Hello Hank.
It’s Wednesday at like, freaking midnight and I have work in the morning at 9 but I’m not tired. I’m not tired because something in my brain wants really, really badly to write this script. It’s kind of a meta-script, actually, because I do in fact intend on writing about writing.
One of the prompts was to write about current events and since writing is neither sciencey, financial, nor about online videos, here we are.
I’ve decided to write about the phenomenon that has swept the nation in the form of books and movies and Shailene Woodley.
That’s write (hehe) Hank, I’m talking about dystopian society books.
Dystopian books have been around for a long time. One of the first books to be classified as dystopian is actually Gulliver’s Travels, written in 1726. Dystopian literature slowly picked speed throughout the centuries, hitting landmark books such as Huxley’s Brave New World in 1932, and George Orwell’s famous 1984 in 1949 and finally ending with Mocking Jay. But if you were to plot it on a graph it would look more like an exponential growth graph than a line because dystopian literature has almost become a staple in literature now.
To show just a little of my history nerdy side, I just have to point out the fact that from 1920 to 1930, the dystopian literature actually more than tripled. This is particularly interesting because the 1930’s was pretty darn close to dystopian society. In Italy, Mussolini was trying to recreate Rome through Fascism. In Germany, Hitler was eliminating every any threat to his totalitarian government with efficient death camps. In America, unemployment rates were higher than ever and the country seemed to fizzling out underneath its feet.
The numbers continue through the world war of the 40’s and spike again during the Cold War of the 50’s and 60’s. During this time, people were afraid of Russia and communism through what was known as “Red Scare.” So many, books were written almost as a how-to-spot communism guidebook.
And you can see that the next big spike is a 400% increase in dystopian literature in the 2000’s. I mean, it’s everywhere. Everyone is writing dystopian literature. It’s like there’s two options; dystopian or Twilight. Especially recently, everything has been either a Marvel Superhero movie or a movie adaptation of a dystopian book. There’s the Giver, Matched, City of Ember, Haddix’s Among series, Hunger Games, Divergent, Unwind, Maze Runner, the Uglies, IT NEVER ENDS!!
So welcome to: Cracking the Code of Dystopian Literature 101.
First I think that it’s important to break down the major themes in dystopian literature.
One: overpowering, totalitarian government. This is a pretty basic need for any dystopian book, but if we delve in a little deeper, then we see that each totalitarian government has one goal in mind: to totally and completely control the people.
Two: revolution. Every dystopian book is about the rebel. The protagonist rebels against the government, usually leading said revolution. Luke creates a safe haven for Thirds, Katniss becomes a public figure to rally support and morale for the overthrow of the government, Lina and Doon free the underground city to a clean Earth and Winston and Julia escape the watchful eye of Big Brother to... make love in the forest. Yeah...
Three!: Life appears on the surface to be a utopia. The latin roots of Dystopia literally mean “broken place.” In Harrison Bergeron, everyone is perfectly equal in every way possible. In the Alliance, there is no violence and crime. Panem is free from civil war. However, equality is achieved by tearing down strengths to make everyone weak, violence and crime are put to an end by inflicting pain when one even thinks of a dangerous thought, going so far as to give a little girl crippling pain because the computer misinterpreted her nightmare as violent thoughts. And Panem maintains control by using fear and executing 23 teenagers on live television.
