Fictional stories act as the portals to the human heart. Through fiction, people are given insight into new perspectives from a wide variety of authors and characters, and develops a sense of empathy in readers that furthers their connection to each other. The knowledge offered by fiction is best demonstrated through insight on society, one's own nature, and other perspectives. Fiction provides the reader with a deeper understanding of their own society, other societies, and possible societies. Through intricate worldbuilding, authors are able to introduce their audience to unfamiliar settings and even provide warnings by drawing parallels to the real world. By setting stories in existing places, readers can be introduced to foreign cultures…
The first dystopian piece of fiction to be created is credited to the work of H.G. Wells, who published The Time Machine in 1895. Since The Time Machine, hundreds of thousands of dystopian fiction works have been published, making it one of the most popular genres in works with young adult audiences, be it literature or movies. The movie The Hunger Games, based on a book published in 2008 by Suzanne Collins, is one of these works of dystopian fiction. The dystopian genre has several common…
Jacob Hickey Savage Government December 20, 2017 “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”. Dystopian fictions depicts a realistic future for our society that our current government cannot protect us from. There are many different stories that show the examples of how they show a realistic future for our society that our current government cannot protect us from. A couple book examples that show this is “The Hunger Games”, “Divergent”, “The Circle” and…
The emergence of the female heroine in young adult dystopian fiction is working to change stereotypical representations of women through texts. Women are often under represented, hyper-sexualised or lack complexity in modern works, with just 23% of films distributed globally from 2010-12 featuring female protagonists according to a report released by the Geena Davis Institute. While it is true that female protagonists have been seen over time, they are all too often represented in manners that…
Fahrenheit 451 and Hunger Games as Dystopian Fiction A dystopia is a term used to describe a universe where there is a great measure of societal control, and an intention of a perfect society are made through tight control. These controls can be corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral, or totalitarian control. Dystopian societies have characteristics in which keep them apart from others. For example, a dystopian society may use propaganda to control the citizens of the society.…
Dystopia is a view of the future where we lives in a more developed world, nonetheless, with oppression, war and conflict. In the book “Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults,” edited by Balaka Basu, Katherine R. Broad, and Carrie Hintz, “Dystopian fiction describes non-existent societies intended to be real as “ considerably worse” than the reader’s own.” For example, we can find Dystopia in movies, and books were society is different in the technological aspects, social…
Although a dystopian novel and literary piece of fiction, Orwell manages to capture the paradox of utopia and the quest for perfection. 1984 embodies a civilization uniform in belief and ethics, with a common admiration for Big Brother. As seen throughout the novel, Big Brother gains support of the people and manipulates the thoughts of Oceania’s public to form a belief that their world is impeccable. From the perspective of a “prole”, or any common inhabitant of Oceania, Big Brother seems to be…
Angela Carter: Bridging the Gap between Fiction and Reality Angela Carter 's book The Passion of New Eve is a work of fiction that was published in 1977. However, the book could easily be seen as realism through a dystopian lense. When people think of dystopia nowadays, they think of teamwork heroines such as Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games" or Tris Prior from Divergent. This idea of women standing up against their society is not as new as some people like to believe. Like Hunger Games…
concepts of war, death, despair, oppression, and environmental ruin result in a form of demoralizing literature involving dictators or “damaged” people, revolution, and counterrevolution, or emphasizing the negative aspects of our society. Dystopian literature on the young adult scale, however, typically involves a well-designed setting, an individual or group with absolute power, a strong protagonist who has been shaped by his or her surroundings, and dismal conclusions that leaves readers…
Out of every single dystopian novel, each is said to be similar in many ways. Each of these stories follows a set of characteristics that mold them into the dystopian genre; however, as readers begin to analyze separate works, they ask questions of how strictly these guidelines must be followed. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is one of these. When compared to the outline of dystopian fiction, it won’t hit every mark, but it will hit almost all of them. Even though To Kill a Mockingbird does…