Theme in Dystopic stories - Isolation

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Isolation is a negative feeling and therefore, it is a theme that is recurrently used in dystopic stories to create a negative background. Isolation can be broadly divided into three kinds: Social, Physical and Mental. Social isolation is when a person does not interact with the society for long periods of time. Physical isolation is when a person or a society is physically isolated from other people or societies. Finally, mental isolation is when the ideas or psyche of one person is radically different from that of the others in the society. The three types of isolation are used by authors for different purposes. Although isolation can be divided into three types, all types of isolation are used in dystopic stories to create negativity in the stories because the effects of isolation are typically negative. Mental isolation was used by the authors in some of the short stories that we read, to demonstrate the difficulties one person had to face because he/she was mentally isolated from the society. A person becomes mentally isolated from the society when his/her beliefs do not agree with that of the society. The theme of mental isolation is used by the author of ‘Cassandra’ to show the difficulties that Alice has to face because she has a special ability that others in the society do not have. (Cherryh, C.J. Bedford/St. Martins. 1978) The author says that “Even her parents had not been able to bear with that - visited her only at first in the hospitals, and then only on holidays, and then not at all. She did not know where they were.” (Page 945). Crazy Alice is mentally isolated from the society because of her ability to see the future. Due to her ‘incurables illness’ or special ability, the society isolates her by not listenin... ... middle of paper ... ...pic stories we read, isolation was used to create negativity. The different types of isolation, created negativity in the stories in different degrees. The degree of negativity depended on the manner in which it was presented by the author. Isolation caused multiple negative effects in dystopic stories such as unhappiness, changes in attitude, torture and suffering. Usually, mental isolation was suffered by one person in the society who had radical ideas. This is in contrast to physical isolation in which, a person or a society was physically isolated. Therefore, the negative effects caused by isolation were used to create a negative theme/ negative feeling in dystopic stories. Hence, isolation was a theme that was used in every dystopic story we read. So, it can be concluded that, isolation is a theme commonly used by dystopic authors to create dystopic societies.

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