The Handmaid's Tale 'And The Machine Stops'

I believe that Lewis is correct in believing that utopian ideals warp our morality in ways that end in creating catastrophe or dystopia. This theme is evident throughout the books and stories we’ve been reading. Each of the stories had a background in which the dystopia began – they have a reoccurring theme of the creator of the utopia having good intentions for his or her people, but carrying out those intentions in a bad way. The person then potentially becomes obsessed with the idea and it controls him or her. The result is the dystopia either being destroyed or the main character being unable to change it.
The Machine Stops is about a machine that was made by humans who live underground because of the dangerous conditions on the surface.
A coup took over the US government and killed all the people in it. Then, the new government instated that all women who weren’t elite were to become handmaids, women who had children for the female elite. These handmaids have no rights: they aren’t allowed to leave the house unless they’re shopping (they must go in pairs), they can’t show emotion, and they must obey every order. Handmaids who are barren are considered non-human and are sent away to hard labor camps. Babies who are born defective are killed. The moral of the story is that the creator of this dystopia wanted to save humans from extinction, but instead enslaved
The main characters’ stories are connected at a Shakespeare play, King Lear, when one of the characters dies from a stroke. From there, a deadly flu ravages the world, killing much of the world’s population. Twenty years later, a main character named Kirsten is with a travelling group of performers called the Travelling Symphony. This group performed many plays and musical pieces in the small towns that still existed. Their motto is “…because survival is insufficient” because they believe that art is the one thing that can make people happy. The moral of the story is that there are many ways one can find one’s meaning. These can exist amidst corruption, anarchy and a lack of outward comfort. The first underlying message is that everything happens for a reason. The second is to keep hope alive even in the darkest of times. The third is, in a way, that only those with the strongest will can survive. The final one is that one can find comfort in hard times while adapting to the harsh