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Comparing Dystopia In Harrison Bergeron And The Lottery

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Dystopia is a made up futuristic society that is unpleasant to most citizens living there. The society can be a place where rulers dehumanize the citizens living there. A dystopia can be a place that is filled with disaster or it can be a place where everything is in such proper order that it becomes too perfect. A utopia is a picture perfect place. A utopia can become a dystopia in the blink of an eye. It will look like everything is perfect, but then rulers become overpowering. In many dystopian societies, at first it seems normal and then the audience sees what is happening. When citizens have been raised or have been brainwashed to only know what is happening in their society they think everything is normal. In the short dystopian society, …show more content…

Some examples of this is in Harrison Bergeron and in the short film called The Lottery. One major characteristic of a dystopian society are through different types of control that a government takes. This could be making the people of a ruled locations lives miserable. They could take away basic human rights that all people rightfully deserve. Another major characteristic of dystopias is people losing their individuality. They do this is many ways. In the film Harrison Bergeron people are treated equally. This happens in a way by placing handicaps on them, for the strong they put on weight, if they were too beautiful they had to put a mask on them. Protagonists of dystopian societies, like Harrison Bergeron and The Lottery live miserable lives. While everyone but the protagonists think they are living in a perfect …show more content…

In Harrison Bergeron, George Bergeron believes that by following all of the rule given to them everyone can live peacefully in a utopian society. The old man in The Lottery explained that town stuck with tradition. He did not want to think otherwise of the tradition he grew up with. He thought it was all normal. The characters who are antagonists think exactly how the dystopian rulers want them to think. The characters do not think for themselves. In the way that the government was portraying their controls, they made it seem like a utopia. Only the antagonists understood the dystopia that they were living

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Dystopia is defined as an imaginary place or state in which every single thing in society is based around human oppression. In both “The Pedestrian” and “Harrison Bergeron”, people are given a handicap or are disabled in society one way or another. This form of dystopia is one of the most literal forms because humans and society are actually being oppressed from a higher level of power. American society is nothing like that of a dystopian society. Yeah, people will argue about how much the government does to us, how much they’ve ruined our economy, and all sorts of other negative perspectives.

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A dystopian film is a genre that can be described as a dark vision of the future. A dystopian film is normally set in the future. Dystopian films have dystopian worlds. Dystopian worlds are shown as worst case scenarios worlds, like for example the city was very overpopulated and polluted. These are the complete opposite of a Utopian world.

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Individuals are the building blocks of society, but they can’t dictate the way society flows. In the short stories “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson and “Harrison Bergeron,” by Kurt Vonnegut, and the theories of enlightenment philosophers, individuals can not change society. Tessie Hutchinson from “The Lottery,” tried to persuade her village that the tradition was wrong, but she faced death. While, Harrison from “Harrison Bergeron,” tried to overthrow society's ideas, through atrocious actions. The philosophers believed that the governors of society should be responsive and secure rights for the people.

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Harrison Bergeron and The Lottery both have a sort of calm tone throughout the stories. The Lottery starts off with a warm, welcoming tone, then evolves to a more detached The serious tone of the stories lead you away from thinking that the two societies are anything but normal. While each story ends jarringly the tones are oddly deadpan; both of the stories end with the characters brushing off the death of a loved one. A cold, chilling, or creepy tone would have taken away from the surprise ending.

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There are many reasons on why the story of Harrison Bergeron is a dystopian story. One main reason is because the way the government is ran meaning it is a bureaucratic control type government. What this means is it is controlled by mindless bureaucracy through relentless regulations and government officials. This is shown in the part of the story where Harrison was shot mid air by a government official or known as Handicap General. Another way bureaucratic control can be seen is that no one has any free will.

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However in the stories “The lottery” by Shirley Jackson, and “Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. Therefore we see how structure and tradition can result to a dystopia. The cause and the effect that is similar in both of the stories is both “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut is both of these stories demonstrate how people force them self in a tradition that they have been told to follow even if they have an option to seek for change The first story I will be focusing on is, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut. In this story that being equal to one another is not always the best way to live, everyone is different for a reason.

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The world could be a definition of a utopia or a dystopia, though our world tends to be leaning towards a dystopia. This world we live in is filled with depression, hate, and even pain because all the conflicts and deaths that is happening all around the world. A point in history that is a clear example of a dystopian society was the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, shows a normal child during the Holocaust being put through camps after camps as a result of being Jewish. He was forced to grow up fast; having to take care of his father, encountering millions of deaths, and tortured by the S.S. Guards, living a life like no child should.

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He is tall, handsome, and intelligent. He refuses to accept the government’s laws and breaks free from his handicaps. He declares himself emperor and dances with a ballerina, who also has unique talents that have been suppressed. The government eventually kills Harrison, but not before he has made a powerful statement about the importance of individuality. Harrison Bergeron is a character who represents the importance of individuality and the dangers of conformity.

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‘Positive characters … usually prove miserably ineffectual when contending with ruthless overwhelming powers’ claims Amin Malak, noting on such protagonists as Winston Smith and Offred in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and, when looking at the dystopian genre as a whole, he certainly seems to be correct. Dystopian fiction does seem to portray the worse side of human nature than the better, leaving the positive traits to the struggling protagonists. While utopian writers seemed to think that the essence of human nature was to do good, dystopian writers seem to think very differently and it is from this notion that these novels seem to be written. Nineteen Eighty-Four certainly seems to do this, with almost every member of the society representing one or more negative aspects of humanity.

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It is looking at all the aspects in our world both negative and positive and really emphasizing them. In dystopian you can find hidden meaning and themes while realistic fiction is more one sided. Dystopian and realistic fiction have more differences than similarities because they are set in different times, in Dystopian the conflict is more dangerous and life

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But in a dystopia, these things are taken away from the people. When comparing the dystopia to our life, it shows that freedom and being in control of your own life is what separates a dystopia from a utopia. Another example of a dystopian government controlling the people is during the tests that everyone has to take to determine their faction, the people are not allowed to share their results, even if they are positive. Tris isn 't even allowed to share with her

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In The giver, by Lois Lowry the community is a dystopia. A dystopia is a place that is distinguished by perfection. There are imperfecting throughout the community. The community is a dystopia because of sameness they have complete control of the environment and complete control of the people.

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Lack of individuality, impossibility to express yourself. That is very similar to the dystopia in the short story of Kurt Vonnegut “Harrison Bergeron”. World where no one is better, but everyone is worse cannot be called utopia. Maybe suppressing everyone’s feelings will do the trick, thus no one will try to be different. Same idea was applied in the novel written by the Lois Lowry “The Giver”.

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What is the difference between a dystopian society to our society? How about the similarities between the two societies? There are definitely many discernible unorthodoxness in a dystopian society versus the “real world” like the fact, that a dystopian society is more grotesque, to the point that it’s boring. On the other hand, there are plenty enough similarities like, how both societies strive for better, a utopia. In other words, dystopia compared to society, more specifically dystopian society, education systems, rules/laws, and family between our society’s education systems, rules/laws, and family, is substantially different, but there are some associations that could be made.

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Dystopian Survival in James Dashner’s “The Maze runner” Abstract In the novel “The Maze Runner” James Dashner portrays the artificial society in the middle of flare. Dystopia is a representation of imperfect society and survival is one of the emerging themes in dystopian literature. Every human learned to survive in their certain society and made the pathways to their future.

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