A
dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος,
alternatively,
cacotopia,
kakotopia,
cackotopia, or
anti-utopia) is the often futuristic vision of a
society in which conditions of life are miserable and characterized
by
poverty,
oppression,
war,
violence,
disease,
pollution,
nuclear
fallout and/or the abridgement of
human
rights, resulting in widespread
unhappiness,
suffering, and other kinds of
pain.
Etymological origin of dystopia
Dystopia is formed by adding the prefix
dys to
the elided form of the word
utopia,
which was coined by Sir
Thomas More, in
his book of that title completed in 1516.
The first
known use of dystopian, as recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary
(OED), is a speech given before the British House of Commons
by John Stuart Mill
in 1868, in which, Mill stated: "It is, perhaps, too complimentary
to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians,
or caco-topians. What is commonly called Utopian is
something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to
favour is too bad to be practicable." According to the
OED, a "dystopia" is:"An imaginary place or condition in
which hing is as bad as possible; opp. UTOPIA (cf. CACOTOPIA). So
dystopian n., one who advocates or describes a dystopia; dystopian
a., of or pertaining to a dystopia; dystopianism, dystopian quality
or characteristics." The example of first usage given in the
OED (1989 ed.), cites "1868" writing by
John Stuart Mill: "1868 J. S. MILL in
Hansard Commons 12 Mar. 1517/1 It is,
perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather
to be called dys-topians, or caco-topians. What is commonly called
Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they
appear to favour is too bad to be practicable." Other examples
given in the
OED include:
1952 NEGLEY & PATRICK Quest for Utopia
xvii.
298 The Mundus Alter et Idem [of Joseph Hall] is..the
opposite of eutopia, the ideal society: it is a dystopia, if it is
permissible to coin a word.
1962 C.
WALSH From Utopia to Nightmare 11 The 'dystopia' or
'inverted utopia'.
Ibid.
12 Stories...that seemed in their dystopian way to be
saying something important.
Ibid. ii.
27 A strand of utopianism or dystopianism.
1967 Listener 5 Jan.
22 The modern classicsAldous Huxley's Brave New World
and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four are
dystopias.
They describe not a world we should like to live in,
but one we must be sure to avoid.
1968 New Scientist 11 July 96/3 It is a pleasant change
to read some hope for our future...
I fear that our real future is more likely to be
dystopian.
Distinctions between utopia, dystopia, and
anti-utopia
According
to the Encyclopædia
Britannica, "People have been dreaming of a perfect
city—and a perfect society—for thousands of years: In 1516 Thomas More of England
completed
his book Utopia, in which the
narrator-hero has the luck to find an island on which a city
operates in perfect harmony, with tolerance toward a wide variety
of people." Subsequent authors "have written about utopias
as a way to criticize society and present possibilities for
improvement," and while "Some modern science fiction writers
continue this tradition," "Others … have chosen instead to write
about dystopias, which are visions of dangerous and alienating
future societies, often based on life in large cities."
According to
Mary Ellen
Snodgrass, unlike the fictional society depicted in
George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopia
does not
pretend to be utopian, whereas an anti-utopia
appears to strive intentionally to be utopian—to be intended by its
creators to be utopian—but a fatal flaw or another unanticipated
factor has destroyed or twisted the intended utopian world or
conception, resulting in its antithesis.
Common characteristics of dystopian societies
Dystopias share the negative characteristic of being undesirable
societies Described as "dangerous and alienating future societies,"
a fictional dystopia serves to critique then-current actual
cultural trends observed by its author.It is a culture where the
condition of life suffers from deprivation, oppression, or
terror.
Counter-utopia, anti-utopia
Many dystopias found in fictional and artistic works can be
described as a
utopian society with at least
one
fatal flaw, whereas a
utopian society is founded on the good life, a
dystopian society’s dreams of improvement are overshadowed by
stimulating fears of the "ugly consequences of present-day
behavior."People are alienated and mostly the individualism is
restricted by the government.
Society
Fictional dystopias may impose severe social restrictions on the
characters' lives, involving
social stratification, whereby
social class is strictly defined and
enforced, and
social mobility is
non-existent. In the novel
Brave New
World', by
Aldous Huxley, the
class system is prenatally designated in terms of Alphas, Betas,
Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. In
We, by
Yevgeny
Zamyatin, people are permitted to live out of public view for
only an hour a day. They are not only referred to by numbers
instead of names, but are neither "citizens" nor "people", but
"ciphers." In the lower castes, in
Brave New World, single
embryos are "
bokanovskified", so that
they produce between eight and ninety-six identical siblings,
making the citizens as uniform as possible.
Some dystopian works emphasize the pressure to conform in terms of
the requirement to not excel. In these works, the society is
ruthlessly egalitarian, in which ability and accomplishment, or
even competence, are suppressed or stigmatized as forms of
inequality, as in
Kurt Vonnegut's
Harrison Bergeron.
Similarly, in
Ray Bradbury's
Fahrenheit 451, the dystopia
represses the intellectuals with particular force, because most
people are willing to accept it, and the resistance to it consists
mostly of intellectuals. Moreover, in
Ayn
Rand's
Atlas Shrugged,
the protagonist Dagny Taggart struggles to keep Taggart
Transcontinental (the railroad corporation where she works)
thriving in a world that spurns innovation and excellence.
Social Groups
In a fictional dystopia, there is most often a total absence of any
social group besides the state, as in the novel
We; or such social groups are subdivisions
of the state, under government control, such as the Junior Anti-Sex
League in Orwell's novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Notably, religious groups independent of the government are absent
in many fictional dystopian societies. In
Brave New World,
the establishment of the state included lopping off the tops of all
crosses (as symbols of Christianity) to make them "T"s, (as symbols
of
Henry Ford's Model T). The state may
stage, instead, a
personality cult,
with quasi-religious rituals about a central figure, usually a
head of state or an
oligarchy of some sort, such as Big Brother in
Nineteen Eighty-Four, or The Benefactor of
We. In
explicitly theocratic dystopias, such as
Margaret Atwood's
The Handmaid's Tale, the State's
fundamentalist religion governs,
enforcing its laws and regulations with the same vigor as those of
any secular dystopia; there are no social bonds outside the
State.
Even more than freedom of religion, the concept of the family is
under attack in fictional dystopian societies. In some of them, the
family has been eradicated and continuing efforts are deployed to
keep it from reestablishing itself as a social institution. In
Brave New World, where
children are reproduced artificially, the concepts "mother" and
"father" are considered obscene. In other fictional dystopias, the
institution of the family exists, but the State deploys great
efforts to keep the family in its service. In some novels, the
State is hostile to motherhood: for example, in
Nineteen
Eighty-Four, children are organized to spy on their parents;
and in
We, the escape of a pregnant woman from OneState is
a revolt.
Nature
Fictional dystopias are commonly urban and frequently isolate their
characters from all contact with the natural world."Avatism and
Utopia" 4, in Eric S. Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D.
Olander, eds.,
No Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and
Dystopian Fiction. They generally require their characters to
avoid nature, as when walks are regarded as dangerously
anti-social in
Ray
Bradbury's
Fahrenheit
451. In
Brave New
World, the lower classes of society are conditioned to be
afraid of nature, but also to visit the countryside and consume
transportation and games to stabilize society. A few "green"
fictional dystopias do exist, such as in
Michael Carson's short story "
The Punishment of Luxury".
Political
Fictional dystopian politics are defined as types of governments
and political systems such as:
bureaucracy;
socialism;
communism;
capitalism;
fascism;
totalitarianism;
dictatorships; and other forms of political,
social, and economical control or lack of control; in the absence
of such a clearly-defined political system controlling the world,
chaos may occur. These governments often
assert great power over the citizens, dramatically depicted in
Nineteen Eighty-Four as the authority to decree that
Two + two = five.
In
When the Sleeper
Wakes,
H. G. Wells depicted the
governing class as hedonistic and shallow.
George Orwell contrasted Wells's world to that
depicted in
Jack London's
The Iron Heel, where the dystopian rulers
are brutal and dedicated to the point of fanaticism, which Orwell
considered more plausible.
Whereas the political principles on which fictional utopias (or
"perfect worlds") are based are
idealistic in principle, intending positive
consequences for their inhabitants, the political principles on
which of fictional dystopias are based are flawed and result in
negative consequences for the inhabitants of the dystopian world,
which is portrayed as
oppressive.
Dystopias are often filled with
pessimistic views of the ruling class or
government that is brutal or uncaring ruling with an "iron hand" or
"iron fist". These dystopian government establishments often have
protagonists or groups that lead a "
resistance" to enact change within their
government.
Dystopian political situations are depicted in novels such as
Parable of the
Sower, Nineteen
Eighty-Four, and V for
Vendetta and in films such as Fahrenheit 451, Brazil, THX
1138, FAQ:
Frequently Asked Questions and Soylent Green.
In some dystopian societies, such as the fictional world of Anthony
Burgess's novel A Clockwork
Orange, there is little government control and the people
themselves cause chaos. .
Economic
The economic structures of dystopian societies in literature and
other media have many variations, as the economy often relates
directly to the elements that the writer is depicting as the source
of the oppression. However, there are several
archetypes that such societies tend to
follow.
A commonly occurring theme is that the
state is in control of the economy, as shown
in such works as
Ayn Rand's
Anthem,
Lois Lowry's
The
Giver, and
Henry Kuttner's short
story
The Iron Standard. Some dystopias, such as
Nineteen Eighty-Four, feature
black markets with goods that are dangerous and
difficult to obtain, or the characters may be totally at the mercy
of the state-controlled economy. Such systems usually have a lack
of efficiency, as seen in stories like
Philip Jose Farmer's
Riders of the Purple Wage,
featuring a bloated welfare system in which total freedom from
responsibility has encouraged an underclass prone to any form of
antisocial behavior.
Kurt Vonnegut's
Player Piano depicts a
dystopia in which the centrally controlled economic system has
indeed made material abundance plentiful, but deprived the mass of
humanity of meaningful labor; virtually all work is menial and
unsatisfying, and even very few of the small group that achieves
education is admitted to the elite and its work.
Even in dystopias where the economic system is not the source of
the society's flaws, as in
Brave New World, the state
often controls the economy. In
Brave New World, a
character, reacting with horror to the suggestion of not being part
of the social body, cites as a reason that everyone works for
everyone else.
Other works feature extensive
privatization. In this context, big businesses
often have far more control over the
populace than any kind of government and thus act
as governments themselves instead of businesses, as can be seen in
the novel
Jennifer
Government and the movie
Rollerball. This is common in the genre of
cyberpunk, such as in
Blade Runner and
Snow Crash, which often features corrupt and
all-powerful corporations, often a
megacorporation.
Characteristics of dystopian fiction
As fictional dystopias are often set in a future projected virtual
time and/or space involving technological innovations not
accessible in actual present reality, dystopian fiction is often
classified generically as
science
fiction, a subgenre of
speculative fiction.
Back stories
Because a
fictional universe has
to be constructed, a selectively-told
back
story of a war, revolution, uprising, critical
overpopulation, or other disaster is often
introduced early in the narrative. This results in a shift in
emphasis of control, from previous systems of government to a
government run by corporations, totalitarian dictatorships or
bureaucracies.
Because dystopian literature typically depicts events that take
place in the future, it often features technology more advanced
than that of contemporary society.
Caste systems
In dystopian literature the advanced technology is controlled
exclusively by the group in power, while the oppressed population
is limited to technology comparable to or more primitive than what
we have today. In order to emphasize the degeneration of society,
the standard of living among the lower and middle classes is
generally poorer than in contemporary society (at least in United
States or Europe).
In
Nineteen
Eighty-Four, for example, the
Inner
Party, the upper class of society, also has a standard of
living lower than the upper classes of today.
In contrast to
Nineteen Eighty-Four, in
Brave New World and
Equilibrium, people enjoy much
higher material living standards in exchange for the loss of other
qualities in their lives, such as independent thought and emotional
depth.
Hero
Unlike utopian fiction, which often features an outsider to have
the world shown to him, dystopias seldom feature an outsider as the
protagonist. While such a character would more clearly understand
the nature of the society, based on comparison to his society, the
knowledge of the outside culture subverts the power of the
dystopia. When such outsiders are major characters—such as John the
Savage in
Brave New World—their societies cannot assist
them against the dystopia.
The story usually centers on a protagonist who questions the
society, often feeling intuitively that something is terribly
wrong, such as
Guy Montag in
Ray Bradbury's novella
Fahrenheit 451,
Winston Smith in
Nineteen Eighty-Four, or
V in
Alan Moore's
V for Vendetta. The hero
comes to believe that escape or even overturning the social order
is possible and decides to act at the risk of life and limb; in
some dystopias , this may appear as irrational even to him, but he
still acts.
Another popular archetype of hero in the more modern dystopian
literature is the
Vonnegut hero, a
hero who is in high-standing within the social system, but sees how
wrong everything is, and attempts to either change the system or
bring it down, such as Paul Proteus of
Kurt Vonnegut's novel
Player Piano.
Conflict
In many cases, the hero's conflict brings him to a representative
of the dystopia who articulates its principles, from Mustapha Mond
in
Brave New World to O'Brien in
1984.
There is usually a group of people somewhere in the society who are
not under the complete control of the state, and in whom the hero
of the novel usually puts his or her hope, although often he or she
still fails to change anything. In Orwell's
Nineteen
Eighty-Four they are the "proles" (Latin for "offspring", from
which "
proletariat" is derived), in
Huxley's
Brave New World they are the people on the
reservation, and in
We by
Zamyatin they are the people outside the
walls of the One State. In
Fahrenheit
451 by
Ray Bradbury, they are
the "book people" past the river and outside the city.
Climax and dénouement
The hero's goal is to either escape from or destroy the social
order. However, the story is often (but not always)
unresolved. That is, the narrative may deal with
individuals in a dystopian society who are unsatisfied, and may
rebel, but ultimately fail to change anything. Sometimes they
themselves end up changed to conform to the society's norms. This
narrative arc to a sense of hopelessness can be found in such
classic dystopian works as
Nineteen Eighty-Four. It contrasts
with much fiction of the future, in which a
hero succeeds in resolving conflicts or otherwise
changes things for the better.
Destruction of dystopia
The destruction of dystopia is frequently a very different sort of
work than one in which it is preserved. Indeed, the subversion of a
dystopian society, with its potential for conflict and adventure,
is a staple of science fiction stories.
Poul Anderson's short story "Sam Hall" depicts
the subversion of a dystopia heavily dependent on surveillance.
Robert A. Heinlein's
"If
This Goes On—" liberates the United States from a
fundamentalist theocracy, where the underground rebellion is
organized by the Freemasons.
Cordwainer
Smith's
The Rediscovery
of Man series depicts a society recovering from its
dystopian period, beginning in "
The Dead Lady of Clown Town"
with the discovery that its utopia was impossible to maintain.
Although these and other societies are typical of dystopias in many
ways, they all have not only flaws but
exploitable flaws.
The ability of the protagonists to subvert the society also
subverts the monolithic power typical of a dystopia. In some cases
the hero manages to overthrow the dystopia by motivating the
(previously apathetic) populace. In the dystopian video game
Half-Life 2 the downtrodden citizens of
City 17 rally around the figure of
Gordon Freeman and overthrow their
Combine oppressors.
Destruction of the fictional dystopia may not be possible, but—if
it does not completely control its world—escaping from it may be an
alternative. In
Ray Bradbury's
Fahrenheit 451, the main
character succeeds in fleeing and finding tramps who have dedicated
themselves to memorizing books to preserve them. But ironically,
the dystopian society in
Fahrenheit
451 is destroyed in the end--by nuclear missiles. In the
book
Logan's Run, the main
characters make their way to an escape from the otherwise
inevitable euthanasia on their 21st birthday (30th in the later
film version). Because such dystopias must necessarily control less
of the world than the protagonist can reach, and the protagonist
can elude capture, this motif also subverts the dystopia's power.
In Lois Lowry's
The Giver the
main character Jonas is able to run away from 'The Community' and
escapes to 'Elsewhere' where people have memories.
Sometimes, this escape leads to the inevitable: The protagonist
making a mistake that usually brings about the end of a rebel
society, usually living where people think is a legend. This
concept is brought to life in Scott Westerfeld's novel
Uglies. The main character accidentally brings the
government into the secret settlement of the Smoke. She then
infiltrates the government to escape, but chooses to join the
society for the greater good.
Works with dystopian themes in various media
See also
References
- Cacotopia (κακό, caco =
bad) is a synonym used by English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer
Jeremy
Bentham (15 February 1748 – 6 June 1832) in his 19th-century
works.
- http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dystopia
Dictionary.Reference.com
- Cf. "Dystopia Timeline", in Exploring Dystopia,
"edited and designed by Niclas Hermansson; Contributors: Acolyte of
Death ('Gattaca'), John Steinbach ('Nuclear Nightmare'), [and]
David Clements ('From Dystopia to Myopia')"
(hem.passagen.se), Niclas Hermansson, n.d., Web, 22 May 2009.
- See also Michael S. Roth, "A Dystopia of the Spirit" 230ff.,
Chap. 15 in Jörn Rüsen, Michael Fehr, and Thomas Rieger, eds.,
Thinking Utopia, Google Books Preview,
n.d., Web,
22 May 2009.
- "City Life - Future Cities: Utopia or
Dystopia", Encyclopædia Britannica,
Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Student edition,
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2009, Web, 22 May 2009: This article concludes
that "It is debatable whether the rapid growth of cities will lead
toward utopia or dystopia. More certain is that future cities will
continue to house a mixture of privileged groups and impoverished,
powerless groups on the margins of society, with all of the promise
and potential conflicts this involves. Regardless of the urban
realities to come, cities will no doubt continue to affect nearly
every facet of human life."
- Mary Ellen Snodgrass, Encyclopedia
of Utopian Literature, ABC-Clio Literary Companion Ser. (Santa
Barbara: ABC-Clio Inc, 1995) xii. ISBN 0874367573 (10). ISBN
9780874367577 (13).
- "dystopia", The
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th
ed., Dictionary.com, Web, 22 May 2009.
- "Science fiction", Encyclopædia Britannica,
Encyclopedia Britannica Online, Encyclopedia Britannica,
Inc., 2009, Web, 22 May 2009.
- William Matter, "On Brave New World" 95, in Eric S.
Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds., No
Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction.
ISBN 0809311135.
- Jack Zipes, "Mass Degradation of Humanity" 189, in Eric S.
Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds., No
Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction.
ISBN 0809311135.
- William Matter, "On Brave New World" 94, in Eric S.
Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds., No
Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction.
ISBN 0809311135.
- Gorman Beauchamp, "Zamiatin's We" 70, in Eric S.
Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds., No
Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction.
ISBN 0809311135.
- ISBN 0809311135.
- Tom Moylan, " 'Look into the Dark': On Dystopia and the
Novum," Learning from New Worlds, ed. Patrick Parrinder
(Durham: Duke UP, 2001).
- Carter Kaplan, "The Advent of Literary Dystopia,"
Extrapolation 40.3 (1999): 200–212.
- William Steinhoff, "Utopia Reconsidered: Comments on
1984" 147, in Eric S. Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and
Joseph D. Olander, eds., No Place Else: Explorations in Utopian
and Dystopian Fiction. ISBN 0809311135.
- William Steinhoff, "Utopia Reconsidered: Comments on
1984" 153, in Eric S. Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and
Joseph D. Olander, eds., No Place Else: Explorations in Utopian
and Dystopian Fiction. ISBN 0809311135.
- "Utopia", The
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th
ed., 2004, Dictionary.com, Web, 11 Feb. 2007.
- Jane Donawerth, "Genre Blending and the Critical Dystopia," in
Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian
Imagination, ed. Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan (New York:
Routledge, 2003).
- Howard P. Segal, "Vonnegut's Player Piano: An
Ambiguous Technological Dystopia," 163 in Eric S. Rabkin, Martin H.
Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds., No Place Else:
Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction. ISBN
0809311135.
- William Matter, "On Brave New World" 98, in Eric S. Rabkin,
Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds., No Place
Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction. ISBN
0809311135.
- Gorman Beauchamp, "Zamiatin's We" 62-63, in Eric S.
Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds., No
Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction.
ISBN 0809311135.
- Gorman Beauchamp, "Zamiatin's We" 57, in Eric S.
Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds., No
Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction.
ISBN 0809311135.
- John Clute and Peter Nicholls, "Dystopia", The Encyclopedia of Science
Fiction (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995) 361. ISBN
031213486X.
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