Amazing Essays

Dystopian Genre Study Essay

This essay was written by HighlyUnmotivatedTrashCan31.

Young adult fiction is now overrun with dystopian novels all with messages about society. While all of these have varying themes and settings, many of them have very similar societies. Take Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury in 1953 and The Selection by Kiera Cass written in 2012, and one can tell both societies condemn individuality and dehumanize their citizens.

The citizens function as empty husks of people due to their dystopian society. In Fahrenheit 451 the character Clarisse McClellan helps Montag, the protagonist, realize that what he thinks is a perfectly normal world is actually very robotic and disconnected. In a conversation with Montag she tells him, “People don’t talk about anything...No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else” (Bradbury 26).  Clarisse is the first person Montag is introduced to in the novel that recognizes that the people around them only speak from a script society has placed upon them because they cannot think or feel beyond that point. Later on during Montag’s transformation, he comes to the conclusion, “I don’t know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing” (Bradbury 78). Montag is finally starting to feel emotions and he now knows he isn’t really happy, Since Montag is starting to think and open his mind, he is already different from the others in his society who feel this emptiness and do not know it. This parallels to The Selection when America discovers that she has been chosen to participate in the competition for the prince’s hand, she thinks to herself, “May snuck into my room, and I took one of those stupid pills. I fell asleep holding her, finally feeling numb” (Cass 70). In this world feelings are acknowledged  but not encouraged. Some simply deal with their frustration and stress through violence. “It was no secret that the rebels the underground colonies that hated Illéa, our large and comparatively young country - made their attacks on the palace both violent and frequent” (Cass 33). Their entire society cannot deal with their negative feelings constructively because they have no idea how to. Both societies leave their people as either people feeling guilty for their own humanity, or mannequins with painted smiles and smiles that never quite reach their eyes. In one of Bradbury’s own essays he describes a woman he passes as “There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleepwalking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there” (Bradbury 189). The woman mentioned is ignoring her own spouse, the person who she is supposed to love and share a deep emotional connection with, and instead is focused in her own world daydreaming about a reality that is not hers.  He already was seeing people trying to escape the world and themselves, and he makes it a point to extremify that in Fahrenheit 451. While Kiera Cass does not go to such extreme lengths, her more subtle approach is noticeable and shows the true suffering of the citizens as well.  

Not only do the citizens function as robots, the also must function as one since no one can express any individuality. In Margaret Atwood’s essay entitled “Fahrenheit 451,” a very original name, she writes, “Instead of books the public is offered conformity via four-wall TV, with the sound piped directly into their heads via shell-shaped earbuds (a brilliant proleptic leap on the part of Bradbury)” (237).  Her analysis of the text accurately describes Fahrenheit 451 as well as The Selection. She discusses how technology has allowed conformity, and in the novel Beatty, the highest position of authority we see in the novel, tries to sway Montag into believing it is the right the thing to do as well.  “The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That’s why we’ve lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we’re almost snatching them from the cradle” (Bradbury 57), is what he tells Montag when he is describing on how to avoid outliers in their society.  Society is so afraid of any distinctiveness, they brainwash children from  almost birth. To justify this he adds, “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal” (Bradbury 55). Here he is blatantly belittling any deviance from social norms and wants to assure Montag that his ideologies that is the right path. When you cross over to The Selection, it becomes clear America’s difference in social class is highly scrutinized by the others. The second she walks into the room she notices that, “They didn’t know I didn’t want this. In their eyes, I was a threat. And I could see they wanted me gone” (Cass 74). The girls next to her sees her as a second class living thing, a threat, prey, rather than another human being simply because she is not from a higher social ranking. Later on the castle is attacked and America breaks down and realizes that, “The girls here didn’t care for me, the clothes were stifling, people were trying to hurt me, and the whole thing felt uncomfortable” (Cass 110).  Their society has been so conditioned to punish the lower castes, people not only try to socially shun her but threaten violence against her. America does not try to hide the fact she comes from a different caste and this difference nearly makes her lose the entire competition despite the prince’s feelings toward her. In Fahrenheit 451, Montag’s desire to read and learn nearly has him killed. both worlds, any uniqueness can cost someone their own life, In both extremely broken, unhappy places, conformity gives authority control and this conformity is what both our protagonists wish to break from in hopes of happiness.

While Fahrenheit 451 and The Selection were written almost six decades apart from each other, both can have similarities drawn from their fictional worlds. Both protagonists are shunned for their deviation from society, and both are surrounded by masses of people who walk each other just to have another warm body next to them instead of developing a human connection. While both worlds have completely different plots, they both still are two great works under the dystopian fiction genre.