Cinder Dystopia

According to Merriam-Webster, a dystopia is defined as “an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives”. Cinder, a novel written by Marissa Meyer, fits this description perfectly for many reasons. The main character, Cinder, is a cyborg and is 36.28% not human. Cinder’s “stepfather” passed away from Letumosis shortly after his trip to Europe, where he adopted her without the approval from his wife, who became Cinder’s “stepmother” and caretaker. At home, Cinder is not treated like her stepmother’s children, she is treated horribly. Cinder fears her stepmother and another element which the whole city of New Beijing fears, Letumosis or the plague. Cinder is essentially a dystopian style Cinderella story. The first
Shortly after he got back to his family in New Beijing, he passed away from Letumosis, more commonly known as “the plague”. Because he traveled to Europe and adopted Cinder, she was always blamed for his death, even though there was not anything that she could do about it. She stated, “My step-- my guardian, Adri, always suspected he got it in Europe. When he adopted me.”, Cinder told this to Dr. Erland, a doctor that she was sent to after Adri found out that her real daughter had acquired Letumosis after going to a junkyard with Cinder. She was sent to be a guinea pig for testing to find a cure, even though she did not volunteer. Adri still thought that she owed it to Peony, her step sister because she once again thought it was Cinder’s fault that one of her family members went out and got the plague. Although, it made absolutely no sense that Adri made that decision because Cinder was the family’s only source of income, she worked as a mechanic at the market to make money for them. Everything in the testing center ended up well after all, she met Dr. Erland, who became almost her mentor and taught her how special she was, and Cinder found out that she was immune to