# Future Times explained — Penguin Island

> Chapter companion for Penguin Island by Anatole France.

## What happens

This chapter depicts a dystopian future of an industrial, trust-dominated society where multimillionaires rule, the poor are apathetic, and social order is maintained through pride and greed. Overproduction, artificial food, widespread mental illness, and periodic accidents plague the city. Amidst this, a series of anarchist bombings and a financial panic shake the capitalist system, but the authorities respond with repression and the courts are destroyed.

## Themes in this chapter

### Progress and Its Discontents

The chapter critiques technological and industrial 'progress' that leads to artificial living conditions, mental decay, and catastrophic accidents.

### Political Corruption and Oligarchy

The society is dominated by multimillionaire trusts, with the state enforcing respect for the rich and contempt for the poor, and the courts and media serving capitalist interests.

### Human Folly and Vanity

The rich pursue wealth ascetically, ignoring human suffering, while the poor are apathetic; the society's stability is built on pride and cupidity.

## Character check-ins

### Caroline Meslier

A telegraph clerk who sits on a bench in the Fort Saint-Michel square, turning her back to the town to refresh her eyes with green.

### George Clair

A clerk in the Electricity Trust who joins Caroline on the bench; they have a comradeship but not a tender or intimate conversation.

### Brother Samuel

The multimillionaire Samuel Box, who let himself be killed rather than surrender any property, becoming a martyr to wealth.

## Key lines

> The houses were never high enough to satisfy them; they kept on making them still higher and built them of thirty or forty storeys: with offices, shops, banks, societies one above another; they dug cellars and tunnels ever deeper downwards.

People built ever taller skyscrapers and deeper underground tunnels, creating a vertical city of offices, shops, and banks.

_Describes the relentless vertical expansion of the city._

> The multimillionaires were bald at the age of eighteen; some showed from time to time a dangerous weakness of mind.

The ultra-rich went bald by eighteen and occasionally suffered mental instability.

_Highlights the physical and mental decay of the wealthy._

> Samuel Box gave nothing, and let himself be killed for the sake of principle.

Samuel Box refused to give any aid and allowed himself to be killed rather than compromise his property.

_Illustrates the extreme devotion to wealth among the multimillionaires._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/penguin_island_se/chapters/book-viii-future-times
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/penguin_island_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/penguin_island_se/chapters