Utopian Definitions

Utopian Definitions and

Exploration

The dictionary definition of utopia is “a theoretical "perfect" realm, in which everyone is content, where things get done well by people who are happy to do them, and where all the problems which have plagued our world for millennia no longer apply.” My definition of utopia is a “world” where everything is perfect and there are no issues or conflicts of any kind. Utopias also usually turn into dystopias. The dictionary definition of dystopia is “an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.” My definition of a dystopia is a “place” where there is only chaos and disorder.

At the beginning of the book it felt like Jonas lived

in a utopia. I thought this because there was no hunger or poverty. There was no discrimination because there was no race. It seemed like nothing could ever go wrong. But then when Jonas started seeing the Giver all of my thoughts started to change. To me (at first) it seemed like the giver was a nice elderly man looking forward to his near days of retirement. Then the Giver started to give Jonas memories of pain. Real physical pain. My mind was convinced 100% that this “world” was a dystopia when the Giver showed him what release really is. When Jonas ran away and started to give back all of the memories to the community I think that his community started to gradually form into what our world is like today. Not a utopia, but not a dystopia either. The reason that I feel like Jonas’s community never became either a complete dystopia or a perfect utopia is because when Jonas left there was panic but no one was starving and not everyone was scared.

Explain why people would want to create a utopia, but why utopias are often so impossible
to achieve. Then write an explanation contrasting your utopia with the world in which we currently live.
People want to create utopias because they are not happy with the world they live in and they want to make it better. They think that living in a utopia is the best way to live. Utopias are quite often hard to achieve because not everybody has the same ideas for a “perfect world”. In our world we have to go to school five days a week and don’t have USB ports in our heads. The reason that my utopia is very strict and has tons of laws is because when people are given the slightest bit of freedom, they have the freedom to choose wrong. That is how most utopias turn into dystopias.