What Makes A Dystopia?

Utopias and Dystopias are fictional places that have been written about extensively since the era of Thomas More and his work, “Utopia”. What makes a utopia? It is an imaginary place, or a place of “nowhere” as Thomas More puts it, a perfect place. Lyman Tower Sargent worked to define Utopia to establish a universal understanding of it, he was considered the first utopian scholar. He establishes the framework by discussing the three faces of Utopia, social contrivance, communitarians and utopian social theory. Sargent emphasizes that utopias are created when the dreamers solely vision a society that is better than their own. These dreamers write about these dream societies in their literature, and how the readers perceive the literature will
Unlike other academic articles that were examined, this article presented results from a study by Jonathan Gottschall who concluded that the story theme of romance is scattered around time and is a part of ancestral roots. To further support this, Jon Ferreira who is a director, actor, and educator, defines storytelling as “it is what links us to our past, and provides a glimpse into our future”. This indicates that we reflect on the multiple themes in the past and use them to write, narrate, and portray new
Scholes and Otenson believe that dystopian novels, will allow for students in the classroom to become more actively engaged because young adults enjoy them. They also argue that a lot can be learned from these novels, how young adults can learn about the system of government, about present issues in their society today, and they belong in the classroom. They believe that these novels are pivotal to teach them in this time of their life where they are figuring out who they really are. It can be argued that dystopian novels are in place to inform the readers about the problems of today’s society, and how the world would look if these problems went unnoticed. Melissa Ames discusses the rise of these young adult dystopian novels and how they inform young adults about the government, how to become more politically active. There was a claim made that young adults are strictly apolitical just because they do not have high voting turn outs, however that is not the only indicator of political involvement. Ames states that especially after 9/11 she saw a positive correlation between these young adult dystopian novels and their political involvement. She claims that they are more involved today they ever were before because these books plots and characters inspire them to instill a change to ensure that problems will not get out of