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ACTIVITIES:

A) Find out what is understood by utopia and dystopia and take to class examples of
utopian and dystopian texts and movies.

The word utopia comes from the Greek word “ou”, meaning “no”, and “topos”, meaning “place”. Since its
original conception, utopia has come to mean a place that we can only dream about, a true paradise.

Dystopia, which is the direct opposite of utopia, is a term used to describe a utopian society in which things
have gone wrong. Both utopias and dystopias share characteristics of science fiction and fantasy. Williams
distinguishes 4 types of utopian and its dystopian counterpart:

 The paradise, in which a happier life is described as simply existing elsewhere.

 The externally altered world, in which a new kind of life has been made possible by an unlooked-for
natural event.

 The willed transformation, in which a new kind of life has been achieved by human effort.

 The technological transformation, in which a new kind of life has been made possible by a technical
discovery.

A piece of writing that concerns itself with the description of a perfect society in the physical world as
opposed to the perfection of afterlife is termed as Utopian Literature. However, the original motives behind
utopian novel were political, social and philosophical. Utopian novels share some common characteristics,
these includes an elaborate description of the geography structures of the imaginary landscape by the native
guides that familiarize the narrator to the ways through the region. He is an outsider to the utopian society,
and harbors extensive skepticism regarding modern political, social, economic, or ethical problems. One of
the common misunderstandings is that utopian models serve to project a better way of life. To the contrary,
the reason behind such literature is to help the reader envision the problems, paradoxes, or faults entrenched
within the existing political framework.

B) Why did dystopian literature become popular in the 20 th century?

Dystopian literature become particularly popular after WWII when writers had the necessity of showing the
injustices of the government and reflect worries over the rising power of fascism and communism and the
effects of industry and technology. There was a great disillusionment due to the war in those times. For this
reason there is nostalgia for an always-better past time.

The rising of popularity of dystopian literature among adolescent audiences is prominent in today’s pop
culture due to its relevance in young adults’ lives, its direct comparisons to current events in today’s world
and its originality in relation to other genres.
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C) How would you define a dystopian novel or movie?

Dystopian writings are not necessarily predictions of apocalyptic futures, but rather warnings about the ways
in which societies can set themselves on the path to destruction.

A very good example of a dystopian movie is the famous “The Hunger Games” trilogy: The Hunger Games is
a 2008 dystopian novel by the American writer Suzanne Collins. It is written in the voice of 16-year-old Katniss
Everdeen, who lives in the future, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem in North America. The Capitol, a highly
advanced metropolis, exercises political control over the rest of the nation. The Hunger Games is an annual
event in which one boy and one girl aged 12–18 from each of the twelve districts surrounding the Capitol are
selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle to the death. The novel is the first in The Hunger Games
trilogy, followed by Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2010). From my experience, visual resources are
extremely helpful in the classroom, as I am a visual learner.
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LITERARY READING:
A) How do the two novels you read relate to Williams’ considerations?

In my opinion, George Orwell’s novel 1984 can be categorized as a dystopian technological transformation,
because he describes a society controlled by the government through monitors in every room of every house
and therefore people were being watched every second of their life, new technologies have made a new
lifestyle. In addition, Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a combination of the externally altered
world, and the willed transformation. In this dystopian novel, a Christian fundamentalist regime, called the
Republic of Gilead, has staged a military coup and established a theocratic government in the US. The regime
theoretically restricts everyone, but in practice a few men have structured Gilead so they have all the power,
especially over women. “The Handmaid’s Tale” was published in 1985, when many conservative groups
attacked the gains made by the second-wave feminist movement. This movement had been advocating
greater social and legal equality for women since the early 1960’s. The novel imagines a future in which the
conservative counter-movement gains the upper hand and not only demolishes the progress women had
made towards equality, but makes women completely subservient to men.

Gilead divides women in the regime into distinct social classes based upon their function as status symbols
for men. Even their clothing is color-coded. Women are no longer allowed to read or move around freely in
public, and fertile women are subject to state-engineered rape in order to give birth to children for the
regime.

B) C) What literary values can you find in those novels? Would you recommend them to
any reader? What fears do they express? Do the authors say something you can relate
to our times?

I strongly recommend reading 1984, which is based in a possible future with the enormous technological
advances nowadays. I believe that with the reading of this novel I became aware of how important our voices
are in a society, how one individual can change (or at least try to) a whole system imposed by authorities and
make them feel their weaknesses and flaws. Just think about every individual with the courage of the lovers
in the novel, if they gather, they can change their reality, they can rebel and make a difference, but this is
impossible if we do not communicate with each other, if we don’t express our ideas and beliefs. We already
have a voice, we just have to use it and make noise.

Added to this, I also recommend reading Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” because it is not just the story of
a dystopian future, it is also an abstract, symbolic way of referring to the present. When Atwood decided to
write her novel, she self-imposed the rule that she would not use any event or practice that had not already
happened in human history. This decision makes the story even more catching by using events that are factual
around the world and invite the readers to think and mull over such practices. Moreover, Atwood’s
employment of the language made the story even more personal as is told through the eyes of the main
character, Offred. Along the story, one can perceive how Offred experiment a waterfall of emotions, which
are transferred to the reader.

Personally, some events in the story made me feel extremely impotent, since they are so horrible that one
can only imagine such brutality. Moreover, the novel made me realize how broad the gap between male and
female power within society and helped me to start taking into account how women along the history have
struggled to get social, legal, economic, etc. equality.
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D) What do the dystopian movies and texts you know about share with the texts we are
reading this year? Do you think they are good resources for the EFL classroom?

All of them show the possible results that the current way in which society is developing can cause. I definitely
think they are good resources for the EFL classroom as a powerful way of making students reflect on current
practices that are happening around the world. Even though not all the students may be interested in them,
if we happen to catch at least one student’s interested, then a change can be made, or at least a change in
that particular student can be made thought their personal further actions.

E) Do those novel lend themselves to a Neo-Marxist/Cultural Studies/Historicist approach?

Why/why not?

In my opinion, both novels “1984” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” lend themselves to a New Historicism
approach because in order to understand why Orwell and Atwood’s composed novels politically charged, we
have first to understand, interiorize the political, cultural and social context in which they were living in. This
school (Neo Historicism) was “influenced by structuralist and post-structuralist theories and seeks to
reconnect a work with the time period in which it was produced and identify it with the cultural and political
movements of the time” (New Historicism, Cultural Studies (1980s-present) online writing lab Purdue).
Having said that, now we have to take a look into the context in which those novels were written.

On the one hand, George Orwell’s hatred of totalitarianism and political authority was inspired by the rise to
power of dictators such as Adolf Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and therefore he
began to write first “Animal Farm” 1945 and then “1984” in 1949.

On the other hand, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a city that during the
American colonial period had been ruled by the theocratic Puritans. In many ways, the republic of Gilead
resembles the strict rules that were present in puritan society. Puritans believed that the devil walked in their
midst, and witches were believed to consort with evil and dark magic. The trials and execution of these so-
call witches were believed to root out evil and protect the piety of the community. Margaret Atwood learned
she may be a descendant of Mary Webster who is known for having been accused, tried, and hanged for
witchcraft in 1689, (although she survived!), several years before the infamous Salem Witch Trials. Atwood
dedicated her novel to Mary Webster, as well as to Perry Miller, a scholar of American Puritanism who was
Atwood's mentor at Harvard. Atwood’s decision to set her narrative in Cambridge was a conscious one.
Though today the public knows Harvard as a center for liberal education and civic engagement, its roots are
as a Puritan theological seminary—the religious inspiration at the core of Gilead’s ideology.
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