Dystopian Literature Analysis

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There are many different forms that the regimes of dystopian literature take in order to suppress individuality from suppression by force in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to a kind of silent suppression in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or even just a suppression by the circumstance of nature in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. There are many different ways in which the suppression is manifested and many would argue that it’s not just the obviously controlled that are lacking in individuality. Whilst it is clear that the suppression of individuality does play a part in dystopian fiction, just how far is it integral to it? And how far were the authors led by the…show more content…
From when ‘a curious emotion stirred in Winston’s heart’ to ‘buy[ing] the engraving of St Clement’s Dane’, Winston shows his own uniqueness and personality throughout the novel as opposed to other members of the Outer Party such as Parsons. Julia also shows individuality such as deliberately wearing the scarlet sash ‘just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips’ and it is this individuality that lures Winston and is the main manifestation of her rebellion. Similarly, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred’s inner monologue represents both her individualism and her silent rebellion against the regime of Gilead. In both these novels, the protagonist’s attempt to express some form of individuality is what drives the plot and it does seem to be an emulation of the authors potential desires at the time. Orwell would have probably liked for the oppressed to rise up against the regimes of the USSR and Nazi Germany and and show some individuality whilst Attwood would have been responded to the desire by feminists to rise up and show individuality outside of the roles designed for their gender - Coral Ann Howells says in her book Margaret Atwood, “Offred refuses to be silenced, as she speaks out with the voice of late twentieth-century feminist individualism, resisting the cultural identity imposed on
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