Dystopia In The Giver

In 1949 George Orwell wrote “1984” to epitomize the haunting life under a Dystopia created and maintained by a totalitarian regime. The novel used themes from life in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as well as wartime in his own country of the United Kingdom. Orwell believed that democracy as it existed before 1939 would not survive the war and would be replaced by Fascist coup d’état or, and more likely, a socialist revolution with Stalinist overtones – admitting later that events had proved him wrong. In 1993, Lois Lowry wrote “The Giver” to expose the fallacy of a Utopian society where inhabitants, although well fed, healthy and seemingly happy, lack the basic freedoms and pleasures that our own society values. The novel was written

Yet, a close analysis of “1984” and “the Giver” gives a clear indication that although the motives that created and maintained both types of society and the level of cruelty adopted to sustain control over them may diverge, there is sameness in the end product - a society that lacks true diversity, individual identity, emotion, a reliable history to learn and develop from, vision and most importantly hope. This paradox between Utopia and Dystopia was best described by J. S. Mill in one of his Parliamentary Speeches 1868 (Hansard Commons) to denounce the government 's Irish land policy: "It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, or caco-topians. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable” – in short, sameness in

However, he is not the only author whose novels explore the chances of a futuristic, extreme society. The struggles against a totalitarian government is predictable a recurrent theme in dystopian literature, Louis Lowry’s The Giver being no exception, and therefore it relates greatly to the themes discussed in Orwell’s 1984. The