Dystopian Fiction Essay

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Dystopia is defined as the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Dystopian societies feature different kinds of repressive social control methods and various forms of active and passive intimidation. Works about dystopian societies often explore the concept of humans neglecting technology and humans individually and collectively trying to manage or not being able to properly manage with technology that has progressed far more rapidly than anything else. One story that clearly demonstrates this theme of a dystopian society is "Harrison Bergeron", and a form of media that can be compared with it is, the 2005 film V for Vendetta. Both

One night, a very dark night, trouble was lurking in the shadows. You could just smell it in the air everywhere you go. It was like choking on a dark cloud filled with danger. Legend has it that it targets one person until they die. It fills them with dreadful thoughts, making them do bad deeds, and leading them to suicide. Today it chose to pick me...

The city that once had homed thousands and been the most economically successful country ever, was now a contaminated wasteland. The land looked dry, destroyed and lonely. The morning breeze felt like crying sorrows, and the grey deceitful sky awed down at us. In the deepest corner of despair lies dystopia where hope dies. As someone looks through the eyes of the devil, they see his utopia. Only visible by the dim light of the moon was the great wall. Beyond the wall? No one knew. Stretching away from the wall was a humongous bridge that towered the wall. Standing tall on the bridge was a tower, which had two circles that almost looked like eyes. Those mysterious, creepy and dangerous looking eyes stared down at the city giving away a haunting look.

I look to the right of my bed and it’s there; crouching beside me. Its face is pure white and doesn’t resemble skin at all, but a shining porcelain. The monster doesn’t have a mouth - there is just skin running down from the bottom of its nose to its chin. Shielding it’s beady eyes are a pair of raven-black goggles strapped to its bald head. It wears what resembles a completely circular helmet the colour of a neon orange and its hands are covered in tactical gloves, dark as a jet-black night. It wears an amber jumpsuit and stare into my soul. Its wretched face is about five centimetres away from mine and I can feel an ice cold breath creep onto my forehead.The creatures body is hunched over and strange

A dystopia the darkest form of government, a utopia gone wrong, a craving for power, struggling for fewer rules. The dystopia is factual the worst possible form of a government. Its the struggle to be so perfect that it fails. There are typically two types of dystopias first a monarchy. A monarchy is a group of people controlled by a king or queen, and they make every last decision. What they want they get. A monarchy is typically born like this example from lord of the flies. “He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them"(Golding 58). This shows that a monarchy starts by one just taking over from the start rather than being a

In this world what people often forget about that a human can do is cause mass destruction, things one should remember can be forgotten easily and just as fast as it came it leave, this can be seen in the books around us. Authors share their opinion through the words they write talking about society and how if we keep going the direction we are going we will find ourselves in deep trouble, the messages authors are trying to send can be seen through social commentary, many books have powerful messages behind them; especially in dystopian novels and movies. They show these messages through diction,syntax, imagery, and character development; for examples the books and movies; Fahrenheit 451, Incarceron, Wall-E, and Hunger games. The authors Ray Bradbury, Catherine Fisher, Andrew Stanton, and Suzanne Collins all convey a message through their works through syntax, diction, camera angles, and imagery; emphasizing their warnings of what they fear may happen.

What exactly is a dystopia, and how is it relevant today? E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops uses a dystopian society to show how one lives effortlessly, lacking knowledge of other places, in order to show that the world will never be perfect, even if it may seem so. A society whose citizens are kept ignorant and lazy, unknowing that they are being controlled, unfit to act if they did, all hidden under the guise of a perfect utopian haven, just as the one seen in The Machine Stops, could be becoming a very real possibility. There is a rational concern about this happening in today’s world that is shared by many, and with good reason. Dystopian worlds are often seen as fictitious, though this may not be the case in the

Through the dystopic texts of 1984 written by George Orwell and V for Vendetta directed by James McTeigue, the concept of a cautionary tale is portrayed by the dystopic qualities present in the highlighted texts. To which a dystopic text is an exploration of restrictive and controlling societies which reflect modern day concerns. To portray the texts as a warning story, Orwell and McTeigue give depictions of the dystopic qualities of their worlds, through the loss of independence and freedom and emphasise the importance of the individual through its loss in the dystopic societies.

In my report I have chosen to examine the four texts of ‘Station Eleven’ by Emily Mandel, ‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley, ‘1984’ by George Orwell and ‘Harrison Bergeron’ by Kurt Vonnegut from the dystopian genre. Throughout these texts, I studied the two connections: the use of Shakespeare and the setting of a totalitarian government.

The stone hollow echoed with dozens of small breaths and the clunky shuffling of chairs and tables. The lighting pulsated, from glowing orbs, the color of mandarins, positioned near walls throughout the room. Every child in the room was quiet in fear of disobeying and in pure content that today was another school day. Eilig sat in the back left of the room, at an ancient wooden desk with years worth of scratches and pen marks. Everyone else’s desks were identical: a scribbled-out heart an inch away from the corner, a deep, inch long scratch on the side. The silence was contagious until a woman entered the room, with hare-like features she clutched a clipboard, needle-like claws holding the soft wood in place.

We are able to see that language in both the texts maintain the dystopian societies. However as well as authoritarian manipulation of language, the dystopian genre is created through the authors styles of writing.

Dystopian novels have become more common over the last century; each ranging from one extreme society to the next. A dystopia, “A futuristic, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral, or totalitarian control,”[1] through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, criticizes about current trends, societal norms, or political systems. The society in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is divided in a caste system, in which humans are not individuals, do not have the opportunity to be individuals, and never experience true happiness. These characteristics of the reading point towards a well-structured

Popular literature often reflects society’s beliefs and struggles, and dystopian fiction is once again gaining popularity. From Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro to Hulu’s reimagining of The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, and all the young adult dystopias in between, one does not have to search far to find a unique dystopian read. While every dystopia is different, these novels have similar characteristics that define their genre.

| They are; political dispute and rebellion, the stifling of freedom to express individuality and the loss ofhuman connectedness, which is central to our need for social interaction and validation. In order to address these fears, dystopian texts examine contemporary issues and hyperbolise them; consequently identifying the possible flaws that underlie the societies we construct and shedding insight into our response to their deconstruction.

Brave New World and 1984 are two monumental works belonging to dystopian literature by imagining worlds in which society itself is struggling to subdue people, in which human rights are being abolished and the offered living conditions are tailored to meet some ‘human machines’ rather than ‘human beings’. In this respect, the two literary works bring in front of the reader’s eyes two alarming visions of a possible future, together with two powerful social satires. Our goal is to prove that the two authors, despite the fact that they have created two very different books, had the same intention: to warn the present.