The Handmaid's Tale 'And The Machine Stops'

I believe that Lewis is correct in believing that utopian ideals warp our morality in ways that end in creating catastrophe or dystopia. This theme is evident throughout the books and stories we’ve been reading. Each of the stories had a background in which the dystopia began – they have a reoccurring theme of the creator of the utopia having good intentions for his or her people, but carrying out those intentions in a bad way. The person then potentially becomes obsessed with the idea and it controls him or her. The result is the dystopia either being destroyed or the main character being unable to change it.
The Machine Stops is about a machine that was made by humans who live underground because of the dangerous conditions on the surface.
The Machine gives the people everything they could ever want: the perfect bed, just the right music, and wonderful food. However, there is very little face-to-face interaction since it’s seen as unnecessary; they believe that all they need is a phone-like device to communicate with people next door to them. There is no need for athletes as there is no need to leave one’s room, so babies who show athletic traits are euthanized. There is no physical pain because the Machine kills those who want to die. The only religion is the worship of the Machine. At the end of the story, the Machine is destroyed along with everyone living in it. The moral of the story shows just how reliant humans have become on technology/ how we would essentially die without it, and how we prefer to serve ourselves rather than others.
The Perfect Match is a society where an artificial intelligence program called Tilly essentially runs people’s lives by making suggestions to them on where to go, what to eat, what to listen to and the like. Sai, the main character, is used to doing what Tilly suggests. Then he meets Jenny who compares people to cyborgs with how they let Tilly run their lives. There is no privacy – everything one does is recorded, from music to what one eats, which is why Jenny says that she wants to destroy it. Meeting with Jenny makes Sai realize just how dependent he is on Tilly. They are caught and, during interrogation, are asked what they plan to do should Tilly be destroyed. They are told that Tilly and its algorithms have caught many criminals by way of all search history being sent to the government. In the end, Sai goes back to his house and shuts off Tilly. However, he doesn’t realize that it’s impossible to turn it off. The moral of the story is that a culture like this wants to keep its people safe by having no privacy, along with like minds.
The Handmaid’s Tale is in a fictional world where the reproduction rates were extremely low.
A coup took over the US government and killed all the people in it. Then, the new government instated that all women who weren’t elite were to become handmaids, women who had children for the female elite. These handmaids have no rights: they aren’t allowed to leave the house unless they’re shopping (they must go in pairs), they can’t show emotion, and they must obey every order. Handmaids who are barren are considered non-human and are sent away to hard labor camps. Babies who are born defective are killed. The moral of the story is that the creator of this dystopia wanted to save humans from extinction, but instead enslaved
women.
Fahrenheit 451 rests in a dystopia when books are burned because they are controversial. The people who destroy the books are known as “firemen”, people who burn books and the homes they’re in. The real meaning of firemen had been lost. The firemen wanted to destroy controversy by trying to destroy the source, but it’s impossible to get rid of controversy as that is a controversy. The main character is a fireman who believes he’s happy by destroying the books, but as time goes on he begins to wonder what his true purpose and true happiness are. He begins to question his role when he meets Clarice, who looks him in the eye when talking to him and who seems happy – unlike people he knew. After she died from a “car accident” he realized that human life in his culture means nothing and that knowledge is the way to happiness. He also realizes that he has been stealing books from homes he had burned. He is deemed as a traitor and his house is burned down; luckily for him, he hid some of the books outside his house. He is chased, but is never caught. He ends up joining a group of outcasts who have memorized books. There he learns that human life means nothing and that his society is destroying itself. The moral of the story is that it matters not what one does to make people as alike as possible because everyone has their own opinions and individual characteristics.

Left Hand of Darkness is a dystopia that takes place on a planet Gethen. The world is, in the most basic terms, a giant glacier. Its denizens are androgynous, neither male nor female, that can change genders during a time called kemmer. Genly Ai is a human from a different world –the Gethenians call him an alien because of this – who is tasked with convincing them to ally with the Ekuman, his kind. At one point, he is deemed a traitor and meets Estraven, former Prime Minister of the city Karhide before being deemed a traitor. The two meet and attempt to escape to Hordon Island. Near the end of their journey, Estraven gets himself killed for Ai’s sake so that he could live. Ai returns to his home planet with a new appreciation of both genders. The moral of the story is to not judge a person by their gender and to treat people respectfully and kindly.

Station 11 is set in a post-apocalyptic future.
The main characters’ stories are connected at a Shakespeare play, King Lear, when one of the characters dies from a stroke. From there, a deadly flu ravages the world, killing much of the world’s population. Twenty years later, a main character named Kirsten is with a travelling group of performers called the Travelling Symphony. This group performed many plays and musical pieces in the small towns that still existed. Their motto is “…because survival is insufficient” because they believe that art is the one thing that can make people happy. The moral of the story is that there are many ways one can find one’s meaning. These can exist amidst corruption, anarchy and a lack of outward comfort. The first underlying message is that everything happens for a reason. The second is to keep hope alive even in the darkest of times. The third is, in a way, that only those with the strongest will can survive. The final one is that one can find comfort in hard times while adapting to the harsh
conditions.
Every dystopia is based on a utopia ideal that was executed incorrectly, whether it is to raise a population or keep people safe from destruction. After a time, the utopia slowly becomes a dystopia by way of corruption or a warping of morality – a “perfect world.” This happens through the subtle brainwashing of the people living in said “utopia” and their unwillingness to give into the truth of the corrupt culture.