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“There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars. All diseases were conquered. So was old age. Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.”

This is the opening of the story and sets the casual and ironic tone of the piece. The only options for death are accidents and adventure. Thus, within the framework of the story, the murders and suicides that end it are considered accidents and adventures within the world. This is, of course, absurd, and illustrates the satire of the piece. This is a similar type of dark humor that Jonathan Swift uses in his satirical short story “A Modest Proposal.”

“He was so rumpled, so still and colorless as to be virtually invisible. His camouflage was perfect, since the waiting room had a disorderly and demoralized air, too.”

The description of Wehling as invisible is repeated when Wehling calls himself invisible. Rumpled and colorless can also be used to describe the drop cloth the painter later states is a better representation of life. The description of Wehling aligns with the waiting room itself, and highlights Wehling’s lack of individuality within the world of the story as well as his demoralized state.

“Never, never, never—not even in medieval Holland nor old Japan—had a garden been more formal, been better tended. Every plant had all the loam, light, water, air and nourishment it could use.”

The repetition of never emphasizes the extraordinary nature of the garden and highlights its fiction. Such a garden cannot exist. As an extension, such a society cannot exist. Dystopia/Utopia strips humanity of messiness and, as a result, stops people from truly living.