Preview

Dystopia vs Utopia ( a Clockwork Orange vs. Player Piano

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2027 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Dystopia vs Utopia ( a Clockwork Orange vs. Player Piano
Utopia can be defined as a place immune from inhumane treatment and absent of the hardships of society , where the population is blindfolded from fear, anxiety, and general negative aspects of human nature. A utopia can be generalized as that perfect society. This is one type of a drastic society. There is another, more appalling type of society, that of a dystopia. A Dystopia is nor a fairyland or the promised-land like the utopia is, it looks at the chaos, anarchy, rebellion and disorder of a society. As we compare these two opposite society types, there are two books that are the poster child of utopia and dystopia. Those two books are Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano", and Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange". In Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano" we follow the hero Paul Protues through his utopian society. Where in his society they have just recovered from a ten year war and now has been built up and ran completely by machines. Furthermore a super computer always controls the populations actions, it acts as a shepherd leading the sheep.
However where there are sheep there is always a ever lurking black sheep, Paul is that of a black sheep. Through his journey in this utopian society we follow his rebellion against the super computer and machines. As Paul progresses in his society it becomes less and less of a utopia on more and more of a force fed, totally governed society where there is little freewill. As we follow his expedition we can see the changing society from a utopia to what Paul perceives as a dystopia. In Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" we observe the antagonist Alex in his blatant dystopia society. Where in his society they have high criminal activity and few police.
We follow Alex and his "droogs" as they acts like Vikings, raping, pillaging, and burning. Alex has no respect for law and order he rebels in part one of the novel . However Alex is eventually caught by the police and put in jail. In jail he is

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    | Paul has lost so much throughout the war, and his generation of people has decresed infinitly. They are losing man after man, and those who aren’t lost will not come back. He has suffered so much loss he has become used to it. The men who have been fighting and survived, have still lost their lives. They were so young coming into the war that they couldn’t get their lives started, and now it is too late to begin. It will be hard for them to adapt to life after war, this is all they have ever known.…

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the book Paul is always having to deal with his violent older brother and his friend Arthur Bauer and Paul never tells anyone what he is seeing his brother do. There is one external force that helps convince Paul to finally tell someone. Towards the end of the book Antoine Thomas said to Paul, “The truth shall set you free.” This quote is important to the book because this is when Paul is convinced to tell the truth about the real Erik Fisher. This is what I think is one of the most important quotes to the resolution of the…

    • 824 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Which causes them to write different literature than before as they all write of gloomy and horrific events instead of stories with good endings. As well the soldiers who survived the war started painting in the gloomy days in war and how it still horrifies them. This was all different from men in the war and men who did not serve in the military as Paul stated “Whom I envy and Despise”. Paul has stated how he is disconnected and wishes to be like all of them and did not go into war due to them being able to live normal lives as he is not able to due to have served in the…

    • 1034 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    the love and care he unknowingly needs. Paul takes on roles that disguise his own traits and turns him into what he believes to be a person nobody can say no to. When he takes on these roles, he embraces it with a passion, his life is insignificant, what matters is the…

    • 1247 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Paul’s thoughts on his youth are “And even if these scenes of our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do.” An immense amount of Paul and other soldiers’ youth was taken away from them too soon, even if these scenes of youth were given back to them they could not regain the old intimacy with these scenes. This quote also shows Paul’s loss of innocence. Paul has become wiser during the war, but this wisdom is leaving him with no hope in his future. Paul also says that if the scenes of their youth were given back to them “...it would be like gazing at a photograph of a dead comrade…” This quote shows how much Paul misses his youth but there is no way for him to connect with it. Youth and innocence is nowhere to be found for Paul and other…

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Paul learns the briefness of life in retrospect of all other things. He sees his closest comrades and best friends die beside him, leaving him with a feeling of urgency to live a life worth living, as it could end at any minute. Simply stated by Paul, “Life is short” (139). Paul and his living comrades aspire to, “make ourselves as comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted” (139). Paul realizes that every minute lived is one minute closer to his inevitable death, whether it be from fighting or disease or natural causes, as James Dean declared, “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”…

    • 2220 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Paul has nothing left. His friends are dead. His mother is sick, and he is on the brink of…

    • 2449 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Utopias are the quest for someone’s perfect society. Usually only one person is happy in a utopia everyone else suffers. Utopias are bad In many utopia there is only one person that does not have it hard. In the story Harrison Bergeron.…

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout this story it is apparent Paul does not wish to slowly progress into perfection instead, Paul wants to experience instant gratification and while doing so Paul wants to move his way to the top and remain at the top. One down fall for Paul is that his method of personal achievement is attempted by being deceitful, telling lies to everyone that surrounds him including his teachers, his elders, and his father. Paul had the struggle of being successful yet, because of his hast, Paul was about to fail. In doing so, “he stood watching the approaching locomotive, his teeth chattering, his lips drawn away from them in a frightened smile; once or twice he glanced nervously sidewise, as though he were being watched.” (65). Paul appeared to think this was a time when he would be remember, that he would finally achieve what he was looking for, stardom, people would remember him and Paul ended his own life.…

    • 1124 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A utopia is a perfect society. One in which everything works according to plan, and everything is how it is imagined it should be. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and George Orwell’s 1984, utopian societies are built upon varying terms. Each society, while proclaimed to be perfect, has it’s inevitable flaws. The main characters in these novels, Winston and John, deal with the flaws in both similar and opposite ways. They are created to highlight the ways these utopian societies fall into dystopia, when looked at through an analytical lens. Winston and John have similar traits, as well as different traits, and their characters eventually find their way to almost identical…

    • 113 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    absence of love. In a world of bottled-births, not only is there no need for a…

    • 1192 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    me in the yarbles and the [mouth] and the belly and dealing out kicks...I [was]…

    • 972 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    CRMJ 505 Paper 1

    • 279 Words
    • 1 Page

    Utopia is an ideal to make perfect humans with in vitro fertilization. This type of fertilization is good if you can’t have children on your own but not for a perfect being. This is a very prejudice way of thinking if you carry this out on embryos it will hurt those who can’t afford such luxuries to become a part of this Utopia. If you use eugenics this is a plan that will alter embryos in the early stages. I think it’s inhumane to want a utopia because it’s not for anyone to change what considered normal there is no supreme human being.…

    • 279 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Utopia vs Dystopia

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages

    A utopia is an imagined place or state of being in which everything is perfect. Opposite to that is a dystopia which is an imagined place or state of being in which everything is unplesant. The first time that a utopia was invented was in 1516 in the book Utopia by Sir Thomas Moore. Two present day examples would be an Omish Community, because of the set rules that everyone must follow to make the society perfect, and Heaven, which is the definition of perfection. Depending on what your opinion is, in my opinion most dystopias began as utopias, but something goes wrong or someone beats the government at its on game and it instantly becomes the other. For example, you have Panem in The Hunger Games, a typical utopian society until Katniss comes in and defies all they created. In the book Divergent there are five different factions of life, you are born into them but when you reach a certain age you can change factions but you have to leave everything you have ever known behind, and that is when the society turns dystopian. Finally, the Society in Matched the citizens live in separate burroughs and are very limited on what they are allowed to know.…

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Dystopian Visions

    • 1006 Words
    • 5 Pages

    An imaginative society consisting of oppressive squalor in which all are heavily restricted by the absolute superiority of the ruling party. A society where repression and restrictions seem boundless, while the individual liberty of the citizen seems boundlessly obstructed. A society where mental deprivation and deception is the goal of the guardian; a society where misery and poverty are thrust upon the unsuspectingly loyal citizens; a society where the well- being of the people are of imperceptible acknowledgement, yet its inhabitants have been manipulated into perceiving such as utopian. Contrary to their deceit induced perceptions, these characteristics are quite the opposite of utopian, they are dystopian! Many authors…

    • 1006 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays