What is Paradise? Throughout history man has sought to create, find, or at least image a paradise on earth, a place where there is peace, harmony, and a surcease from the pain that plagues our lives. On the eve of World War II, James Hilton imagined such a place in his best-selling novel, Lost Horizon. The story itself begins when an evacuation of Westerners is ordered in the midst of revolution in Baksul, India. A plane containing four passengers is hi-jacked and flown far away into the Keun-Lun Mountains of Tibet.
The plane crashes and the passengers are welcomed to the valley of the Blue Moon, and the lamasery of Shangri-la. Here they see an isolated monastery shrouded in mystery, which combines Christianity and Buddhism with a focus on the progression of knowledge. The four passengers who land in Shangri-la are Barnard, a boisterous American, Miss Brinklow, a Christian missionary, Mallinson, a headstrong and passionate English youth, and Conway, the main character and WWI veteran who is unattached and somewhat passionless. All of the characters except Mallinson enjoy life in Shangri-la.
Conway especially finds himself at home there and eventually the High Lama of the lamasery unveils all its mysteries of to him. Conway learns that the inhabitants, thanks to the climate and a special drug, live to an extreme old age. They devote the length of their lives to the pursuits of knowledge and do everything in moderation. They believe that their hidden society will escape the destruction toward which the outside world is heading. He also learns that the lamas of Shangri-la intend to keep him and his companions there forever.
Almost immediately Conway feels he is ideally suited to their way of life. He meets other lamas who have been at Shangri-la for a long time, including Lo-Tsen, with whom he quietly falls in love with. All the newcomers desire to stay, except for Mallinson. He and Lo-Tsen fall in love with one another and makes plans to leave. Conway warns Mallinson not to take Lo-Tsen back with him, knowing her extreme old age will cause her to die immediately. Mallinson doubts Conway’s knowledge of Shangri-la, which in turn leads Conway himself to doubt and eventually consent to leave.
After their departure from Shangri-la, the story is unresolved. We are lead to believe that there was truth to the story and that Lo-Tsen rapidly ages then dies, we are never definitively told the fates of the her, Conway and Mallinson following their departure from Shangri-la. A theme found in Lost Horizon is the desire to leave and apparent utopia in favor of a former home, however flawed. This is comparable to Odysseus who wanted to leave the utopian island of Kalypso to return home to Ithaca and his wife. The British youth Mallinson is similar to Odysseus in this respect.
While Conway, Barnard and Miss Brinklow find Shangri-la a satisfying place to live, Mallinson intensely desires to leave and return home to his family, friends, and country. The other characters’ lack of connections to the outside world causes the difference in their attitudes toward a potential eternity in Shangri-la. Mallinson is the only one with strong family ties to the outside world so consequently he is the only one who wishes to return to it. This is similar to Odysseus; had Odysseus not wished to be back with his beloved wife one can guess he would have been content to remain on Ogygia with Kalypso.
The inclusion of a character like Mallinson raises many questions about what exactly makes a utopia. He despised Shangri-la as dark and unnatural and even disputes the seemingly universally sought after concept of extreme longevity. “Give me a short life and a gay one”, he says, explaining to Conway why even if the story of Shangri-la is true he wishes to leave. Through his passionate love for Lo-Tsen, he again opposes the utopian element of moderation that otherwise may have been seen as a collective essential within the book.
Because of this, Hilton presents the reader with much to ponder. Is a society founded on moderation better than one founded on the extremities of passion? Would you enjoy living a long and peaceful life filled with essentially meaningless pursuits? Or would you prefer a life filled with passion and activity that might last less than half as long? The lack of a definitive resolution of the narrative leaves these questions entirely open-ended and leaves the reader to answer the most important question.
