If you know the
definition of a utopia, a dystopia is just what it sounds like. A dystopia is “an imaginary place or state in which the condition of life
is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror”. By the
definition alone, this does not sound like a genre of literature that an
adolescent student would like to explore. However, characters that are involved
in this type of society have a lot in common with the adolescent students that
are attracted to this genre. In many cases, both the characters and the
students are involved in a shifting world. Students are no longer children, but
not yet adults and are trying to find their way in a world that they may not
understand or a world that ignores them in some way; be it race, class, gender,
opinion differences, etc.
An example of this genre is the
recently popular series The Hunger Games, by Suzanne
Collins. While I was student teaching this past fall in a middle
school classroom, I noticed that most of my students had read or were reading
this series independently. While The
Hunger Games will not appear in this bibliography, it did make me start to
think about this particular series and it’s appeal to adolescent readers. I
then realized that if a variety of students were, and still are, interested in
this series I might be able to explore that interest in a larger selection of
dystopian literature.
By exploring the fictional worlds of
characters, it opens a pathway to discuss inequalities in our own world. Not
only how to spot them, but how to challenge them and change them. As educators,
I believe that it is our responsibility to teach students to read the word
while simultaneously reading the world. In other words, students should be able
to notice things in the world around them that affect them every day. In this
bibliography, I chose to start with genres of fiction and then shift at the end
to real dystopian elements that are occurring in our world today.
The text set that I am going to
discuss, as a whole, is meant to be for students in either 11th or
12th grade. However, some texts may also be used for slightly
younger grades and I will note those texts below when I discuss them in more
detail. The following bibliography begins with a short story collection that
will introduce students to the dystopian genre, followed by other fictions in a
variety of genres (a film, a graphic novel, and two novels) that explore
dystopias, and concluding with texts that feature dystopian elements that are
occurring in our world today as well as what we can do to combat dystopian
elements (a documentary and a website). All of the texts (except for some of he
introductory short stories) feature adolescent protagonists, and this will
allow the students to place themselves within the story easily. The variety of
texts is meant to attract both young men and young women and readers of all
types (even those who only “read” films). Here are some questions for students
to consider while they are reading these texts:
·
What
is my place in society?
·
How
do I know what I know about my world? Or, Where do my opinions come from?
·
What
are the norms, or hidden norms, of my world?
·
How
do I disturb or perpetuate the norms of my world?
·
What
does any of this have to do with me?
Brave New Worlds is a collection of over 20 short stories edited by John Joseph Adams. Each short story that is presented in the collection presents a different issue in a different hypothetical dystopian society. The characters in each story are in a world that they can’t control and the stories follow their choices and the choices of others. These stories will appeal to adolescent readers because they bring up interesting topics in a concise way and beg students to debate over the issues presented.
For the text set
that I will be presenting, I recommend three stories to begin your exploration
of Brave New Worlds with. “The
Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, follows the members of a village and a tradition
that they must follow every year that involves them choosing, at random, a
member of the village, which they must kill. There is talk of ending the
tradition, but no one is quite sure how. This story can later be connected with
The Giver and the theme of
tradition’s involvement in oppression. The next story is “Red Card”, by S. L.
Gilbow. This is the story of a woman named Linda Jackson and is set in a
society in which you are allowed to murder any person of your choosing without
consequences if you are chosen to hold a government issued red card. You can
later connect Linda’s choice with the choice of the main protagonist in the
novel Divergent. The last story that
I recommend is “From Homogeneous to Honey” by Neil Gaiman and Bryan Talbot.
This story follows a man that is explaining how they developed the current
“utopian” society in which he lives by eliminating everything that was
different. This short story is written in a comic book style and can therefore,
later be connected with V for Vendetta and
it’s theme’s of LGBTQ issues as well as the genre of the graphic novel.
I am not recommending that as a teacher, you
sit with your students and read all of the stories that are presented by every
author. The reason that I chose to begin with this collection was just that,
it’s a collection. As a teacher, one could take this collection and tweak it
with every use. Every year, students change and different things happen in the
world and this collection can help any teacher adjust to those changes. By
changing the choices of stories to react to the world around you, you can help
your students to see the connection between the literature that you are sharing
with them and the world they live in. You could either begin a unit with these
stories or spread them throughout a unit as an introduction to different texts.
Lowry, L. (1993). The giver. New York: Dell
Laurel-Leaf.
The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is the story of a boy
named Jonas and his life in the “Community”. Jonas has grown up in a place
where everyone has a job to do and a role that they have to play. Each year in
the Community, there is a ceremony that is held that marks the passage of a
year in a child’s life and this year is particularly important to Jonas. As he
is turning 12, this is the year that a job is selected for him by the elders of
the Community. At the ceremony, all of his friends are chosen to be
care-givers, or recreation managers, or birth mothers (yes, even the job of
giving birth is assigned in the Community) but Jonas is saved for last. He is
given the job known as the “Receiver”. There is only one in the entire
community and no one quite knows what he does. But Jonas soon learns that he
has been chosen to receive all of the memories of the Community that they chose
to give up when they went to “sameness”. These memories include extreme
happiness, but also extreme pain. The Giver (what the old Receiver becomes when
Jonas is chosen) teaches Jonas that “sameness” may be easier, but it is not
necessarily for the better. However, no one in the Community knows enough to
choose for themselves.
Adolescent
readers (particularly 11th and 12th graders) will be
attracted to this text because they are at the point in their lives where they
will be thinking about their place in their society. Where do they want to go
to college? Where do they want to Live? Etc. Younger readers could also be
connected to this text because the protagonist is 12 years old and they can
identify with the childhood that Jonas feels that he is leaving behind. Since there
is a male protagonist, young men may also get into the content of the story a
little more. This novel explores the themes of censorship, tradition and free
will and can open discussion about all three of these issues in the everyday
lives of students.
While everyone
in the Community seems happy, this is in fact, a dystopian novel. Members of
the Community are not given information or choices that they should have a
right to. Even though this text has a lower reading level, I think that it is
an appropriate way to begin a discussion of dystopian literature because it can
open the door to many current discussions stretching from a race discussion
(all color was eliminated when the Community went to “sameness”) to the death
penalty (the Community chooses everything for you, including death).
Ross, G. (Director) (1998). Pleasantville [DVD].
Pleasantville is a movie about two high school aged
students, David and his sister Jennifer. Through the power of a supernatural
remote control, David and Jennifer are transported to the fictional town of
Pleasantville which is the setting of David’s favorite TV show by the same name
and become the shows main characters Bud and Mary Sue. Their world turns from
Technicolor to black and white when they are suddenly stuck in the 50s, in
their television! Throughout the movie, David and Jennifer introduce the town
to new concepts that they didn’t even know existed and through that process
begin to change the entire town, physically and mentally. Those who hold power
in the town don’t wish for anything to change and dystopia emerges.
In contrast with
The Giver, the film Pleasantville is more easily related to
our history as a nation. Especially towards the end of the movie where there is
an obvious nod toward the Jim Crowe laws of segregation in the United States
with signs in the town reading “No Coloreds”. The segregation of African
Americans and the role of women in the 50s are both an integral part of this
movie’s plot and themes, making a dystopia not something that only exists in a
fictional world, but in our past (and still present today).
This film will
appeal to visual learners that may still be struggling with the concept of
dystopias, allowing them to see it in a different way. This movie may also be
used in connection with a history teacher when your students could also be
learning about American history. This film can also be a way to share with
students that everything that they experience can be viewed as a text to be
interpreted by them. For example, what does it mean that there are no African
American characters in this movie? Why are the leaders afraid of change? Do you
see similarities between Pleasantville and
the world you live in?
Moore, A., & Lloyd, D. (1988). V for vendetta .
New York, NY: Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.
V for Vendetta is a graphic novel written in 1988 by
Alan Moore and David Lloyd that is set in a post-apocalyptic London in the late
1990s. After a war that devastates the world, there is a struggle for power in
England and the group that takes over, takes control of everything. They can
hear and see everything that all of the citizens say and do and they can also
control all of the information that the citizens of London receive, thinking
that they know best. In the beginning of the graphic novel, we meet V. A masked
avenger of sorts, V decides to take the law into his own hands and single
handedly constructs taking down the government. That is, until he meets Evey. Evey
is a 16-year-old girl who is forced into living in London in a certain way
because of the way the government has changed her world. V teaches Evey that
she does not need to sit idly by while the world controls her; she can take the
steps to change it.
This graphic
novel does contain more adult content than other texts in this bibliography,
such as Evey being forced into prostitution because of the destitute situation
that she is in as well as murder of government officials because they “deserve
it”. V can be classified in the comic book world as an “anti-hero” meaning that
he has a positive end goal in mind (a free country) but he chooses less than
honorable avenues to get there (murder and conspiracy). This text will link to
the visual aspects of Pleasantville as
well as the dystopian element throughout this bibliography. This text starts to
get at some different questions that students may not have thought about in
previous texts such as: how far is too far? Whose responsibility is it to
change? And can one person really make a difference?
Also, as with Pleasantville, educators could team up
with history teachers to discuss the Holocaust during WWII. I did not mention
this earlier, but when the government in V
for Vendetta takes over, they eliminate minority groups such as African
Americans, Asians, or anyone who is different from them in similar ways to the
Nazis during the Holocaust. In particular, for a section of the graphic novel,
we follow a young Lesbian woman who goes through the camp known in the novel as
“Lark Hill”. This text can be used to discuss many issues including those of
the LGBTQ community. Who would be safe in this London? And who would be cast to
the side in the search for “peace”?
Roth, V. (2011). Divergent. New York: Katherine Tegen
Books.
Divergent by Veronica Roth is the story of
Beatrice Prior in her search for her place in the world. This novel is set in a
future Chicago that is broken up into five different “factions” referred to as
Abnegation, Candor, Amity, Dauntless and Erudite. Each faction has a code of
conduct that its members must live by and, once someone makes a choice to be in
a faction, they are there for life. Beatrice is 16 and is at the stage in her
life where she must make that choice for herself. However, she discovers that
she is not meant to be in any one faction, she is Divergent. The story follows
her choices and leads adolescent readers to think, which faction would I be a
part of?
This novel is
the most like The Hunger Games and is
meant to be a female parallel to The
Giver. As a current book, it still has new appeal to younger readers and explores
the idea of a different type of society that is different from our own (the
romance that evolves through the novel is also a pretty good incentive for
adolescent girls). This novel is honestly one of my new favorite books and I
read it in a day (I also learned 5 new vocabulary words based on the 5 factions).
I chose to place this towards the end of the set because I think that students
will be able to see their progression in thought and critical thinking skills
between the first novel they read and this novel.
For educators,
we can focus on the way that this novel explores personal choice as well as
societal guidelines. What qualities do students think are important? What do
they value in other people? How do we know what is “proper behavior” in our own
lives? This dystopia is the most relevant to personal character exploration.
Palos, A. (Director) (2011). Precious knowledge
[DVD].
Precious Knowledge is a very current documentary that
follows the lives of several Latino and Latina students in Tucson, Arizona. The
documentary begins with a discussion of the school district’s Ethnic Studies
program. This program allowed Mexican American students to learn about their
culture and to be proud of where they, and their families come from, while
simultaneously teaching them about social justice of all types. Just as I
mentioned in the title of this post, they were teaching their students to read
the word while reading the world. To notice things around them, so they could
try to change it. These courses have raised the graduation rates in these
Tucson schools considerably. Throughout the documentary, we learn that leaders
of the school are getting rid of these programs and classes and unfortunately
have since succeeded. The leaders have claimed that these classes are “anti-American”
and promote hate. The students and teachers are attempting to fight back.
This is a current
civil rights issue. It is happening now. Students who have been learning about
dystopias may think that they can’t possibly exist in any place other than in
fiction. This documentary can be used to show them that they are wrong. Race,
class, gender, sexual orientation… all of these topics are still visible in the
United States today and aren’t fictional or in our past. This text will appeal
to students who can feel the strain of race in their every day lives. It will
also give students who are considered part of the “majority”, a look into the
struggles of race.
Since the
students in this documentary are the same age as the target audience, there is
a way for them to “read” this film with their own schools in mind. Teachers can
connect all of the dystopian ideas that have been introduced to the current
state of our country. Issues still exist, so what are our students going to do
about it in their lives?
KidsPeace. (n.d.). Teencentral.net. Retrieved from http://www.teencentral.net/
I will admit
that taking on a fictional world, the past of the United States and entire
school boards can seem intimidating and impossible to the students in any classroom.
So, what can our students do about anything that they have learned from this
bibliography? I think the website, teencentral.net is the perfect place to
answer that question. It is a website that I believe allows students to face
their own dystopias. This website deals with topics from growing up military
and bullying to LGBTQ issues, drugs and alcohol. It is a place where students
can blog about their issues anonymously as well as read the experiences of
other adolescents. There are trained counselors who can respond to these posts
as well as a place on the website that is for parents to explore and learn
about.
By realizing
that dystopias are not all about fiction, students can learn to look around
them to try to determine what makes their world work, or not work, and attempt
to change it. Something as small as stopping a bully, or not judging someone
based on their appearance could be just as influential as taking down an entire
government. Teaching students about dystopian literature allows them to think
critically about issues of the past, present and future and their place in them.
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