If you were a teenager in the early-2010s, you might fondly recall the wave of dystopian literature that took the world by a storm and prompted the creation of many iconic film adaptations. From the Capitol’s motley in The Hunger Games to the labyrinthine world of The Maze Runner, we remember this era as one with novels rooted in the same central theme yet each story was executed in a vast variety of ways.
This was the era of teenagers overthrowing oppressive government systems, and we believed every version of it. It was easy for audiences of the same age group to sympathise with these like-minded characters, even easier to project oneself onto them, which is primarily why the dystopian genre was a staggering success. But was that all there was to it?
The goldmine of dystopia
Oftentimes in fiction, political intrigue is a mere subplot that may be added to influence narrative tension and intensify stakes. However, in dystopia, politics is the beating heart of the plot. Politics is why we are compelled to view a dystopian universe in the first place. If the politics fails, the rest of the system crumbles – and while that denouement is necessary for the protagonist’s arc, the author need not make it the reader’s journey.
That being said, you can’t bring up the genre without mentioning The Hunger Games at some point, if not first of all. For the unversed, this novel follows the journey of Katniss Everdeen, who volunteers to take part in a lethal survival show in place of her younger sister Primrose.
In the twelfth district of a post-catastrophic, war-torn North America, Katniss is the sole breadwinner of her family in a world where insurmountable wealth disparity between the Capitol and its districts has become the norm. Why this series works is not just because of the real-world implications, but also because it explores the regressive regime of the Capitol past the opulent vanity.
The dictator President Coriolanus Snow is named after the Roman general and the titular protagonist of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. The characters in both fictional works are personifications of the corruption of absolute power that is aided by the hoarding of wealth and resources, and denying basic necessities to the impoverished.
This inspiration has enabled author Suzanne Collins to not only explore the constitutional subtleties of the narrative, but also depict how they were first put to practice in the incredibly-pieced prequel following the rise of the antagonist. Furthermore, Collins doesn’t present authority as an isolated act driven by one individual; rather, she stresses that it is a vicious cycle, a touch of which can ruin anyone, through her portrayal of rising antagonist President Alma Coin.
The relatability factor works wonders when it comes to the depiction of a jarring, futuristic world – one we might not be around to witness at its full scale yet we can see the signs early on. A harrowing representation of this is in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which is a feminist dystopian narrative that depicts a world where the state takes full control of women’s bodies, reducing their individual identities and brutally exploiting them.
Given the heated discourse around abortion, the rates of rape and honour killings, and policies denying women the rights to their own bodies, this premise unfortunately does not steer far from reality. The elements of patriarchal servitude in the novel are also inspired by historical events, cementing the theocratic intent of the in-world totalitarian regime.
Another excellent depiction of a similar dystopian government is in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in which every aspect of a citizen’s life is governed. Transparency takes an oppressive form when it comes to this classic novel, in which human beings are bioengineered and modified to fit seamlessly into society.
The fascist World State discourages human emotions, obliterating them so that conflict never arises and citizens are fully subdued by the government. In contrast, those who are alienated from high society are viewed as primitive for being able to express human emotions. The 1932 novel comments on the dooming reliance on technology, which in the context of our world is becoming unavoidable with every passing day hence making this dystopian take an intellectually inquisitive one.
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