Dystopia- Modernity's Darker Side

Utopia-Dystopia: A Novel Study through Literary Letters

Can Earth survive human beings? Does development make our lives better in the long run? Do we need more or less control over development if we are to survive as a planet and/or species?

Every generation notices things that need to be changed – devastation of the environment; pervasive poverty; continual prejudice and discrimination.  But hope seems to be a human quality that keeps us going.

Some authors have explored the world of the future and have tried to imagine what could cause a major change and what the results of that change may be.  For instance, some writers consider a natural disaster that topples cities and ruins infrastructures, which once supported communication, transportation and distribution of basics like food and water.  Survival of the fittest takes over.  Other authors consider how political issues polarize a country and cause civil war.  Who wins?  How are laws and governments reorganized?  How can one group of citizens be “losers” to the other and still live side by side?

Other questions that these fantasy situations may evoke include: Will a catastrophe unify us as “citizens of planet Earth,” or will an apocalypse forever alter the world as we know it?  Who will survive?  What will be left to live on?  What parts of human nature will survive and gain control – competition and fear, or compassion and humanity? These are the questions that authors of dystopian novels ponder.

A dystopia is a view into the future with something gone wrong in society – it’s almost like another world, or our world turned upside down.  Usually in a dystopia, individual freedom is lost due to an authoritarian or totalitarian government.  Social controls are meant to “keep everyone safe” – from themselves.  Instead these same controls are one-sided and people who don’t fit the social norm are persecuted or destroyed.  Within such a controlled society, there is still an imbalance of power and someone ultimately gains more from the system than others.  The most unsettling question is, Are there countries already like this today, or are there any situations from our history that resembled a dystopia?

The setting of a dystopian novel usually includes mass poverty, warfare, or a militaristic police force.  Quite often young people are targets – either they are used by adults or are expendable in order to conserve resources.  At the same time, young people often become symbols of hope and change; their negative experiences have driven them to protest the status quo and seek a new order.

Here’s what to look for in a dystopian novel:

1. A catastrophe – either natural or manmade –has altered the world and its citizens
2. Science and technology have “perfected” humans, but unnaturally so to the point where humans are more machine-like and heartless than their ancestors
3. Futuristic or technical terminology/vocabulary
4. Generation gaps between young and old –  elders who survived the catastrophic change and agreed to a controlled system to avoid fatal errors from the past; the next generation of youth who question the status quo and resist rules, seek change, or take over power
5. A government or an institution that tries to make “everyone equal” but at a cost to individuality and creativity
6. Victims hiding or excepting rules of a government
7. Groups planning a rebellion or a quest to travel through unsafe settings to deliver information or something valuable to get others to revel
8. A growing up theme like a young person maturing quickly and learning his or her place in the order of things, or his or her mission in life
9. Social classes that are divisive, usually based on those who “have” and those who “have not”
10. Antagonists – a government that has taken all individual rights and decision-making away from the people; a police force of bullies who abuse power; neighbor versus neighbor, turning each other in to the authorities out of fear or for personal gain…and more.

 

 

The Novel Study Instructions:

1.       1. Chunk your novel into 3 sections: Chunk #1 should be finished the night of May 15^th; Chunk #2 should be finished by the evening of May 22^nd, and the entire book should be finished by the evening of May 29^th.
2.       Write a literary letter for Chunk #1 due in class May 16^th and Chunk #2 due May 23^rd.
3.       Write responses to your classmates’ letters the following day.
4.       Prepare for a fishbowl on May 30^th with passages and questions for the fishbowl to debate modernity.
5.       Keep all your notes, letters and responses for a unit portfolio!

Literary Letters: One way to make sense of what you are reading is to write “literary letters.”  When you write a literary letter, you can write anything about the book; it is not a book report, though, so spend only a little time describing the plot. In other words DO NOT RETELL everything, just retell enough to help your reader understand what is going on.

Requirements:

□   date

□   greeting (Dear Dystopia Reader,)

□   closing (Sincerely, )

□   title and author of what you are reading

□   one paragraph retelling of what you read in that chunk—50 words

□   two or three paragraphs that answer a “thinking question” (see below)—300 words total

□   use quotes from the text in each paragraph to support your response.

□   use this format for quotes: “________” (30). Notice how the page number is in parentheses?

□   one closing paragraph asking your reader questions about his or her dystopia novel- about 50 words

□   Your literary letters should be at least two pages handwritten, or one page typed (12 pt Times New Roman and 1/5 spacing)

□   your responses should be about 100 words.

Thinking Questions:

1.       What catastrophe or apocalypse has caused changes to life, culture, and community in this dystopia or “utopia”?

2.       What details about the setting and the characters prove that this is a fantasy set in the future?

3.       What are some advances or regressions in science, medicine, or technology that are part of the setting? What are the benefits or disadvantages of these technologies? And why were they even needed in the first place?

4.       What are some rules in this society that are used to control human behavior or ways of living? What are the benefits or disadvantages of these social rules? And why were they even needed in the first place?

5.       What character do you learn the most about in this chunk? What are at least two of his/her traits and what evidence from the text proves this? What do you admire or dislike about this character? What are some events that have a lasting effect on this character? In what ways did this character change by the end of the story (if this is the third chunk)?

6.       Does anyone die – either before the story begins or during the plot? If so, how does the death affect the main character, the rules or technologies in the story, or the plot in general?

7.       What allusions are used by the author such as quotations from famous books, poems, or people or references to other stories, myths, or legends? What other books or stories does this novel remind you of? Explain any connections?

8.       Talk about some passages in the section of the novel that the author uses vivid description, poetic techniques, language that creates a mood, or just a section that appeals to ethos, pathos, or logos to get you thinking about the conflict in the story.

9.       Talk about any older or wiser characters in the novel that give warnings or advice about the future or the past and explain how the author uses these characters to communicate the theme or messages about the subject. What is the author trying to tell you or warn you about? 

Sample                                                                                                      September 18, 2010

Dear Reader,

Today I read the story Waiting, by Budge Wilson. The story is told by Juliette Westhaver, a young

girl who always outshines her twin sister, Henrietta. In the story, Juliette talks about how different she

is from Henrietta. Juliette is pretty, energetic, healthy and good at everything from school to sports to

acting. Henrietta is thin, bony, pale and gets sick a lot. Juliette remembers some experiences she had

with her sister as they grew up. One of these experiences involves the sisters being involved in a play

put on for people in the neighbourhood; Juliette is the lead actress and Henrietta designs the costumes

and sets. When Henrietta comes on stage to fix an embarrassing problem with Juliette‟s dress in the

final scene, the audience realizes how beautiful she is and wants her to come back out. From then on,

Henrietta gets lots of attention from local boys, while Juliette receives none.

For this story, I chose to answer „what character was your favourite or most unusual or the one you

dislike? Why?‟ I really disliked Juliette through the whole story. She is very conceited, which means

that she thinks really highly of herself; for example, she said, “I can’t understand why no one listens to me” (30). .

 I thought that the way she spoke about her sister in the story was very mean, too. . One thing that really bothered 

me was when Henrietta was given a compliment for doing a good job on the set for one of the kids’ plays, 

and Juliette put her down so she wouldn‟t start feeling like she was “a pretty smart stage manager” (55).

I think that Juliette acts the way that she does because she feels superior to her sister. Her mother

always says really great things about her, but not about Henrietta, so Juliette has gotten the idea that she

is better. I also think that Juliette is jealous when other people get more attention than her. She seems

insecure about herself, and maybe that is why she puts Henrietta down. At the end of the story, it is

clear that Juliette is very jealous of Henrietta now that she is getting so much attention. She says, “I just

wasn‟t all that crazy about having her around all the time.” She doesn‟t want her sister around because

it makes her feel like she isn‟t superior anymore.

I think this story was really interesting. It was really cool to read about the likable character through the

eyes of the unlikable one. I would recommend this book to kids that feel unpopular to show them that

they don‟t have to be worried that they will always be in the shadows of others. Tell me about what 

you are reading? Are you noticing similar things about your character? What situations are challenging

 your protagonist?

Sincerely,

Julie (455 words)

______________

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Mini-lecture on "Modernity" to encourage students to look at the "Enlightened" and the Darker Sides of progress leading up to a conversation about climate change:
http://prezi.com/23vc-9d6dmcv/untitled-prezi/

Reading the "dystopian" novel looking for the society's acts toward utopia or a more perfect community (e.g., population limits, sorting people into factions, match making, witholding painful memories, etc. )  and then the dystopian side of such efforts (e.g., hidden children, inter-faction conflicts, etc.).

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Now that the novels are going, we are shifting a bit to talk about climate change. We are trying an interdisciplinary unit - -Math, Science, History, Spanish, Reading, and Writing -- around the topic of climate change with the essential questions:  Is nature -- all organism (plants, insects, human beings) -- resilient enough to withstand modernity?

To get us thinking about chain reactions and the transnational nature of climate change and modernity (specifically the globalized economy), we started with a PBS clip about bees.

 Students took notes on the problem, causes and solutions related to pollination according to this source.  What is important to note here is that the climate is becoming more unpredictable. The year of this video, the orchards bloomed 5 weeks early, and the bee keeper was not able to meet the demand needed to support pollination. One solution discussed here is looking for bees to cultivate that can withstand the colder temperatures because the honey bees used currently cannot fly high enough in the cold and windy weather to pollinate the trees -- thus, impacting the growth of nuts and fruits.

Here is another way orchards are adjusting to unpredictable weather. One orchard in Canada is using helicopters to protect their apple orchards from frost and damage to the blossoms to protect its reproductive parts. Low temperatures kill the reproductive parts, and so there is no pollen for pollination. A helicopter brings warm air back down to protect the blossoms -- successfully. It was the subject of PRI's The World's geo quiz:
https://soundcloud.com/theworld/canadian-apple-farmer-uses

Next, we read a short story: "Busy as a ..."

As students read, they complete a graphic organizer that begins to illustrate the transactional nature of global warming.

As we learned from this story, climate change impacts food production and contributes to food scarcity and thus price of food and other consequences.

To get us thinking about this, we learned a little bit about desertification - caused by climate change, but also over grazing and soil exhaustion by "reading" some videos and considering the ethos, logos, and pathos of the sources:

To think about the impact of desertification, we did a journal about our what food we'd eat in our own utopia. We quickly figured out that my utopia as a vegetarian was quite different from others, but many of us still appreciated fruit and pancakes. This led us to a discussion of how wheat, corn, and dairy production impacts virtually all of the food we eat. And so we developed a situation of a family of four and worked out a sample budget for their household and then introduced a 30% price increase because of food scarcity, which required students to rethink the family budget and consider how the price of food impacts so many other choices we make in society.

The next week, we moved from land to water and began talking about how marine life both impacts social and political groups and how human beings impact the marine life.

We began by watching  Big Miracle, and students took notes about all the different organizations or groups who tried to save three Californian Gray whales trapped in ice in Barrow, Alaska. The key here was to look at modern ways of thinking and the rhetorical situation -- how environmental issues are used for political and economic gain.