Dystopian Imagination in Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Literature as a whole grows and changes from generation to generation. Each age has its own particular point of interest and its own particular way of thinking and feeling about things. So the literature which it produces is governed by certain prevailing tastes. Modern age is a complex age and the changing attitude of this period has influenced thought and literature of this period too. Of all forms of literature, fiction dominated the twentieth century as it reflected the currents and forces that were shaping and moulding society. The twentieth century with its complexities of Communism, Capitalism, Democracy and various other political doctrines, changing pattern of women’s position in society and dominance of science and scientific research caused a new kind of imaginative writing in the form of ‘dystopian fiction’ that blended modernism and social realism in one form. Dystopian fiction records the contemporary social trends and projects them into imaginative reality, while stretching them to extremes to forewarn that taking anything beyond its limits can have drastic consequences. Dystopian fiction attempts social criticism as it has opened new ways of seeing and feeling about things.
Although dystopian fiction lacks basic essentials of novel writing such as characterisation, psychological realism and suspense, it is still quite powerful and popular means of presenting a vision of distorted tomorrow that results from present itself.The major feature of anti-utopian fiction is that it revolves around conflict, which results from certain weakness or inefficiency in the society or system it depicts.Thus the dystopian fiction often revolves around dramatic conflict between society which is very often a totalitarian society and a protagonist, who is a non- conformist.
In The Handmaid 's Tale it is the conflict between Gilead and Offred who believes that something is terribly wrong with this society. The conflict here is internal one as she manipulates the

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