Why is dystopian fiction important? Some may say that it is because of the high-tension environments, the action, or the gripping storylines. While those aspects certainly play a significant role in the continued success of dystopian fiction, being well-written stories is not the only goal. This paper will detail various reasons why dystopian fiction continues to be popular and successful with all audiences, using The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Giver, and Ready Player One as examples. In order to fully understand why dystopian fiction is important, the term dystopia needs to be defined. According to dictionary.com, dystopia is a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding. Merriam-Webster defines dystopia as an imaginary place where people are unhappy and usually afraid because they are not treated fairly. The Oxford dictionary defines dystopia as an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. These definitions have one thing in common—dystopia is bad. And although many aspects of dystopian societies seem like possible future situations, they are generally considered to be fictional outcomes. One cause of the continued success of YA dystopian fiction is how it examines and challenges gender stereotypes and norms. Although it is becoming more common to have female protagonists in general, it still is not quite as common to have strong feminine
Dystopia is common theme which dates hundreds of years in literature worldwide. Dystopian novels and short stories often depict a society repressed by a totalitarian government which comes to power after a cataclysmic occurrence, wielding unforgiving power and control over inhabitants for their own good. These dystopias are often perceived by the average citizen as a normal or unavoidable way of life, sometimes even a better way of life, yet there is often a single person or group of protagonists who question the justification of such living arrangements and threaten upheaval of the utopia sold by the ruling class.
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...
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 dystopian novel is a story relating to or denoting an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. 1984 by George Orwell, is indeed a dystopian novel as it describes a nightmare vision of future society which is opposite to a perfect world. George Orwell creates this image using a few different techniques including, the language or style, the setting, characterization, and oppression.
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.
Years ago, Charles Darwin developed a theory of evolution. The strong will readjust and change while the weak die off. This became known as natural selection. The world is ever changing and in order to survive, one must adapt to their surroundings. Without doing so, the chances of survival are slim. Much like society today. Society has the top 1%, who are adjusting just fine to this ever changing world. But what about the other 99% of people? Majority of them are the ones struggling to change their life. Whether it be by going to school to earn a degree and a higher paying job, or cutting back on expenses to afford the necessities of life, one must adapt. Dystopian literature gives people an idea of what could happen in this ever growing, refined world. Most dystopian literatures install a sense of fear in people. A fear that society could be taken over by a select few, an unnatural force, or Mother Nature herself. The movie, In Time¸ and the story by Ray Bradbury, The Murderer, give chilling examples of what could, or could not, become of just Earth, but society as well.
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
Many people today often enjoy reading books or watching movies from the dystopian genre. A dystopia is a futuristic, fictional world which is most of the time controlled by some sort of government. This government makes it seem that the world they live in is perfect, but in reality, there are multiple things wrong with it. People who experience these worlds are usually intrigued and are engrossed in the plot line of the story. In most cases, the story consists of the main character rebelling against the government because they believe that the things they are doing are not right. This leads the viewers or readers to evaluate the society which they just learned about and relate it back to theirs. Two examples of literature that have a dystopian society are Fahrenheit 451 and The Hunger Games.
There are many reason why dystopian novels are becoming favored by teens. Many teens like dark books, with a lot of melancholy and disturbing moments, like in Animal Farm, many people get seriously hurt and it is described in a gruesome way, “Three of them had their heads broken by blows from Boxer's hoofs; another was gored in the
In literature, dystopias have always been given a bad reputation for being detrimental to a society. However, this belief does not represent the positives of a society being dystopian. It is known that any dystopia, a detrimental society, was created originally as a utopia, a pleasant society. This means that any dystopia was started with the hope of helping people, but since no government can make everyone happy, the society eventually breaks down into a dystopia.The fact that many dystopias are rooted in good intentions means that, while contrary to popular belief, there must be some good things to a dystopian society. Despite most people thinking that dystopias are completely rotten, there are in fact some benefits to a society being dystopian.
Up till now, language has not been largely studied in relation to dystopian fiction. Gorman Beauchamp (1974) was one of the first to draw connections between dystopia and language, however he did not treat language as a major interest of dystopia. Following that, Robert Baker argued that a “motif of language” ran through dystopian texts (1990), but as he focused only on Brave New World, it is difficult to extrapolate it to anything more general, much less all of dystopian fiction. David Sisk (1997) wrote that “scholars have tended to examine concerns with language … as minor interests, points that enrich … but do not play a central role” (11). Similarly, Eike Kühl laments the “shortage of comparative research which tries to analyse and compare
A dystopian society, usually illusory, is the reverse of an idyllic utopia: it is generally tyrannical and inhibited. Dystopian societies mirror our future- they are usually a hyperbolic familiar society with satirical exaggeration. This kind of literature is written to amend other people 's idea of the kind of society they should thrive for. As well as that, they are written to express their concerns about the future and humanity. Societies of this nature appear in many works of fiction, predominantly in novels set in a speculative future. Dystopian culture is often mused by societal collapse, dehumanization, poverty, and deprivation.
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.
as many writers, critics and philosophers give different definitions for them, and many books have written about them,To show that the society as it is or how it should be. The dystopian stories are regularly stories around survival. Dystopian tales stress the feelings of the frailty of the people in the face of the oppressive. Merriam Webster also defined dystopia as "a place in which nothing is good and corruption is everywhere controls the whole society" (Webster
A dystopia in the 21st Century consists of an unpleasant society that's made to seem as if it were a utopian world, but in reality is quite the opposite because of its unjust laws and rules, oppressive society, and harsh rulers. According to John Adams the word "dystopia" comes from Greek origin meaning literally a "bad place. [2] Dystopian fiction is a literary genre that "explores" political and social structures, usually of a futuristic setting. This genre has grown to be immensely popular, especially in the "Teen" category. The dystopia genre is relatively new as it's less than a century old. The dystopias usually consist of a protagonist going against a system made to seem like a utopia and fighting its oppressive government in hopes of defeating it and freeing themselves along with everyone else.