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Critical analysis of dystopian literature
Dystopian literature characteristics
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Many people value the tangible over the complex. However, viewing the world solely through this definite lens is an oversimplification. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We explores this flaw in a society founded solely upon its government’s definition of the “ultimate happiness.” To reach utopia, it eliminates inefficiency, crime, and despondency, by promoting state-led happiness. Despite these admirable goals, the One State’s methods sacrifice freedom, individualism, and, ironically, happiness itself, ultimately failing its mission. Zamyatin explores the emotionless routine within the One State to assert that happiness cannot exist when controlled and rationalized.
Euphemisms reveal the expectations of One State standards, presenting the appearance of a perfect community. The “Table of Hours” dictates exactly when “millions rise as one” (Zamyatin 13). All under the same schedule, the populace experiences nearly identical lives, erasing individual difference to manufacture a stable united force. To attain happiness, the One State abandons diversity in favor of guaranteed perfection. However, it permits an element of
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Despite the state’s glorified rhetoric, Zamyatin reveals the volatile nature of stability when people walk “in twos” (129). This deviation from the norm of four signals a crack in the society’s ability to control its populace. When the government announces the Operation, pandemonium erupts as ciphers run without “[singing] the Hymn” and a couple “shamelessly copulates….without a ticket” (190, 192). The ciphers oppose routine. Before this ultimate requirement to conform, no cipher willingly lends himself to greater society, revealing the human instinct to be free. Even those who passionately embrace society’s standards quickly abandon them. As the expectations of the state clash with the nature of humanity, the plausibility of regulated happiness diminishes and becomes
Freedom is one of the many great qualities of life, but when it is taken away, life could turn out to be anything but great. Freedom to think, repent, and refuse should be incorporated in ones daily routine, but under an authoritarian dystopian society, these freedoms are only dreamt of. When society draws such attitudes and lifestyles upon its citizens, one adapts and accepts these requests, but not without a compromise. In Shirley Jackson’s masterpiece ‘The Lottery’ and Kurt Vonnegut’s exceptional story ‘Harrison Bergeron’, human life is so often sacrificed and withdrawn that is becomes a norm in society. Forcing people to agree with someone else’s ideology of harmony and success cannot be achieved without discarding the non-believers. Both dystopian societies possess excessive force on their civilians, with harsh consequences resulting in death. Traditional values and dictatorship laws forcefully overcome the mass population’s beliefs, resulting in obedience and respect to the laws of society. By comparing and contrasting the short story ‘The Lottery’ and ‘Harrison Bergeron’, it can be derived that these societies have strict rules and regulations, citizens of the society have become so adapted that they are afraid of change, and there is a severe lack of freedom.
The struggle between happiness and society shows a society where true happiness has been forfeited to form a perfect order.
Earlier this year, I became the government. Everyday, for the next few days, I woke up before the sun rose and filled my hotel room with light. In business professional attire, I would walk down the halls of the California State Capitol and into the Assembly Chambers. I experienced firsthand how the administration of our society works. There came a day, a cloudy day with rain falling momentarily, in which a protest was gathered in the streets. A man spoke, asking for the government to remove its mask. I failed to understand. What did this man want? Deep in my gut, I knew a life of terror, a life a darkness, and a life of despair could only be the outcome of the absence of government. This ideal is explained by the classic novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, which explores the universal theme that civilization is significant, regarding its role in securing that man does not return to his primitive nature of savagery.
The concept of happiness has been argued for thousands of years, and will probably be argued for thousands more. Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, a 20th century Polish philosopher, wrote an interesting paper, adding to the age-old debate, called, Happiness and Time. This essay correctly claims that for one to look at happiness one must also be aware of its relation to time.
The society uses one’s happiness to seek their own. Starting with the ancient Adam Smith’s theory of a market economy where commodities are sold and bought in a market freely, where sellers and buyers exchange to achieve profit, and happiness is derived from profit. Thus “happiness is both produced and consumed” (Ahmed 3). Happiness is a matter of research for corporates of big companies. They try to figure out which product makes the buyers feel the happiness they need, so that they can produce more for their own profit. So, they cunningly make commercials with people having a good time. Which when watched by the buyers they get the false sense that their life would be so much better if they bought that small bottle of happiness. Once they buy their “Pandora’s box” they hope that underneath all the unnecessary objects there will be happiness, but they are dispirited at the end. Unknowingly the markets are making the society a more dull and sad place rather than distributing
Although our world is not extreme as the World State, we are closer than we have ever been to Aldous Huxley’s future prediction of the world. In this dystopian novel, people want what they want, but never what they can’t have. They live through meaningless relationships, extreme censorship, and a substantial amount of soma. Writer, Frances Tapon, says, “Psychologists believe that there are seven factors that influence your happiness: wealth, education, personal freedom, equality, health, social position, and positive life events.” The only difference between what makes us happy and what makes them happy is conditioning. In the World State, people are conditioned from the day they are decanted with chemicals, hypnopaedia, and Neo Pavlova. Humans today have always been told “money is power” and “go to college, get a good job, then you will be happy.” Even though we feel emotions, people will do anything to feel happy just like the World State. Brave New World is our world with a surplus of drugs, sex, and people conditioned to think that their life is happy and
In contrast to Aristotle, Roko Belic’s documentary “Happy” provides a fresh perspective that takes place far more recently. The film sets out to similar goals of Aristotle in defining the nature of happiness and exploring what makes different people happy in general. Unlike Aristotle, however, the film’s main argument refers to makes people happier. In this case, the film argues that merely “doing what you love” is what leads to happiness (Belic). The argument itself appears oddly self-serving, considering that message is what underlines the foundation of happiness, yet there is a subliminal message that a simpler lifestyle is what leads to what the film is trying to convince you of. The message itself is obviously addressed to Americans, considering
In the book, The How of Happiness, author and researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky sets her book apart from other self-awareness books by being the first to utilize empirical studies. She uses data gained through scientific method to provide support for her hypothesis. This hypothesis consists mainly of the idea that we have the ability to overcome genetic predisposition and circumstantial barriers to happiness by how we think and what we do. She emphasizes that being happier benefits ourselves, our family and our community. “The How of Happiness is science, and the happiness-increasing strategies that [she] and other social psychologists have developed are its key supporting players” (3).
The Strugatsky’s 1972 book Roadside Picnic ends with a single wish: “Happiness for Everyone, for Free, and don’t leave anybody out!”. Spoken by Red, a wish for happiness captures the idea of a dystopia, as ironic as it sounds. As a stalker, Red collects artifacts in a dangerous ‘Zone’ left behind by a brief alien visit that did not contact humanity. The visit and the Zone reveal the insignificance of humanity, yet the humans focus instead on the strange artifacts left behind. In Red’s speech to the golden ball, an object that grants any wish, happiness captures an ideal filled with exploration and limitless possibilities which to Red is represented in the dystopian Zone. This wish reveals what it means to be human: striving towards perfection that is impossible to obtain because to Red, the Zone represents happiness, but the Zone simply cannot coexist with happiness.
With the following of the American Revolution, Western Utopianism was created. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was seen in this new found utopianism that it was realistic and possible to create utopian societies. With no monarchial rein, it...
For years, authors and philosophers have satirized the “perfect” society to incite change. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a so-called utopian society in which everyone is happy. This society is a “controlled environment where technology has essentially [expunged] suffering” (“Brave New World”). A member of this society never needs to be inconvenienced by emotion, “And if anything should go wrong, there's soma” (Huxley 220). Citizens spend their lives sleeping with as many people as they please, taking soma to dull any unpleasant thoughts that arise, and happily working in the jobs they were conditioned to want. They are genetically altered and conditioned to be averse to socially destructive things, like nature and families. They are trained to enjoy things that are socially beneficial: “'That is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny'” (Huxley 16). Citizens operate more like machinery, and less like humans. Humanity is defined as “the quality of being human” (“Humanity”). To some, humanity refers to the aspects that define a human: love, compassion and emotions. Huxley satirizes humanity by dehumanizing the citizens in the Brave New World society.
From the moment of birth, to the moment of death, humans are flooded with emotions both good and bad. Individuals are continuously seeking fulfillment, some failing to find it while others succeed. Many seek adoration; love, accomplishment and greatness. In literature, authors take the readers on journeys that allow imagination, granting the possibility for the reader to grasp inner desires and decide what is truly important in life. Literature allows readers to dive into a different world where happiness and fulfillment is plentiful and eternal, also described as a utopia, while other pieces of literature direct the reader into a world of dissatisfaction which is a dystopia. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is in 26th century England. With the help of advanced technology and drugs, happiness fills the lives of the people living at that time period. But, the people are missing out on one of the most important feelings of life. That is sorrow or unhappiness. The society in Brave New World is very different from modern-day society; many aspects of life are removed such as family, monogamy, and religion. The citizens of Brave New World live in false happiness with all the necessities of life provided for them but have the lack of an inferred deeper satisfaction. In Brave New World happiness is the lack of unhappiness because the inhabitants can never truly know what happiness is without experiencing true unhappiness. The lifestyle in Brave New World is built on the notion that happiness is the only thing necessary in one’s life. This novel suggest that the reader should seek things besides happiness because the citizens in the World State live bleak and monotonous lives which show the faults in this so-called ‘perfect’ society. In thi...
French author, journalist and philosopher, Albert Camus writes, “but what is happiness except the simple harmony between man and the life he leads.” In his book, The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner sets out on a journey around the globe to “places that possess, in spades, one or more of the ingredients that we consider essential to the stew of happiness: money, pleasure, spirituality, family, and chocolate, among others”. (2) According to the World Happiness database, these are the keys to the happiness of several countries he visits. However, when he explores the nation of Bhutan, he encounters an entirely contradictive idea of happiness. The Bhutanese believe that less is more. From the beginning of his visit in Bhutan he finds that from their daily life activities, to their economics, to their ideas about self, the key to their happiness is simplicity. Simplicity is defined “as the state of being free from complexity, intricacy, and division; the absence of luxury or pretentiousness; of having plainness and sincerity; basic”
In Utopias, as in the Garden, one must give as much of oneself as possible to the society so that there is plenty to distribute to all members. The fall and the subsequent banishment from the perfect existence within the Garden serves as an example of how corruption has removed humanity from its golden age, or the “original period of human felicity, [the] idyllic state of ease, harmony, peace, and plenty” (Murfin and Ray 205). Humanity, having been educated in the perfection of the past, and the possibilities that morality, tolerance, and communitarianism can offer us for future betterment, continues to seek redemption to this lost age. Utopian philosophy and literature has served as the tool with which humanity can explore the possibilities of these preferable existences.
The pursuit for happiness has been a quest for man throughout the ages. In his ethics, Aristotle argues that happiness is the only thing that the rational man desires for its own sake, thus, making it good and natural. Although he lists three types of life for man, enjoyment, statesman, and contemplative, it is the philosopher whom is happiest of all due to his understanding and appreciation of reason. Aristotle’s version of happiness is not perceived to include wealth, honor, or trivial