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Comparing The Hunger Games, Sheet 'AndThe Perfect Match'

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Dystopian novels are becoming more and more common these days, with more well known series including The Hunger Games, Divergent, Fahrenheit 451, and so many more. A commonality between all of these is the way their society is controlled by the government. Most of the time, the citizens have no control over anything because the government makes the decisions for everyone. The two short stories used in this paper are both dystopian short stories and show a lot about how modern society acts and what it could turn into. “The Perfect Match” by Hen Liu focuses on a world where everyone is connected to each other through a handy gadget named Tilly, created by Centillion Software. “Ten With a Flag” by Joseph Paul Haines is about a society where …show more content…

Similarly, “Ten With a Flag” has a deep reliance on technology; however, it is used in a different way. In this story, instead of Tilly, the citizens have something called Central. Central is a little different than Tilly, though, in regards to what it is used for. Instead of Central being a personal assistant, it is the main grid that everyone is connected to. Their cars operate with Central to drive the citizens where they need to go, Central keeps track of messages, it picks out their wardrobe, and does a lot of things for the individual, much like Tilly can do in the other story. The main issue this story talks about is how the government uses Central to determine how helpful a child will be to society before it has even been born. Human Services uses Central to “predict the future based off the child’s cellular past and other environmental factors” (Haines). Once the child’s usefulness has been determined, they tell the parents what rank their child is in. If the child has a higher rank than the parents, the parents will receive a promotion. If the child has any abnormality Central marks it with a flag and the parents are given the option to terminate the pregnancy. However, what Human Services does not tell the parents is that their request to terminate the pregnancy is not always accepted. After all, “the flag is an option, not a right” (Haines).
Tilly and Central are both

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