![]() ![]() government control: dystopian works often reflect extremes in terms of governmental rule, from oppressive totalitarianism to violent anarchy.Here are some examples of central themes in dystopian literature: Examples of Central Themes in Dystopian Literatureĭystopian literature tends to feature common, central themes that allow writers to create alternate realities while imparting deep meaning to their readers. Therefore, individual freedom of choice and action is eliminated. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violenceĪs a response, the authoritarian government in the novel uses behavioral techniques to “rehabilitate” aberrant behavior among the characters that don’t conform to societal rules. In addition, dystopian literature is often enjoyable for readers in its engaging and thought-provoking content.įor example, in his novel A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess creates a futuristic society in which there is a subculture of young characters that participate in intense and extreme acts of violence: Instead, dystopian works typically portray societies that are frightening and dehumanizing as a dark warning of the potentially dangerous effects of political and social structures on the future of humanity.ĭystopia is a significant literary device in its ability to educate readers and warn of the potentially dark consequences for humanity if changes are not made to present day societal and governmental constructs. Such analyses also indicate that this sense of mastery already contained the seeds of its own destruction.Dystopian fiction is speculative, arising as a response to utopian literature which portrayed ideal societies based on rational thought, fairness, and human decency. Dramatization of negative traits provides fresh perspectives on problematic social and political practices that might otherwise be taken for granted or considered natural and inevitable. I suppose that dystopia makes the most sense because it contains an element of social or political criticism. Marxist analyses of the creation and interpellation of subjects by bourgeois ideology demonstrate the illusory of the sense of personal mastery experienced by the bourgeois subject, a sense of mastery central to Enlightenment utopianism (Shuklian 781). ![]() At the same time, Marx consistently insists on the necessary of direct action by the working classes to bring about the historical progression to communism (Shuklian 781).Īnd he is quite clear in his belief that this historical change will require violent revolution followed by a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat, a tough-mind Meanwhile, Marx’s insightful focus on the evils of capitalism has much in common with dystopian thought, and much of his work involves an attempt to reveal the illusory nature of the rather utopian claims of capitalism itself. Marx is thus in some ways a typical nineteenth-century thinker, and his faith in the ultimate triumph of the proletariat bears many of the marks of the faith in progress (especially technological progress) that was so central to the nineteenth-century mind-set. ![]() For Marx capitalism, far from empowering humanity through the technological progress that lay at its heart, sacrificed the development of real human potential at the expense of an economic system that devoured everything in its path in the interest of its own ruthless expansion (Shuklian 781).įor Marx even capitalism was a step forward, just as all of history involved a series of forward steps toward the coming communist utopia. Utopian socialism is typical for the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Also, socialist communities are sometimes considered as utopia aimed to increase common good and freedom of choice (Vaninskaya 83). The concept and functions of utopian states were vividly portrayed by Thomas More (the work Utopia) and Plato ( Republic), E. That one person’s utopia can act as another’s dystopia is a fundamental paradox of utopian thought, and it is evident in those writings of Morris and Orwell where socialism plays two mutually exclusive roles” (Vaninskaya 83). “Political creed may be simultaneously the object of utopian hopes and dystopian fears. They criticize the utopian premises upon which those conditions and systems are based or through the imaginative extension of those conditions and systems into different contexts that more clearly reveal their contradictions (Hodgson 195). At the same time, dystopia society generally also constitutes a critique of existing social conditions or political systems. A dystopian state or society situates itself in direct opposition to utopian thought, warning against the potential negative consequences of arrant utopianism (Hodgson 195).
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