...Because of this, the settlers were forced to adapt to the difficulty of the dystopia. Ultimately, the New World was a combination of both utopian and dystopian qualities. There is a major contrast between utopias and dystopias. Each is characterized by opposite qualities, making the two entirely different. While a utopia is considered to be a perfect world that is void of conflict, a dystopia is regarded as an imperfect world that is full of difficulty. Although these definitions appear to be rather definitive, the New World shows a correlation to both. However, it is clear that the New World has more correspondence to a dystopia than to a utopia. The New World presents several utopian qualities. A utopia is characterized by a peaceful, safe environment, abundant with opportunity. Utopias are generally considered to be perfect. Ideally, a utopia would be free of any conflict, poverty or disease. The New World offered the settlers a chance at a new life. They viewed it as a land full of knowledge and undiscovered resources. In Christopher Columbus’ Letter, he affirms that the beautiful land is perfect for planting and sowing, as well as building towns and villages (Belasco 82). Everyone was treated equally and they worked together to grow as a community. These are all characteristics of a utopia. Although the New World consists of many utopian attributes, a larger majority of them are dystopian. A dystopia is a place full of difficulty and hardships. It is unorganized, chaotic...
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...The society that portrays in Kurt Vonnegan’s “Harrison Bergeron” is both a utopia and a dystopia. “Harrison Bergeron” is a utopia and dystopia because all the characters are equal, but it seems asperous and impetuous kkby having handicaps to force equality. Diana Moon Glampers also kills two people, which is not perfect. What makes it a utopia is that they are all equal, so no such thing as bullying. The handicaps make it harmful to the people who have to wear them, but for the people who don’t have to wear believe that the handicaps are just to help them. “All this equality was due to...amendments to the constitution,”(page 69), meaning they thought it would help since it was in the constitution. “Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter...
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...similarities? Many people have described the world we live in today as a dystopia because it is flawed and filled with imperfections. A fantasy world is what’s called a utopia because it’s a perfect world. The dystopic world versus a utopic world, what are the similarities? What are the differences? The legal definition of dystopia “an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one” (Webster). A dystopia is the world we currently live in because in certain parts of the world it can be very degrading and dark. Watching the news alone will give anybody a sense of despair because it’s filled with wars, people dying, and tragedy; whether it’s human induced or natural. The media is constantly buzzing with various scandals, such as corruption by people in high places. Violence has become normal and a part of everyday life, people are immune to violence and bad news. This is the real world definition of a dystopia because it does give you a sense of despair and watching the news will make you think that the world is bad and unpleasant. A utopia is the complete opposite of the dark world. It’s a place where everything is peaceful, there are no deaths, no wars, no corruption scandals, no clergy, rulers, king, or army(s). It is a completely peaceful and beautiful world; there is no need for weapons or violence of any sort like a dystopia. A utopia is the sort of world where people escape to in their minds, it’s...
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...desperation to exit out the door of an unfair society, but they do not know the way out. They look up in the sky and see the deep gloomy blue world that never ends, and if they look down the deep black pavement that brings them more down and distinguishes itself like hell. A dystopia is basically a community where there is corruption or cruelty where people are destined to suffer. Have you ever thought what your life would be deserted in a snowy world where there is nobody there to accompany you? You...
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...keeping order and telling the kids that rescue will come for them. Order is eventually lost when Jack turns rogue on Ralph and decides to do his own thing. There is a constant fight for leadership in the middle section of the book. Both Jack and Ralph go at it nonstop verbally testing each other. This is where the book becomes dystopian, because things are not good at all and tensions are rising drastically. Jack doesn’t obey rules much at all and the first time he runs off is as a result of the rules. “Bollocks to the rules! We’re strong-we hunt! If there’s a beast, we’ll hunt it down!” (pg 98). Jack constantly disrespects Ralph and tells him off, he has no sense of respect. Jack is the main reason behind why the novel turns into a dystopia. Many kids follow him...
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...The Illusion of Reality: A Comparison of The Matrix and Plato’s Cave The poet Thomas Gray coined the phrase “Ignorance is bliss.” The phrase states that a lack of knowledge results in happiness and that people are more comfortable if they don’t know something. We can apply this phrase to utopias and dystopias and get this scenario: imagine living in a utopic society isolated from the true dystopic world. Would you want to know that you are living a false life and that the true world around you has been hidden? If you had this information, how would you react? This scenario is the basic premise for the Wachowski brother’s The Matrix Trilogy and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Both stories show humans perceiving a false utopic society that is being used to blind them from the true dystopic world. Over the course of this paper I will describe the similarities between The Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave and analyze how the Wachowskis and Plato used the ideas of utopias and dystopias as a backdrop for showing human nature. In The Matrix, humans have been enslaved by sentient machines, or sentinels, to be used as energy sources. In order to subdue the human population, the sentinels built a virtual world known as the Matrix. What each person thinks is reality, is actually a complex computer simulation. The Matrix simulates a “utopic” world where humans believe that they have freedom and choice and that their actions have a consequence on this “real” world. In reality, the...
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...dramatic turn into just the opposite tone, dystopian. These two distinctive streams in British literature, with a same distant source, contain totally different settings—if the utopian novels have demonstrated the perfectly idealized future society for mankind, then the dystopian ones describe the least ideal society, and it is usually considered that a dystopia is the vision of a society in which condition of life are miserable and characterized by poverty, oppression, war, violence, disease, pollution, nuclear fallout and/or the abridgement of human rights, resulting in widespread unhappiness, suffering, and other kinds of pain.1 As material civilization develops into a certain level and can be considered as more than sufficient, then the world is superior to spiritual civilization; however human spirit is the reflection and is controlled by the substances. So, in a highly-developed society with rich material life and high technology, human spirit indeed has no real freedom. Of course, flooding modernized technologies provide human beings a better living condition, but they are covering up an empty and weak spiritual world. Human beings are made to be squeezed to become the flat and instrumental existence surround by machines which makes them feel it is a perfect world. It is obvious that this point contains a positive function in terms of political reality. Although, the political principles of dystopia are also based on utopian ideals, they result in negative consequences...
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...Some pieces of literature portray a society of utopia and others may portray a society of dystopia. A utopian society is a place, state, or condition that is ideally perfect in respect of politics,laws, customs, and conditions. A dystopian society is 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. In both Fahrenheit 451 and The Hunger Games, citizens live in a society with a fear of the outside world, individuality compressed, and the illusion of a perfect utopia life. The two are set in a realistic futuristic society that shares numerous similarities. The citizens of Fahrenheit 451 and The Hunger Games share a fear of the outside world. In Fahrenheit 451, no one has the desire to go outside or be apart of it. Citizens in The Hunger Games are gated into their communities by electric fences to keep them from going beyond the boundaries. Though the circumstances keeping each from leaving are different, neither are often questioned. The outside world is kept as a segregated part of society in both Fahrenheit 451 and The Hunger Games....
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...utopias ultimately shouldn’t exist, in the 1700’s many different philosophers tried to set up real-life utopias (Dunn 1) and even before that, people wrote about the concept of utopian societies as if they were real. After reading multiple dystopian articles, short stories and even a book, it is easy to see that the concept of a utopia is one that ultimately cannot exist and that utopias ultimately perish and turn into a dystopia. All of the stories mentioned in this essay share one theme: the government plays a role in what they do, what occupation they have, who they interact with, and...
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...Two Dystopias After reading the iconic novel, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and learning about the devastating Holocaust, I have come to a conclusion that there are many similarities between the sick realism of the world and the made up world of a book. A dystopia is a fictional world where people live under a highly controlled, totalitarian system. In both The Giver and in the Holocaust, societies were based off of: rules, sameness, and death. All qualities of a dystopia that make it the highly controlled, totalitarian system that it is. To begin, I will start with the extreme control and rules placed upon all citizens of the community in The Giver, and the millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Over the course of the Holocaust, Hitler...
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...A dystopia is a city that had a perfect image, but failed and has become a place where the government is in control ruining the city. The stories “The Lottery” and “The Hunger Games” which are both based off of dystopias, have a lot in common, but also have many differences. The main story of “The Lottery” is about how population control was needed to take place by giving everyone a piece of paper. If the paper that was chosen had a black dot you would be stoned to death. For “The Hunger Games,” 23 people would be selected to fight to the death with only one winner, but in this story Katniss and Peeta won together bringing anger upon the government since Katniss had changed the rules. Although these stories both have things in common such...
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...Dystopia ≠ Utopia A dystopia is a fictional society, usually portrayed as existing in a future time, where the conditions of life are extremely bad due to oppression, or terror. Science fiction (particularly post-apocalyptic science fiction and cyberpunk stories set in an imaginary future world controlled by technology and computers) often feature dystopias. Common traits of Dystopian fiction: The setting is the future, but often with contemporary social trends taken to extremes incorporated on purpose. A hierarchical society where there are unbending and definitive divisions between the upper, middle and lower class Society is conditioned to fear the outside world, and one of the methods for achieving this is the restriction of information and freedom. A corrupt authoritarian and totalitarian government creates or sustains the poor quality of life This government makes people believe that society is proper and just, even perfect. State propaganda makes citizens worship the state the leader of the state and the government. There is strict conformity among citizens and the general assumption that having opinions and individuality is bad The penal system often employs psychological or physical torture Violence, cruelty and aggressiveness are always present. Dystopias are frequently written as warnings, or as social satire, criticizing a current trend, norm or political system. In order for the dystopia to have an effect on the reader, the author uses characteristics...
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...Dystopia in The Handmade’s Tale by Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel widely recognized and beloved by people all across the globe. It was written by Margaret Atwood, a Canadian author, and originally published in 1985. This novel falls into the anti-utopian or dystopian genre of literature. Dystopias are like utopias in the sense that both are imaginary worlds or societies; However, instead of possessing the same “perfect” state as utopias, dystopias create the complete opposite environment which are places made up of extremely undesirable and negative aspects. In dystopian novels, the unpleasant societies are often made up of dark political and social structures. These societies can also be prone to having extremely repressive...
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...and The Chrysalids, the communities strive to create utopias in their own ways. Discuss how memories are forgotten and/or emphasized to achieve this. In the novels The Chrysalids by John Wyndham and The Giver by Lois Lowry, both authors illustrate how, when communities emphasize or forget memories from the past, it will result in a dystopia. Further, it will also affect our future generations and the way people choose to live. In the Waknuk community of The Chrysalids, memories are recalled, emphasized, and then used to threaten and control the society. The leaders rule the community using fear as a weapon, forcing the people to believe what they want them to believe. The Waknuk community’s idea of a utopia is to have the people obey the rules, and to live under the will of God. A citizen of another community criticized the Old People, “If they had not brought down Tribulation which all but destroyed them” (Wyndham 157). The memory of Tribulation is constantly discussed, repeated and emphasized throughout the novel. The community believes that if they break the laws and rules of The Bible and Nicholson’s Repentances, their two only and sacred books, they will be faced with consequences like how the “Old People” of the past did. Tribulation is believed to be a period of time where the people of earth made too many mistakes, broke too many rules, that angered God, causing Him to destroy all of earth to give people a chance to start a new life. Another time is when...
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...their readers- are eventually asked to consider the two great questions of adolescence; ‘Who am I now? And who do I want to be when I grow up?’ As they do so, they inevitably embark upon a quest for identity, an apparently innocuous pursuit that lies at the very core of the genre.” (The Pleasure 19) In each of the three books, the reader can see individual or groups of young adults having to unite to achieve a certain goal. In class Professor Walker discussed how rebellious many young adults become as they reach their mid-teens and twenties. Becoming rebellious as a young adult is often seen by our parents as a reckless, impulsive eruption of emotions from within that allow rash decisions to be made. However, in each of the young adult, dystopian novels being reviewed, the main characters are considered rebellious by the law makers and rulers even though they are pushing for change in their unjust society. This essay will discuss three dystopian young adult novels, Divergent, The Hunger Games and Unwind and how each of them reflects on possible futures for humanity and the way young people are called to respond to the changes in the worlds they live in. Before getting started with the novels themselves, getting a brief overview of dystopian societies in Young Adult fiction is necessary. In, Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers, the authors examine young adult dystopian societies, “YA dystopias can uphold that tradition of optimism, embrace a more...
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