Utopian and Dystopian Fiction

What is Utopia? According to The Random House Dictionary, utopia is a place or state of political or social perfection based upon the novel of Utopia by Thomas More. Philosophers, writers of all sorts of novels and movies are constantly trying to imagine and conceive plans for an idyllic state of today. The irony of utopia is that it means ‘no place, good place’ implying that utopia is an idealistic place that can never happen in reality. Then, what is dystopia? Thefreedictionary.com’s definition for dystopia is an imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad. But when all the writers think about their utopian places, just as many dystopian elements will come about as a “perfect” society just cannot happen. Thomas More wrote a book, Utopia in the 1500’s, in the time of Renaissance and Humanism, where he could express his views on society being governed by King Henry VIII. George Orwell also wrote a book Nineteen Eighty-Four or more commonly known as 1984, in the 1950’s, a time after WWII where it had devastating effects on the world. It also brought to the rise of dictators such as Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin who all had different totalitarian regimes but political differences. A movie was also created in 2005 directed by Michael Bay, The Island, which is set in the near distant future to warn us about the future of human society and loss of individual expression in conformist societies. These three texts have been written to express the authors view on a utopian world, all which have significance to the society it was planned for. These texts make us to question what a real utopia would look like and how everyone would work in it but it will criticise the current society. However, it also presents hope for the future and how we may better serve one another in this world.

Firstly, we see that uniformity and conformity is evident in all three texts as the main characters are not presented with anything different than to what is