e purpose of these walls may have been to protect Utopian cities from revolt in Utopia itself--perhaps from all those slaves.No locks bar Utopian doors--which open at a touch.[15] The only reason the Utopians can imagine for privacy is to protect property; there being no private property, anybody can walk into your house at any time to see what you're doing. Conformity is king. All the cities and all the houses in the cities look pretty much alike. Of the towns Raphael says, "When you've seen one of them, you've seen them all."[16]The Utopians change houses by lot every ten years just so they won't get too attached to any endearing little idiosyncrasies in a dwelling. The Utopian towns are as nearly square as the landscape will allow; that means they are built on a grid. I can imagine nothing more similar to Utopian cities in our own day than the sprawling developments outside our great cities where every house looks like every other house and where even the people and the dogs in one household bear a startling resemblance to all the other people and all the other dogs in the neighborhood.The Utopians make much of the household, but they give little place to the nuclear family; they group people into households with "not less than ten or more than sixteen adults."[17] Each household is under the authority of the oldest male--unless he becomes senile. Thirty households make a tightly organized community called in Paul Turner's elegant translation a "Sty."[18] At the sound of a horn, the thirty households gather together for lunch and for supper, and although households can eat at home alone if they want, it seems clear that the Utopians frown on the practice.[19] Says Raphael: You're quite at liberty to take food home from the market once the dining-halls have been supplied, for everyone knows you wouldn't do it unless you had to. I mean, no one likes eating at home, although there's no rule against it. For one thing, it's considered rat...
