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Essay / Essay on Utopia and Dystopia - 1359
The idea of utopian and dystopian societies has been a popular topic throughout literature, dating back to the flawed utopias of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four from George Orwell, to today's dystopia. tales like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Divergent by Veronica Roth. A utopia is written as a society of perfection, where there are no crimes, diseases or discrimination among people. Although story societies such as Brave New World, EM Foster's The Machine Stops, and RA Lafferty's Slow Tuesday Night appear on the surface to be a picture of utopia, they are better framed within a dystopia, or anti -utopia, because of their representation of an oppressed and divided population. Through these stories, authors Huxley, Foster, and Lafferty expose the horrible truths and flaws of their own societies that can also be seen in our society today. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World depicts a society in which the population is divided into a hierarchy of classes, much like a caste system. Whichever level you belong to, whether Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta or Epsilon, is decided before birth and fetuses are physically and mentally altered depending on which category they will fall into. Alphas and Betas, being the highest class, are developed to reach their full mental and physical potential and are the most intelligent and physically attractive. Gammas, deltas, and epsilons are created and chemically modified for the purpose of performing mundane, labor-intensive work. They do not need intelligence and therefore are not allowed to develop mentally to a high level, just like the upper class. This system of division in the novel was used to oppress the population. Members of each level use paper......ice cream to complete daily routines with minimal effort. Foster also spoke about the domination of technology over everyday life and also how technology has taken away the personal aspects of communication. Finally, Lafferty presents in his story the idea of quick gratification in all aspects of life and a lack of commitment in decisions. Through all this, the author shows the oppression of the population. All of the ideas and themes discussed throughout the stories bring deeper meaning to the values and uses of technology in today's society. These authors used their dystopian societies to expose the horrible truth of their own society that applies to present and future times. By exposing these flaws, these dystopia stories can lead us to carefully examine our own uses and values of technology and evaluate whether we too are being held back by its uses..