Life would be perfect if everyone could be married to their true love, jobs fit perfectly to personalities, and diseases were practically nonexistent. The Society in Ally Condie’s novel Matched offers these things and more. But what exactly is the real price for having a seemingly perfect life? In order to have a perfect society with perfect lives, freedoms have to be given up and strict laws must be observed. This may be evident in the book especially, but can also be seen around the world in the different cultures that are prevalent. Ally Condie is a New York Times bestseller novelist that lives on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah with her family of four children and her husband. She mostly writes books for young adults and children. …show more content…
Condie does an excellent job in incorporating this and especially in that in the beginning of the book, everyone had a tree in their front yard. One day, the Officials decided to pull all of the trees out because they promoted the idea of being different. Later, each person’s “artifact’s” were taken and never restored. Life was still fairly peaceful with different recreational activities in the summer for the children and evening activities for all that included games, different movies, and listening to music. However, C0ondie stresses through different characters throughout the book that the activities never really change, they are all mostly to promote being the same once everyone is older. The movies are in fact videos of the Society terrorizing the Outer Provinces and convincing the people in the close districts that what they are seeing is just a show, there really aren’t that many people being hurt. We see this when Cassia, Ky, Xander, and a few other friends decided to go to the movies for a recreational activity one night. Cassia notices KY “is crying. Without a sound” (90). And later “when the movie ends, reprising the sweeping travelogue from the beginning, Ky takes a deep breath. I can tell that it aches… He is calm and composed and back to the Ky I know. Or the one I thought I knew” (91). The Society even went as far as sending off all of the people with Anomaly or Aberration status to fight off the Enemy and would normally die within a short time while fighting the enemy. Cassia has the opportunity to fight against the government with words when her grandfather reveals to her two poems that were hidden in her artifact and she begins a struggle against the government with words. Even though she couldn’t keep the words she had written down, in the end of the book she resolves that she will write her own
Societies vary depending on region and culture, but. But all societies have the characteristics of strict conformity, intolerance for the unique, as well as perfect functionality. The society shown in Harrison Bergeron is as follows: “Everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal in every which way. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General” (Last name 1). This is the dream of society: perfect conformity and functionality. “Everybody was finally equal” (1) shows that society had finally achieved its goal of conformity.
People cheat, lie, undermine, and backstab all the time. People fall in and out of love constantly in a rapidly changing world. In Ray Bradbury’s “utopian” future world, marriage is almost the same. When Montag is trying to remember where and when he met Mildred, he can not, ““I don’t know,” she said. He was cold. “Can’t you remember.”” (40 Bradbury). This sudden revelation of his former blindness in his marriage comes from the attainment of knowledge, without knowledge marriage isn’t marriage. Knowledge is the true power in marriage, it keeps people together because when you have the capacity to think you have the ability to feel for another, which is necessary for a healthy relationship. This necessary factor of love is completely absent in this dystopian
Movies have the ability to transport people to different times and places and distract them from ordinary everyday reality. They allow for a range of emotions to be experienced. At their core, movies examine the human condition. There are plenty of deeper truths woven into screenplays and plenty of lessons to be learned, even when an individual is solely seeking entertainment.
In Matched, Condie introduces us to our first form of government, the Society. In the Society, the citizens have no say in anything. Careers, relationships and even when you will die is thought out through a mathematical system leaving the concept of choice a repellent thing in the eyes of the citizens. With the belief that too much will bring down the level of beauty in arts, the Society has eliminated all but
I read the science fiction novel, Matched by Ally Condie. This book is told in the first person point of view of seventeen year old Cassia Maria Reyes. Cassia is not like any other normal teen, she follows the rules of the Society most of the time. At her matching banquet she finds out that her match is her best friend Xander Thomas Carrow. Xander and Cassia are a perfect fit for the Society, or at least they thought.
In Caitlin Flanagan’s Is There Hope for the American Marriage, she establishes the foundation for what the American Marriage means in today’s world by arguing that marriages are likely to collapse over time. With this being said, Flanagan goes on to depict the fragility of marriage during times of adversity, and how susceptible the couples can be when searching for alternative bonds from people other than their own partner, even if it means making moral sacrifices. Through a series of anecdotes from sources like herself to politicians, she further expands on this idea that the ideal marriage is nothing but a hoax for the likelihood of publicity. Flanagan includes sources from sociologists, such as Andrew J. Cherlin and Maria Kefalas, both whom
Achieving equality has been attempted by many, however, none have completely succeeded. The problems lies in the individualism each person poses. By wiping out the individualism in a society, while not completely achieving equality, equality would be as close to perfect as it could get. In the novel Anthem, Equality 7-2521 and his fellow brothers live in a society in which perfect equality is being attempted to be achieved; individualism has been weeded out over time. During Ayn Rand’s novel about dystopian society, the Council of Vocations assign Equality the job of street cleaner due to a sinister motivation of believing Equality and his intelligence pose a threat to their “perfect” society.
Like The Crucible, conformity is also highly present in everyday society. At a very basic level, this is seen in how people conform to “unwritten rules” of society, such as bathing regularly, and saying “hello” when greeting people. Although there are no requirements or strict punishments for not performing these actions, humans’ concern for what their peers think of them drives them to do them so they do not stick out of the norm. This is seen similarly in how people dress, like wearing suits for office jobs and how kids dress for school based on dress codes. People wear what they consider normal, or what is mandated, in order to conform to the people around them, allowing them to not stick out and to be accepted by people around them. This idea was also demonstrated in an experiment conducted by the producers of the television show “Brain Games,” where they planted some people in a doctor's office waiting room, and told them to stand up when a bell rang, and sit down when the bell rang again. They found that actual patients stood up and down with the planted extras, despite not knowing why they were doing it, essentially conforming to the group in order to avoid being the outcast. Clearly, conformity is very present in society today.
•This society is meant to be an illusion of a perfect utopian world where everyone is equal and everything is managed.
Certain films evoke an emotion in you. Whether it being happy, sad, scared or even angry – movies have a way of teaching us new things about ourselves and even the world. I, myself, often find myself trying to piece together what types of roles individuals play within society, regardless of if it is a film or real life. We all have these roles and functions that determine how we will act, what we will do, how we will react, and who we will interact with. These are all things that we want to know about someone, not only out of curiosity but so we can predict how others that do the same will also react. The movie, Divergent, which is based on the three-novel series by Veronica Roth is one that showed me how society functions from a
Prior to this encounter, the only films the family is permitted to watch is that which they have recorded themselves. As a result, watching home movies becomes a reward for good behavior, and the children mouth along with the dialogue, as if they’ve watched them hundreds of times. This is, in a way, a manifestation of egotistical tendencies – but, without exposure to different stimuli, there is no real way to distinguish the “self” from the “family”. This concept is further explored in The Wolfpack, as well. As the eldest watches the movies, her personality changes, and begins reenacting scenes from them at odd times.
What is all about life if an individual can’t be able to enjoy, relate well and have fun within his or her social boundaries? The social aspect is what makes a person to expound on the other aspects of life such as the economy, technology, and politics with minimal barriers. Movies connect the living generation with real-life situations, giving ideas on how to embrace it and live well when subjected to such circumstances.
Growth is a strong component that symbolises how the human condition can be shaped to become today’s society’s perception of moral standards through generations; this is clearly represented through the film’s change between the teenagers of the 1950s and the 20th century eras.
A perfect society. Something we long and hope for, and work towards to achieve for our future. We picture this society in many different ways, including things like equality, no poverty, and everyone being taken care of among many things. However, we have not become this perfect society yet. This makes you start to wonder, what is preventing this perfect society that we all share a vision of? The perfect society would contain things like equality, happiness, and unity. However, these things are counteracted by greediness, other’s misery, and the fight for power.
Bullies in School Kathleen Berger 1 Bullying was once commonly thought to be an unpleasant but normal part of child's play, not to be encouraged, of course, but of little consequence in the long run. However, developmental researchers who have looked closely at the society of children consider bullying to be a very serious problem, one that harms both the victim and the aggressor, sometimes continuing to cause suffering years after the child has grown up. 2 One leading researcher in this area is Dan Olweus, who has studied bullying in his native country of Norway and elsewhere for twenty-five years. The cruelty, pain, and suffering that he has documented in that time are typified by the examples of Linda and Henry: Linda was systematically