Why is it that the dystopian/utopian genre has always filled the collections of young adult literature throughout our country’s libraries and classrooms? Though the concepts included in dystopian literature are not new, they continue to attract and fascinate readers over the years. Sir Thomas More’s classic Utopia, written in 1516, was the first of many narratives to explore dystopian societies. More recently works such as Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or Isaac Asimov’s I Robot examine challenges the modern world faces as it attempts to create a utopian society, causing plans that backfire, often leading to exhausting and debilitating results. More recently YA novels such as Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Embers, Lois Lowry’s The Giver and James Dashner’s The Maze Runner, continue the tradition of examining our world through a lens that is at once well-meaning and critical, while at the same time misguided and destructive. What seems to link these classics and others like them, is the author’s desire to fix a flaw in the world, to bring light to darkness, to attack political corruption, to reverse a wrong, all at a cost that may at first seem fair and sensible, but inevitably leads to a dysfunctional dystopian society.
George Orwell, arguably the father of the modern dystopian novel, seemed to base his work on the very real, dangerous society that can develop when “big brother” becomes too big. Are we moving closer to the dystopian nightmare that Orwell seemed to see in the twilight of World War II? Are we moving closer to a political world in which, as Orwell himself asserted, “All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.”1 The literature seems to reflect not only our own very real desire for a utopian society, but also our very real demise into a darker society from which our heroes must help us survive, must help us to climb out of the mess we have created on our journey to a “more perfect union.” Our fascination with dystopian literature, among the young and old, is a subconscious search for answers, a search for rescue in a world that, at times, seems to be barreling out of control toward a demise that we all want to avoid.
