AP Seminar
19th April 2023
Resilience in Dystopian Societies
Resilience to many people is the ability of one or a community to either adapt, fight back, or recover from terrible situations. A great modern example of this would be the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, in Guitele J. Rahill's paper, he states that the Haitians were faced with all of these horrible situations but their resilience to fight these disadvantages and hardships got them through it. This leads to dystopian societies, many people dictate authoritarian and totalitarian societies are some of the worst living situations that have ever existed. Even in fictional depictions of dystopian societies like 1984, these dystopian societies are illustrated as places that have little to no free
…show more content…
Big Brother was an example of a totalitarian government in 1984, their main goal was to implement fear into its citizens to keep their power and their ideas in check. “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” (Orwell Part 1 Chapter 3). The Government’s aggressive pushing of the force of media and extensive rules cause people to hate these ideas due to the heavy suppression like the main character Winston does, they then start to test the power of Big Brother and that is what leads to the form of resilience in where they are fighting the power that is bigger than yourself to change your and everyone else's life for the better. Just like the example of The Third Reich, the government’s suppression of their people doesn't just affect them physically but as well as mentally, the suppression of the Big Brother government, also leads to a constant struggle in the form of inner conflicts just like the Soviet Children during World War 2. George Orwell’s illustration of a dystopian society shows that when the government believes they are doing the right thing by suppressing ideas and forcing its own, the people fighting inner conflicts, and others who want to test the ideas of the government eventually will try to fight …show more content…
"How Dreams Change under Authoritarianism." The New Yorker, 7 Nov. 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/how-dreams-change-under-authoritarianism.
Kirschenbaum, Lisa. "The Meaning of Resilience: Soviet Children in World War II." The Meaning of Resilience: Soviet Children in World War II, Lisa Kirschenbaum, 2017, https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=hist_facpub.
Lee, John. "Understanding Authoritarian Resilience and Countering Autocracy Promotion in Asia." Asia Policy, vol. 13, no. 4, 2018, pp. 99-122. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26533132. Accessed 18 Mar. 2023.
Magazine, Catharsis. "Dreaming of Freedom in a Totalitarian Rule." Catharsis, 31 Jan. 2021, https://www.catharsismagazine.com/post/dreaming-of-freedom-in-a-totalitarian-rule.
"Nazi Propaganda and Censorship." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 15 Jan. 2021, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-propaganda-and-censorship.
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Germany, public, 2021.
Rahill, Guitele J., et al. "In Their Own Words: Resilience among Haitian Survivors of the 2010 Earthquake." Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, Johns Hopkins University Press, 13 May 2016,