A "dystopia" is the opposite of a utopia -an ideal world. Both have been the field of assorted novels and films. Perhaps for dramatic reasons, dystopias tend to be a petite more interesting. an additional one connected but positive genre is the post-apocalypse world, as in life following nuclear war or a plague that wipes out most of humanity.
Dystopias, on the other hand, are about the day to day life of habitancy living under tyranny or some other miserable condition. The best known example of a dystopia in literature is George Orwell's 1984. This novel, written in 1948 (Orwell naturally reversed the years), was no doubt at least partly inspired by up-to-date events in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
Nuclear Power
1984 is a brilliant and chilling novel for some reasons. For one thing, it shows us what life would be like under a purely malevolent, all-powerful and ruthless dictatorship. As the Party leaders admit, they do not believe in anyone except power. If there is a downside to this portrayal of pure tyranny, it is that it's more than a petite depressing. You close the book with a sense that the Party is invincible.
Orwell's novel is also supreme for pointing out the role language plays in forming our thoughts and beliefs. The Party in 1984 finds that if habitancy are thoroughly brainwashed by propaganda-filled language, they will be incapable of rebelling. Thus, they originate the diabolical technique of "doublespeak." The slogans of the Party, "War is Peace, relaxation is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength" are examples of this. Victims are ultimately brought to the point where they will believe anything, such as 2+2=5. 1984 is about the perfect subjugation of the individual at the hands of a merciless regime.
The other major entry in the dystopian genre is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. While the community portrayed in this equally brilliant novel is not quite as overtly malevolent as the one in 1984, it is just as insidious in a more subtle way. It has been observed that Huxley, Perhaps fortunately, turned out to have been more prophetic than Orwell in describing the kind of world that would come about in the half century or so after these books were written.
In Brave New World, habitancy are not so much frightened or beaten into submission as lulled into a state of mindless complacency. Between the drug soma, the open sexuality and the constant diversions of favorite entertainment, habitancy do not have the time or vigor to form former thoughts. Everything, including birth, has been automated; Huxley was an early prophet of genetic engineering and test tube babies.
When you reconsider the way habitancy are beholden to television and celebrity culture today, you can beyond doubt see similarities with Brave New World. As for the "soma," this is not so distinct from all the (legally prescribed) drugs given to both children and adults today to treat contemporary "diseases" like Add, depression, anxiety and so forth.
In contemporary society, as in Brave New World, no one is startling to face reality without the aid of chemical or electronic stimulants or relaxants.
A more up-to-date worthy expanding to the dystopian genre is Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is in some ways a more fully realized novel than even 1984 or Brave New World. For as brilliant as both of those are, the characters of both are beyond doubt just there to react to their dystopian circumstances. Yet in Ishiguro's novel, the characters are extremely well developed, to the extent that you don't even perceive you are reading a dystopian novel until a quarter or so into it. This also makes it more chilling. The sinister aspects of the society, which I won't even specify, since in this case it would spoil it for anyone who hasn't yet read it, are so taken for granted by everyone that no special concentration is paid to them. The horror of it all gently descends on us as we find out what's beyond doubt going on.
Aside from providing enchanting backdrops for stories, dystopias have a cautionary message. Hopefully, as we read about the terrible things going on in a novel like 1984, we will be on guard against anyone similar happening in our own world. For example, habitancy speak of government guard as being "Orwellian." The cautionary effect may not always work, but at least we have clues about some things to look out for.
Dystopian Novels - 1984, Brave New World and Never Let Me Go
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