Dystopia is a fictional society or community that has terrible living conditions and it can also have oppression and injustice for the citizens. The reason why my definition changed over the semester is because I had to analyze several short essays and I learned a lot from the voice threads. This class helped me really understand the meaning of dystopia and also learn about utopias. While reading The Handmaid’s Tales it made me acknowledge the fact of how women were treated by different groups in their community. In one of the articles about the novel, it states that “Gilead’s women are stripped of their freedom, they have no rights and they are only possessive items that belong to the men. They are not allowed to read, write or educate or to own property, chose their clothes, or control money.” This tells me that the women of Gilead are oppressed by the men of the community and they can’t do anything about it. If someone tries to do something about it, they are either punished or killed by being hanged which is awful. While reading the book, I also started to watch the tv show on Hulu. In season 2 and on June decided that she needed to fight back so she can get her child and go to Canada where her husband resides. Also in the semester, we had to research a project about dystopian. For my research project, I analyzed the episodes of The Twilight Zone. The episode I picked was called Time Enough at Last. This was a great episode to pick apart. While watching this episode, I was taking notes on how this is an example of a dystopia. One of the articles that talk about this specific episode states that “The breaking of his glasses seems too perfect. For it to be an accident. Bemis is doomed to spend the rest of his life surrounded by books he cannot read. In neglecting those around them, preferring to live a life from page to page, Bemis had to learn a valuable lesson. Bemis got exactly what he desired most, time. The end of the world. But it came at a price” In this fictional community, Bemis was the only one that was alive from the nuclear bomb and while all the time in the world to read, it was one thing that happened that messed it up entirely, his glasses. Overall, I enjoyed taking this class because this has made me a great definition of the word dystopia and I learned so much about dystopias and how to analyze them as well.
