Dystopian Literature Assessment Ever wonder what life would be like if you lived in a society under constant surveillance, a place where advance technology was used to control the way you act, or had a caste system created to place you in a certain category or decide your future? Can you imagine what the worst parts of living in a world like that would be? Those are some of the difficulties that the main characters had to overcome in the books Uglies by Scott Westerfeld and The Giver by Lois Lowry. This is a literary analysis about why constant surveillance, advanced technology, and a caste system are the three most dystopian characteristics seen in the novels, Uglies and The Giver. In Uglies and The Giver, the citizens live in a world with constant surveillance. In Uglies the main character, Tally, tries to leave the city and she gets a warning: “Warning, restricted area” (Westerfeld 49). The citizens are always being …show more content…
The people in Uglies are divided among classes, ugly and pretty: “In three months she’d be pretty herself” (Westerfeld 7). You cannot turn pretty until you're 16, and until then you are considered an ugly. In this book there is only one vision of pretty, and it does not stray away from it. Likewise the caste system is in the Giver as well. A person's life is broken up into ceremonies: “I was very impatient, waiting for the Ceremony of Twelve” (Westerfeld 21). The citizens are as well divided among classes. The different ages are not normally mixed nor do they socialize with each other. Once you turn twelve there is a ceremony where you are given a job and you begin to work. The two books are similar, because they both involve age. The characters in both books move up to another level when they are a certain age. The example of a caste system is more dehumanizing in Uglies. They are physically changed when they are 16, but in The Giver they are just given a different life