Responding to a Dystopian Novel

Throughout the process of reading the novel, I will ask you to analyze the setting and the responses characters have to the setting. The explanation and questions below will help you analyze these two aspects of the novel.

SETTING – How is the world within the novel flawed, corrupted, fallen? How do its flaws reveal flaws in the modern world?
"Something is rotten in the state of..."

These dystopias are all set in some imagined version of the future, but each of these future is based on some aspects of the modern world. (In the modern world, we have video surveillance. In 1984, every moment of life is under video surveillance.) The authors ask the question "What if this or that aspect of modern life were to grow, to expand, to take over? How would human life change?" In dystopian novels the authors are especially interested in how certain aspects of modern life could worsen human existence or could so radically change it that being human would become unrecognizable.

While reading your novel consider the question, what aspects of modern life appear (perhaps in an exaggerated or expanded or intensified form) in the novel? How does the novel critique these aspects of modern life? How does the novel function as warning to the modern reader? How does the novel warn against expanding and intensifying some of the beliefs and behaviors made possible in the modern world?

Then, evaluate the critique of modern life. How revelant is the critique? In other words, how likely is the sort of future presented in the dystopia? Or, how likely is something *like* the future presented in the dystopia? And, how similar are aspects of *our* world to aspects of the novel?

Then, consider whether you agree or disagree with the implied critique? (For those reading 1984, Is video surveillance really that bad? Would it be better if there were more of it in our world? Or for those reading Brave New World, what do you think about soma? Is Mustapha Mond right? Or is John?)

CHARACTERS – How do characters respond to living in a flawed, corrupted world?
"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer/The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,/And by opposing end them?"

How do the characters respond to the dystopia, the flaws in her or his world? Do they suffer the slings and arrows? Do they take arms against a sea of troubles? What do they do? How do they assert (or not assert) their sense that the world is broken, corrupt, flawed, an unweeded garden? Or do they not have that sense? Do they see nothing wrong with the world as it is?

Consider what each of the major characters thinks about the world within the novel and how each of the major characters responds to it. (The answers will vary from character to character. The characters in Hamlet see the world quite differently and they respond quite differently too. The same will be true in your novel.)

You will post your responses to www.jcookghs.blogspot.com or send your responses to jcook@gloucester.k12.ma.us for me to post them. (You will need a Google account in order to post comments.) Your first two responses (one on setting, one on characters) are due by April 25.