Government's Role In Dystopian Novels

The great philosopher John Locke stated the following: “Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and reflection must finish him.” In our society many people believe that the government has too much say in the overall society, but in the world of dystopian novels, the government's role in society becomes a much bigger problem. From looking into dystopian novels such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Anthem by Ayn Rand we can see that if a government has too much control over a society it can have drastic negative impacts. From reading and looking into these dystopian novels, it is easy to see that governments may have too much control over their societies. This can be seen by looking at what the essential tasks of government

By looking at the political philosophies of both John Locke and Thomas Hobbes we can see that the governing systems in these novels are illegitimate. Locke states that an illegitimate government fails to protect the rights of its citizens while also having despotic power over its subjects. We continue to see this time and time again throughout our stories. In the novel Anthem the citizens live in fear. “There is fear hanging in the air of the sleeping halls, and in the air of the streets. Fear walks through the City, fear without name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare to speak” (Rand 46). The government attempts to make the society feel as if it is run off of toil and the collectiveness of all men, but everyone knows it is truly run off of fear and tyranny. The society in Brave New World is meant to believe that they have “freedom” and “true happiness”, however, the society is merely held together by the lack of knowledge for the subjects, the foundation of Henry Ford, and the overall abuse of a drug called Soma. “By this time the soam had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles. Even Bernard felt himself a little melted” (Huxley 83). This shows that soma takes away true emotion and replaces it with false hope and forged cheer. The abundant aspects of soma

Within the novel Anthem the main character, Equality 7-2521, has the chance to escape his unfortunate society. He, later joined with Liberty 5-3000, leaves the community and begins to start one anew. He claims that he will “rebuild the achievements of the past” (Rand 100). Although Equality was lucky when it came to escaping from his society to rebuild a new one, others trying to flee their atrocious situations would not be. After entering the “new world” in Brave New World, John discovers that it’s nothing like he thought it would be. The world is full of people “pretending” to be happy and others as uneducated as infants. John soon becomes stuck in this world that he can not stand and takes an unfortunate action. “Through an archway on the further side of the room they could see the bottom of the staircase that led up to the higher floors. Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet” (Huxley 231). John resulted to horrifyingly hanging himself to escape the government and people in the “new world”. This shows how government's having too much control over a society can lead to sometimes lucky and other times deadly