Leaders and Followers in Kangaroo

Abstract

If Lawrence is attracted to socialism as a possible program in Aaron’s Rod — even implemented in a totalitarian fashion — he is simultaneously afraid of such absolute curtailment, what he calls “bullying,” of individual freedom. This ambivalence is common to Utopian idealism. History and literature have provided many examples of attempted utopias that have failed disastrously; at the same time, the need for hope, the striving for a perfect solution, has kept the Utopian dream alive. Man must not give up hope, but neither should he attempt to enact an absolute utopia that inevitably deprives him of individual freedom. Lawrence reaches this contradictory conclusion at the end of Aaron’s Rod. His next novel, Kangaroo, represents an attempt to enact two different kinds of programs; both are presented as absolute demands on individual freedom. Lawrence defines these two programs along the two definitive human possibilities of “being” and “doing” or, in his terms, “love” and “service.” Willie Struthers represents the typical workers’ movement of the time. Kangaroo is presented as the autocratic leader of a more theoretical absolutism based on a more complete transformation of human nature.