afraid to get off the coach because the system is designed such that doing so would not lead to equality but to that person joining the suffering masses while other individuals fought to take their place in comfort.

In an effort to keep their place as passengers, the very rich develop ideological safeguards to protect themselves from feeling guilty for their part in causing the suffering of others: They mistake the “fortune” that distinguishes them from their “brothers and sisters in the harness” as superiority; and they offer “creditable displays of feeling” to the masses in order to encourage patience when terrain is especially difficult and to convince themselves that they are good and therefore free of responsibility (7).