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Dystopian Fiction

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Dystopian Fiction Becomes a Reality:
Education Imposing a Lack of Creativity by Monotonous Memorization
A society’s ability to consistently change laws to better suit its citizens is what shapes the structure of a community and keeps it feeling valued. Unfortunately, dictating rulers immerse their citizens under strict laws, while making no enhancement in their “perfect” society. This oppression is seen in George Orwell’s 1984, where a Party scrutinizes actions of people, while under the rule of a superior entity named Big Brother. And Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil, where Sam Lowry dreams of escaping technology and overpowering bureaucracy, in fight for deliverance. Both texts, although distinct from the current events of our nation, give insight …show more content…

Jiang Xueqin expresses a related idea of Chinese children being stripped of their “dynamic learning environment” (Xueqin 9) by separating “emotion from memory” (Xueqin 9), while negatively educating children to conform to the governments depiction of the truth. The tradition of memorizing “facts in order to excel in tests” (Xueqin 10) affectively creates children who lack emotion. “Solomon Shereshevskii, a Russian journalist” (Xueqin 13) “couldn’t make sense of similes, poems, or even complex sentences”(Xueqin 13) after submitting to memory “a complex formula of thirty letters and numbers” (Xueqin 13) that were “put in a box and sealed for fifteen years” (Xueqin 13. Thus, the effect of repetitive memorization not only overtakes the mind, but directs individuals to losing their ability to comprehend simple language. Chinese schools “quickly [stamp] out” (Xueqin 11) differentiation and emotion as a means of “educating” children. This is a possible result of the government’s fear of individuals actually starting to “think”, consequently doing whatever possible to keep articulateness at a minimum. Monotony of everyday activities is extenuated to where people are being programmed by unawareness, due to the government’s fraudulence, ultimately “producing a nation of Shereshevskiis” (Xueqin

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