A “dystopia” is the opposite of a utopia: an ideal world. Both have been the subject of various novels and films. Perhaps for dramatic reasons, dystopias tend to be a bit more interesting. Another related but distinct genre is the post-apocalypse world, as in life after a nuclear war or plague wipes out most of humanity.
Dystopias, on the other hand, are about the daily lives of people living under tyranny or some other miserable condition. The best-known example of a dystopia in literature is George Orwell’s 1984. This novel, written in 1948 (Orwell simply reversed the years), was no doubt inspired, at least in part, by recent events in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
1984 is a brilliant and chilling novel for several reasons. On the one hand, it shows us what life would be like under a purely malevolent, all-powerful and ruthless dictatorship. As the Party leaders admit, they believe in nothing but power. If there’s a downside to this portrayal of sheer tyranny, it’s that it’s more than a little depressing. You end the book with the feeling that the Party is invincible.
Orwell’s novel is also famous for pointing out the role that language plays in shaping our thoughts and beliefs. The Party in 1984 discovers that if the people are completely brainwashed with language full of propaganda, they will be unable to rebel. Thus, they create the diabolical technique of “double language”. The Party’s slogans, “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength” are examples of this. Victims eventually get to the point where they will believe anything, like 2+2=5. 1984 is about the complete subjugation of the individual at the hands of a ruthless regime.
The other major entry in the dystopian genre is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. While the society portrayed in this equally brilliant novel is not as overtly malevolent as the one in 1984, it is just as insidious in a more subtle way. It has been noted that Huxley, perhaps fortunately, turned out to have been more prescient than Orwell in describing the kind of world that would come about half a century after these books were written.
In Brave New World, people aren’t so much scared or beaten into submission as they are lulled into a state of mindless complacency. Between the soma of drugs, open sexuality, and the constant diversions of popular entertainment, people don’t have the time or energy to form original thoughts. Everything, including birth, has been automated; Huxley was one of the early prophets of genetic engineering and test-tube babies.
When you consider how beholden people are to television and celebrity culture today, you can easily see similarities to Brave New World. As for “soma”, it is not that different from all the (legally prescribed) drugs that are given to children and adults today to treat modern “illnesses” like ADD, depression, anxiety, etc.
In modern society, like in Brave New World, no one is expected to face reality without the help of chemical or electronic stimulants or relaxants.
A more recent worthy addition to the dystopian genre is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. This is, in some ways, a more complete novel than even 1984 or Brave New World. As brilliant as they both are, the characters in both are really there to react to their dystopian circumstances. However, in Ishiguro’s novel, the characters are extremely well developed, to the point where you don’t even realize you’re reading a dystopian novel until about a quarter of the way through it. This also makes it more creepy. The sinister aspects of the society, which I will not even specify, since in this case it would be spoiled for those who have not yet read it, are so taken for granted by everyone that they are not given special attention. The horror of all this gradually descends upon us as we discover what is really going on.
In addition to providing interesting scenarios for stories, dystopias have a warning message. Hopefully, as we read about the terrible things that happen in a novel like 1984, we’ll be on guard against something similar happening in our own world. For example, people talk about government surveillance as “Orwellian.” The warning effect may not always work, but at least we have hints at a few things to watch out for.