My personal definition of a dystopian society is a society that is knowingly fictional and often imposes oppression towards those who reside in the society because basic elements of happy lives are taken away. I define a dystopia as this because of the experience that I encountered with dystopian societies when reading a portion of 1984 and through reading and watching ‘The Giver’. In The Giver, the entire society is controlled by an entire committee of Elders. This aspect shows a dystopian society because this shows an oppressive government over the people. The commitee assigned everyone spouses and children and had complete control over everything. The committee also deprives the people of many streams of happiness because the don’t allow celebration of any holidays or normal traditions and many of the people cannot see any type of color. Using the details from this book solely, I concluded my definition of a dystopian society because the people had no free will to make their own decisions staring at a very young age of 11. In the portion of book 1948 that I read, the society likely resembles that of the society in ‘The Giver’ because again the society is governed by a select group. Within this society, people are fearful of the being that governs them and they are deprived of basic rights to happiness. They are unable to buy books to read or write diaries, or they will be forced to face punishments such as jail or possibly death. Overall, based on the few examples that I have seen through the texts and films viewed, I summarized a dystopian society as a very oppressive place with minimal degrees of happiness.
