Nobody else in his community is allowed to read books. In these classic dystopian novels, we wonder if the author uses the common theme of banning books to show a change in a community. In Fahrenheit 451 and The Giver, the authors, Ray Bradbury and Lois Lowry, write to show the protagonists want change. They want something to be different. And each time the change is rebellion. Knowledge is the foundation of change, and this causes people to rebel against the rules when they are unfair.…
Feedback by Robison Wells, is the sequel to the fantastic thriller Variant. In this sequel, Benson has finally escaped the deadly gangs and rules of Maxfield Academy. Or so he thought. After having escaped he finds himself in yet another kind of prison. In search of help for his friend Becky; who was hurt in their attempt to escape.…
A popular topic for authors lately seems to be the decline of humanity and morals. Dystopian novels are one of the most popular genres right now. However, authors haven’t just begun to write about violence recently. Many past authors ushered in this generation by using character traits to express themes and morals. An example of this is The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connel. Connel uses character choices and tone in the story The Most Dangerous Game to express a theme of “ignorance leads to violence.”…
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is a science fiction novel about a futuristic community that has lost the ability to socially interact with one another. Guy Montag is the average citizen. His profession is a fireman, except in this society firemen don’t prevent fires, they start them. His job, like many other firemen, is to illuminate books by burning them because books are illegal. Over the course of Fahrenheit 451, Montag realizes society and its faults. Bradbury uses Montag to depict technology and censorship as examples of warning signs, and how that society could one day become ours.…
The Maze Runner By: Aliya Coons Thomas wakes up in an elevator with no memory of his past life other than his name. When the elevator doors open he is greeted by a group of teenage boys in a glade, the boys also have no remembrance of their past life. They all share a strange vocabulary to make them special. Thomas discovers that the Glade is ran by two boys, Alby and Newt, who keep order by enforcing the stern rules and having all the boys busy collecting food.…
The many characters represent some part of the dystopian society in which they live in. Some characters are ignorant drones, some are intelligent cowards, some are troubled, and some want to save to world. And common to any dystopian novel, the world is destroyed in the end in hopes of starting anew. Yet altogether, the controlling message of this famed novel is that although ignorance is bliss, intelligence is, and always will be,…
The Maze Runner is a movie by Wes Ball adapted off a book series of the same name. Every month a child is sent to a place called the Glade with no past memory of anything but their names. A kid named Thomas is sent to the Glades and is more curious than anyone else in the Glade. The movie attempts to try to say it is okay to challenge rules and try new things.…
In today's world, many take the view that the future of society is in a constant downward spiral. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 shares the same views and even tackles many controversies spoken of in today's world. Bradbury’s novel has the ability to impact today’s readers on a whole new level because of just how personal and real such a future seems to be for society today.…
From the times of ancient Greece, to the every life of the average 25 year-old college student, books and other forms of literature have been quite important. People use books and stories to tell of their history, to entertain the masses, to educate the youth; literature is so versatile. In Fahrenheit 451, there are no positive uses of literature. The only books the characters read are smutty pornographic novels, and comic books. True wonderful literature and books of outstanding reputation are nowhere to be found. The people of Fahrenheit 451 don’t want to have to sit down and take the time to read a book, or study the history of the Greek Gods, or simply get a kick out of a comedic play. That takes up too much time in their quick, little lives. These folks just move way too fast; they don’t even slow down enough to notice the simply things. In the world of Bradbury’s novel, “cars started rushing by so quickly they [the government] had to stretch the advertising out so it would last” (pg. 9). Life has become just a blur to these men and women; they just want to get to the “meat and potatoes” of their lives and not dwell on the minor details of every little bit of…
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” (Lee, 39). Authors have the power to show us others point of view, they can put us in their shoes. Literature teaches empathy, gives us a deeper look at things. To Kill a Mockingbird and “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” shows us things very differently than what we initially thought it would was. Things aren’t always what they seem, the truth is mostly being overshadowed by what others want it to be.…
Have you and a friend ever been put in a situation separately at different times in your lives, but you both handled the situation very similarly? Lord of the Flies by Wiliam Golding and The Maze Runner by James Dashner put the characters into very similar situations that were resolved similarly, but the stories also contained several differences. In the novel Lord of the Flies a large group of boys crash landed onto an island with having no way to get off the island during the Second World War. The community that the boys create on the island started off a a civil community that had order, but as time went on the boys grew more and more rebellious to the social standards they created in the beginning since there was no rules keeping them…
From Petronius to Shakespeare to Mark Twain, time honored writers have incorporated satirical elements in their pieces to subtly critique society. Through exaggeration, sarcasm, and irony, satire forms its own complex collection of literature. Branching from this genre, dystopian literature attacks human vices through a different route: the metaphor of a futuristic corrupt society. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron and Disney Pixar’s Wall-E, dystopian societies work to alert the audience of current issues that, if not resolved, could negatively alter the world. While both societies appear farfetched, Wall-E’s prediction of Earth in 2805 is more plausible.…
The word “fantasy” conjures images of free-spirited pixies, magical creatures, new worlds, and ideas of magic that do not exist in the world as we know it. Our association with fantasy lumps it together with escapism, the idea that we can leave our world for a fantastic one. But as literary theorist Rosemary Jackson points out in her work, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, the realm of the fantastic is often a mirror of our own, dealing with the social and political issues that we are faced with today. However, she argues that many works of popular fantasy literature often fail to highlight the social and political issues within them because they provide an ending that does not…
Characters in pieces of literature are often influenced by the societies that they live in, and many authors do this to comment on certain social ideas. The story, “The Bass, the River and Shelia Mant”, the author focuses on how people in society should be able to take pride in who they really are and not feel the pressure to be something they are not. The author of “The Handsomest Drowned Man” wrote this story to show that people tend to make assumptions about people they do not know, based off of their appearance. Another story called “The Pedestrian” also has social commentary, and the author of this story is showing how society gets lazier as technology grows larger and smarter. These authors are providing situations and challenges of society by making social commentary through their literature pieces.…
Canada is known worldwide for our people’s resilience to nature, our acceptance of many different cultures, our universal healthcare, and our contributions to world peace. I believe for these reasons Canada is one of the greatest nations on Earth.…