When the High Lama describes him as curiously “passionless” for one so young, he responds: Conroy, himself war-weary and now skeptical of his youthful idealism, welcomes the respite from both love and hate. It is as if, exhausted from the terrors of war, Hilton is willing to trade passion for peace. The book is strangely void of emotion of any kind. As I read I searched in vain for the passion of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the fury of Orwell’s Animal Farm, or even the whimsical joy of The Wizard of Oz. And I think I can claim that our people are moderately sober, moderately chaste, and moderately honest.” (74-5) Well, though politically correct, this kind of society is only moderately appealing to me.
Chang, explains to Conway: “We rule with moderate strictness, and in return we are satisfied with moderate obedience. Though Lost Horizon cannot be classed with the great books of literature, it deals with great themes: Can there be peace on earth, is a Utopian ideal attainable and, if so, how can it be realized? Hilton’s Utopia is based on the principle of moderation. Here, our protagonist, Hugh Conway, will discover his destiny, and all of the travelers will find out whether or not this version of paradise corresponds with their personal ideals. They are “found” by a mysterious Chinese stranger, who leads them to shelter in a monastery hidden in “the valley of the blue moon.” This is Shangri-La. Lost Horizon tells the story of four persons (three English and one American) who, while attempting to escape a civil war in an Eastern European nation, are kidnapped and transported to the plateaus of Tibet, where their plane crashes, killing the pilot.
On the strength of its cultural significance alone the novel is worth a second look, though on close examination it proves to be somewhat problematic. Its timing (coincident with the rise of Nazi power in Germany) touched a nerve in society, and Hilton’s oasis in the Himalayan Mountains, known as Shangri-La, became part of our lexicon, synonymous with Utopia itself. On the eve of World War II, James Hilton imagined such a place in his best-selling novel, Lost Horizon. What is Paradise? Throughout history man has sought to create, or find, or at least imagine a paradise on earth, a place where there is peace, harmony, and a surcease from the striving and pain that plague our lives. The Search for Shangri-La: Lost Horizon, by James HiltonĪnd answer’d “I myself am Heav’n and Hell.”
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