Thinking Activity : The Setting of 20th Century Literature

  Dystopian Literature :- 

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a dystopia is "An imaginary place or condition in which everything is as bad as possible." The easiest way to think about Dystopian Literature and dystopias is to consider that a dystopia is often the result of a society's arranging its government and laws around good 

The Characteristics of Dystopian Settings :-

Many dystopias share similar characteristics, including:

Economic challenges :- 

 There’s widespread poverty that the citizens must endure, or there are massive gaps in wealth that create a ruling class of elites and relegate everyone else to a life of scarcity and hardship.

Environmental damage :- 

Environmental devastation wreaks havoc on the lives and fates of the characters. This destruction might take the form of major weather events, like earthquakes or floods; climate change and its disastrous effects; or the ramifications of pollution, overpopulation, or disregard for the planet and its finite resources.

Government influence :-

Typically, there’s either no government overseeing law, order, and civilization, or there’s a domineering government that operates a police state and controls and monitors the lives of all citizens.

Loss of freedom or individual identity :- 

A dystopian society often robs its citizens of their basic freedoms and/or individualism. It reduces them to sheep who must blindly follow the dictates of a tyrannical and unjust system.

Propaganda :-

The existing power structure in a dystopia produces propaganda to keep the citizenry in line. Such propaganda might present a deceptive “everything is fine“ picture of life in order to control the population, or it might incite fear and terror and, thus, generate an excuse to engage in further domination and subjugation.

Survival :- 

The characters in a dystopian setting are in a fight to survive the oppressive conditions in which they find themselves. They must resort to extreme measures to protect themselves and those around them, which usually means rebelling against the powers that be.

Technology :- 

Advancements in technology tend to play a key role in controlling or tracking the citizens of a dystopia. Rather than solving problems, technology creates them- damaging relationships, reinforcing hierarchies and power structures, and reducing quality of life.

Subsets of Dystopian Literature:-

Dystopian literature is itself a subgenre of speculative fiction. Speculative fiction takes place in settings that could potentially be a reality but are hypothetical at the time of writing. This hypothetical quality separates speculative fiction from works of pure science fiction or fantasy. Speculative fiction possesses certain plot points that root them to existing realities. The narratives are not as hyper-focused on science, technology, supernatural elements, and other hallmarks of science fiction and fantasy literature. Instead, they centre around the human responses to these themes.

There are also subsets of dystopian fiction. Some works combine both a utopia- an idealised, perfect world-and a dystopia. Ectopian fiction takes place in a dystopia or utopia and emphasises environmental issues, such as the preservation or destruction of the story’s natural environment. Feminist dystopias utilize their settings to critique male-dominated social and political structures and the relationship between gender identity and power.

         

Utopian :-

Utopia is the ideal state of society, where no distress prevails. Society there is full of prospects and opportunities, and no one is unhappy or hopeless there. Utopian society possesses almost perfect qualities for its citizens. In his book “Utopia”, Thomas More describes a fictional island and its rules and lifestyle.

Dystopian :-

Dystopia is the opposite of Utopia, where everything is chaotic and disordered, nothing is good there, and it is not desirable at all.

Writers known for Dystopian Literature :-

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Lois Lowry, The Giver

George Orwell, 1984, Animal Farm

Veronica Roth, Divergent

Fantasy Literature :-

Fantasy is a genre of literature that features magical and supernatural elements that do not exist in the real world. Although some writers juxtapose a real-world setting with fantastical elements, many create entirely imaginary universes with their own physical laws and logic and populations of imaginary races and creatures. Speculative in nature, fantasy is not tied to reality or scientific fact.

Type of fantasy :- 

Fantasy includes a robust and ever-growing number of subgenres, some of which writers combine in their works. There are a few essential subgenres of fantasy:

High or epic fantasy :-

Set in a magical environment that has its own rules and physical laws, this subgenre’s plots and themes have a grand scale and typically center on a single, well-developed hero or a band of heroes, such as Frodo Baggins and his cohorts in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954).

Low fantasy :- 

Set in the real world, low fantasy includes unexpected magical elements that shock characters, like the plastic figurines come to life in Lynne Reid Banks’s The Indian in the Cupboard (1980).

Magical realism :-

While similar to low fantasy, magical realism characters accept fantastical elements like levitation and telekinesis as a normal part of their otherwise realistic world, as in Gabriel García Márquez’s classic One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).

Sword and sorcery :- 

A subset of high fantasy, it focuses on sword-wielding heroes, such as the titular barbarian in Robert E. Howard’s Conan pulp fiction stories, as well as magic or witchcraft.

Dark fantasy :- 

Combining elements of fantasy and horror, its aim is to unnerve and frighten readers, like the gargantuan, otherworldly monsters in H. P. Lovecraft’s universe.

Fables. Using personified animals and the supernatural, fables impart moral lessons, like the stories in Aesop’s Fables and Arabian Nights.

Fairy tales :- 

 Intended for children, these fairy tales and folk tales are typically set in distant magical worlds where trolls, dragons, witches, and other supernatural characters are an accepted truth, as in the Brothers Grimm’s Grimm’s Fairy Tales (1812).

Superhero fiction :- 

 Unlike stories in which a hero acquires special abilities through scientific means, such as exposure to radiation, these protagonists’ powers are supernatural.

Example of Fantasy Literature :- 

Alice in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll.

The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C. S. Lewis.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel García Márquez.