Dystopia and Dystopian Literature

On the other end of the spectrum from utopia, there is dystopia. Dystopia is the worst possible life one can imagine. Similarly to utopian lives, the characteristics of dystopia differ from person to person. Also with a dystopia, there are similar ideas to utopia such as equality and fairness. Everyone should have the same amount of everything and the same stuff but in the case of dystopia, the equality tends not to be a good thing. For example, in the universe of Harrison Bergeron, all people have disabling features such as a radio in their ears to make them lose their train of thought if they were of above average intelligence.

            Dystopian stories tend to be based off of a societal issue that is present during the time that the piece is written due to fear that this issue will be exaggerated into harmful ways. For example, a dystopian piece of literature can comment on societal classes, economic dependency, or even lack of true love like “Pairpuppets”.

            In War with the Newts, Čapek uses his dystopian novel about the takeover of the world by newts as a commentary on Nazism, racism, economic dependency, and many more. He uses these criticisms in a subtle manner so that he would not get in trouble with his government for writing in such a critiquing manner of his society but his commentary is still present. For example, he uses the killing of the newts to make a reference to racism in America and the lynching and burning of many African Americans at this time in North America. Another example, is the economic dependency on the newts present in the novel which alludes to the fact that people become dependent on a something that makes a lot of money but they do not think of the long-term consequences of their actions, like newts taking over the world, because they are happy with the short-term, money.

            In conclusion, dystopias are made through the exaggeration or lack of thought on a pressing societal issue in which the issue is taken to such an extreme, that it becomes horrible and practically unfixable. This is what dystopian writers, such as Čapek, use to write their dystopian literature as a way to criticize the times they live in and predict what will happen if these pressing issues are not addressed.