Dystopias

• ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ - Margaret Atwood 

  • Themes of religion, authority, hierarchy, love, rebellion, language, environmental disaster, sexism 
  • Her experience at Harvard, Soviet union and communism, 

  ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ - George Orwell 

  • Themes of authority, brainwashing, torture, totalitarianism, war, rebellion, love, technology, memory and thought control, collective, 
• Animal Farm - George Orwell 

  • Themes of power, class, inequality and corruption and is an allegory for 1917 Russian revolution 

  ‘The Hunger Games’ - Suzzane Collins 

  • Themes of hierarchy, inequality, violence, identity, appearance, ethics of entertainment, anti-capitalism
  • TV and news, reality tv v news of war, Vietnam war on the author, Greek mythology, Historical figure Sparacys, an enslaved man who became a gladiator and led a rebellion against ancient Rome 
• ‘A Clockwork Orange’ - Anthony Burgess 

  • Themes of free will v societal control, nature of human nature, role of government, interdependence of art + life, language, duality

  ‘The Road’ - Cormac Mcarthy 

  • Themes of apocalypse, moral conflict, father and son relationship, survival, hope amd  as it is the journey of an unnamed man and boy who are father and son as they travel to safety after most of earth is wiped out 
• ‘The Drowned World’ - Ballard 

  • Themes of environmental disaster, man v nature, memory v future, science and psychology, identity, class distinctions, climate change, 

  ‘The Girl with All the Gifts’ - M.R Carey 

  • Themes of self discovery, queer desire, language words and communication, paradoxical nature of the mind, wonder v reality, the pandora myth, science, disease
  • Young adult 
• ‘The Maze Runner’ - James Dashner 

  • Themes of memory, identity, growing up, stability v change and chaos, need for hierarchy and order, importance of friendship, knowledge, disease, hope, sacrifice, sexism 
  • Extended metaphor for the challenges of growing up 

  ‘Fahrenheit 451’ - Ray Bradbury 

  • Themes of censorship, police, rebellion, conformity, individuality, literature 
  • Inspo from second red scare + Nazis and soviets burning books 
  • Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature you must get to for books to burn 
• ‘A Brave New World’ - Huxley

  • Themes of technology and control, cost of happiness, industrialism and consumption, individuality.
  • Parody of utopias, such as ‘A modern utopia’ ‘Men like gods’ 
  • Inspiration from industrial revolution, end of WW1, great depression
• 'We' - Zamyatin

  • Repression of Desire, Many of the characters in We seem subservient and submissive to the demands of the One State. Beneath their passive exteriors, however, they fight a perpetual, invisible battle between acting as the One State dictates they ought to, and acting to fulfill their own repressed desires.
• The Machine Stops - E.M. Forster

  • the dangers of overreliance on technology, the loss of human connection due to excessive reliance on machines, the decline of individual thought and experience, the yearning for nature and physical interaction, and the struggle between the rational and emotional aspects of humanity;