Dystopia And Hope In D. H. Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent

The Plumed Serpent is a utopian novel propagating a new transformative means:the Quetzalcoatl religion, which, through vivid presentation of the dystopia brought about by Christian and political transformative forces, highlights the necessity to abandon one-dominant-force mode of consciousness and restore the unity-of-the-opposites mode of consciousness, and which heralds a better world with balanced relationship between three pairs of opposites most damaged by Western ideology:culture & nature, the material & the psychological, and individualism & collectivism. Lawrence's utter disappointment towards Christian-political transformative means results from his life-long utopian quest in search of a community of congenial friends. During the journey his fictional diagnosis of the malady of Western civilization and his real life searching for an escape lead him to ascribing the hopelessness of the world to people's wrong mode of consciousness. Creating the ideal utopian residents with the life-generating mode of consciousness heralds a new world that worships and sustains life.