I organized my information centered on themes.  Since Cabet’s teachings stand in the middle of my argument, I take different aspects of his writings and arguments and build my points around his themes.  Most central (and the main focus of my paper) are the themes of equality, education, and perfectibility.  Found in Voyage en Icarie and his communist writings, Cabet hones in on the concept of the perfectibility of mankind and how it was being prevented by social constructs that promoted corruption and evil. He argues that education and equality in a utopian community will erase these evil social constructs and allow man to achieve perfectibility.

In order to effectively convey my research and argument, I begin with a cursory overview of Cabet and his teachings.  Transitioning into the Icarian community, I discuss the application of his teachings and how it makes the community fairly restricted.  From there, I work on developing the case that because the community is so exclusive and hard to get into, the community appears hypocritical.  Despite preaching equality and fairness, Cabet’s application of his own teachings in his New World community does not truly grant the members any of this nor does it allow for outsiders to easily enter into the community and partake in Cabet’s teachings.  A large part of this centers on language (especially after several of the fractions) and thereby limits the community significantly.

Attempting to organize my information as linearly as possible was one of the biggest challenges as the topic appear to be a bit more “wheel and spokes” style.  However, properly grooming the topic into manageable portions and organizing them by themes allowed me to present my topic with a degree of clarity.