The Dystopia- Favorite Social Issue Addressed in Fiction
Posted: April 15, 2014 Filed under: Buy Books, Guest Posts | Tags: dystopia, social issues 4 CommentsAnother way to think about Literary Citizenship: do we have an obligation to raise and address social issues in what we write? Does what we read reveal our societal concerns? For example, one of my favorite dystopian novels is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, which I realize speaks to my anxieties about women’s equality. Read this post by Eric Long and share with us your favorite dystopian novels and WHY you like them.
Dystopian fiction has always been one of my favorite concepts in literature. Ever since reading Orwells’s 1984 in high school, followed by Aldous Huxley’s Brand New World, I developed a slight, SLIGHT, obsession. A dystopia, for those of you who don’t know, is basically the opposite of a utopia. It’s an idea proposed to challenge the concepts used to achieve a utopia. For instance, Judge Dredd (super-future-cold-hearted-etc cop) does a hell of a job enforcing the law and minimizing crime rates, but does so at the cost of impoverished citizenship with leaps and bounds of social prejudice. For the rich this might seem like a utopia, but even from that perspective, I doubt you could argue against the derelict living conditions of 90% of the population. Some other fun dystopian universes I enjoy (Yay!):
- The Matrix
- Equilibrium
- Clockwork Orange
- Lord of the Flies
- Blade Runner
- Animal Farm
- I…
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Literary Citizenship 
Cathy: You have probably already caught the typo, but surely you know that Huxley’s novel is Brave New World. However, I think your title, Brand New World, is equally intriguing. Joe
Thanks for the catch. I asked the student to fix that.
Cathy: I forgot to add my favorite dystopian novel—Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Why do you like it, Joe!?