Dystopian literature is a huge sensation nowadays. Unlike utopia, where the world building is completely ideal, dystopia shows us a vision of the future where the world is battling against environmental catastrophes, is under technological control or strictly oppressed by the government. Dystopian fiction may trigger the reader to think about the current political or environmental situation and/or rethink their actions. (1)
Translated from Greek, the word utopia has 2 meanings. Eutopia, meaning “good place”, or outopia, “no place”. (2) The term “utopia” was first mentioned in Sir Thomas More’s book Utopia from 1516. The story is set on a fictional island in the Atlantic ocean where life is completely ideal. With this piece of work, Thomas wanted to warn the reader that not everything that seems ideal is also ideal in real life. (3) Dystopia is an antonym to utopia. It began as a critical response to the idealistic world, showing us a possible vision of the future if we don’t change our behaviour in a certain way. There are 5 most common characteristics of dystopian fiction. Government control, appearing in George Orwell’s 1984, environmental destruction, appearing in James Dashner’s Maze runner, technological control, appearing in Arc of a Scythe trilogy by Neal Shusterman, survival, appearing in The Running Man by Stephen King and loss of individuality, appearing in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. (1) All these novels have some things in common, for example an oppressor with unlimited power and a strong protagonist fighting for a change.
As for an example, let’s take a look at George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, telling a story about rebellion based on the events of Bolshevik revolution. In October 1917 (in Gregorian calendar November), the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin overthrew the Russian Provisional Government in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside. (4) We can see a similar resemblance in the book. Animals banish their human oppressors from the farm and later pigs, being the most intelligent creatures among the other animals living at the farm, appoint themselves as leaders and establish a new socialist state called Animal Farm. Pigs later create The Seven Commandments, a list of rules every animal must obey. One of the rules, and for this story the most important one, is the seventh commandment “All animals are equal.” Everything seemed fine, until the moment when other animals realised that they were working like slaves and pigs were indulging themselves just like their previous farmer did. Later, all commandments were replaced with only one, and that was “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The story ends when other human farmers come to visit Animal Farm and pigs, dressed in clothing, end up drinking beer and playing cards in the house that belonged to their previous owners. Other animals couldn’t believe what they saw, not only that pigs, creators of the rules, abiding that everyone was obeying them, now broke them all at once (for example: the first commandment: “Anything on two legs is an enemy.”, the third commandment: “Animals must not wear clothes.”, the fifth commandment: “Animals must not drink alcohol.”), but their faces were the same as the human faces. (5) This entire story can be interpreted as a satire of the corrupted socialist regime in Russia, where pigs are humans and innocent people are being punished for breaking rules, meanwhile men of influence are guilty of terrible crimes and no one will ever punish them, because rules and laws are adjusted to their needs.
There is no such a thing as a perfect world. Dystopian stories may depict how fragile and easily controllable our world can be, but they also show how determined humans can be. Just like Veronica Roth stated in her work Divergent, “Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it’s so important that we don’t rely on it.” We cannot predict the future or other people’s behaviour, but we can surely learn from stories that were already written. Dystopian literature is timeless, and we shouldn’t despise its importance.
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