
Dystopian books give us so much to work with, it’s almost too easy to use them in the classroom! Below are some essay prompts to get you thinking, and project ideas to keep you busy! Essay prompts: In our post on the dystopian genre, we mentioned that many books contain elements of both dystopia and utopia, Divergent among them. In what ways is Tris’s world supposed to be a utopia? Where does it fail? Human nature is under the microscope in Divergent. Given our tendencies, what other…
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Dystopian Argumentative Essay Do you ever wonder what our world would be like in the future? Dystopian literature is writing that explains about societies that have flaws. Studying dystopian literature helps us understand that we need to change our acceptance in diversity, people shouldn't be afraid to share their opinions/stand up to the government, and start watching and controlling our impact on the environment in our society. To start, people could change the future by accepting diversity.…
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In both the novel and short story, Vonnegut and Bradbury envisioned the future as a dystopian society. The writers of readwritethink.org (2006) defines dystopia as “a futuristic, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral…
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The book, Unwind, by Neal Shusterman, is an enticing read: as soon as one starts it, it is quite hard to put it down. Unwind is set in a dystopian type future, where another Civil War has just occurred. This war has created new laws, one such being The Bill of Life, a law that states “human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. However, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, later lowered to seventeen, a parent may choose to retroactively…
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Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley, is a dystopian novel where everyone is obsessed with their own appearance. In this novel, the people of the World State take a drug called Soma. Soma helps relax the mind and body. They take Soma to escape reality. At the savage reservation Lenina “swallowed six half-gramme tablets of soma”(Huxley,140) to escape the reality. Soma shows the obsession with a calm, fun loving appearance in the World State society. In Brave New World, everyone is suppose to…
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1984, by George Orwell, shows a futuristic dystopian society. There is a totalitarian government where the Party and an unknown all-powerful leader, Big Brother, rules the people by using their fears against them. Winston is a part of the Outer Party and tries to rebel to stop others from turning into “robots” or automatons. Big Brother wants the people, in Oceania, to believe that “ War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.” (16) He also wants to make the people living in Oceania…
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After reading chapter one I’ve gotten a rather good feel of how the book will follow through. The setting takes place in a some what dystopian future where books are outlawed and things such as television and technology has advanced to the point of self dependency on these objects .The main character, Montag, is beginning to see through the façade that his “reality” is putting out before him. On a very spectacular night, he ran into a young girl around the age of 17 who showed him a different view…
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Christy Richardson Kitterman Honors 1010 November 5, 2012 Life or Death In our present day society, violence and crime fill the news, magazines, and the web. With all of this going on around us, what current author wouldn’t write about rebellion and conflict? Suzanne Collins tackles this current issue in her book The Hunger Games by talking about teenagers being forced into a fight to the death battle. There are many other examples in literature that portray violence in a similar way: Battle…
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Do you ever wonder what the world will be like in fifty or even eighty years? In Epitaph Road, a teen dystopian-fiction novel by David Patneaude, the world was in utter chaos in 2067, but by the time this novel’s main character comes around, everywhere on earth is as close as possible to utopian perfection. Set in 2097 California, Patneaude creates a believable future that will leave readers asking a multitude of questions about where we are as a planet and where we are headed. The novel’s chilling…
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kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened.” − John M. Richardson, Jr. This quote is something one can see throughout Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. There are multiple characters that fit these descriptions but three main characters that fit it perfectly. Beatty the fire house captain lets it happen, Montag makes it happen, and Mildred wonders what happened. It is really sad to think that some people just leave their future to chance rather…
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