A dystopia is a society that contains elements that are in some way undesirable or frightening, the opposite of a utopia These have more cynical or a more realistic view of society that comment on current and future trends. . Dystopias usually contain political or social issues, and are often used to raise awareness of real world issues that could possibly lead to a dystopian-like condition. Most of these types of societies are set in the future. They are often characterized by a controlling government and suppression to the population.
Paris in the 20th Century by Jules Verne is set in the 1960's in Paris, in a society where applied science and technology is prevalent and the state of the arts are absolutely dismissed. Anything that can be considered 'art' is all based around technology. Books were only written about science and technology, and even languages, such as traditional French, were disappearing. Paris had evolved into a technological industry, with the skies polluted, the population growing and the banks and industry ruling the world.
George Orwell's 1984 is set in a work of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system under the control of an elite party that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking. Orwell's novel warns of a future world where the government exerts complete and absolute control over the social life, similar to an extreme view of a complete totalitarian government. 1984 puts out an alarm that sounds against the abusive nature of authoritarian governments, but also for its penetrating analysis of the psychological power and the manipulation of language and history to control the mass population. This novel highlights the psychological, technological, physical and social dangers of totalitarianism and political authority.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is set in yet another world where a totalitarian government controls the populace by ways of science and technology. The individual human is controlled by the way of constant condition, so that the person is more inclined to believe and think a certain way. Every human is created, not born, and are raised to believe in certain ways and to be happy with their way of life. The government uses science as a way to better technology, not to increase scientific exploration and experimentation, and to build technology that can create a seamless, happy, superficial world. This world prioritizes happiness at the expense of the truth; that people are better off being happy rather than knowing the truth.
Each of these three dystopian societies have controlling totalitarian-like governments. Both 1984 and Brave New World depict a dystopian society that emphasize the use of power to control the masses. This power is always situated within a small group of individuals that are above the mass population that uses it to control every aspect of the people’s lives. Their is a severe dictatorship of rigid control that destroys individuality. The people of Paris in the 20th Century have more control over their lives, while still sharing the similarities of technology and science outweighing the populace. There are caste systems in Orwell’s and in Huxley’s novels that each have their own responsibilities and regulations to follow. Signs of nonconformity are immediately punished and the societies are set up so the people will never question the morality or humaneness of the situation.REligion is abolished in all three novels and philosophical thought is destroyed. Paris in the 20th Century, 1984 and Brave New World all have main characters that rebel against the established society but in the end succumb to societies rules and essentially are destroyed as a person.
Each of these novels albeit similar, show a slightly different view of how technology and the government take control. Huxley showed a world where science and technology ruled the world. The characters, for example, were developed in an incubator and mentally conditioned to follow orders. Orwell’s world is a society in which the government and political power played a role towards world domination. Verne has a world where technology has grown so exponentially that the ways of the old world are dying out; the arts are declining as science continues to accelerate. Though different in their sight of the future, one thing is clear about the intentions of the authors. Vern, Orwell and Huxley wrote their novels as a way to warn people about the fast growing pace of science and technology and how much power the government and political parties are growing.
The predictions that Verne, Orwell, and Huxley were all advanced for the time that the novels were written. There were predictions of railroads powered by magnets, hydrogen powered internal combustion engines for horseless carriages, artificial intelligence, two way television, modern birth control, and so much more. At the time of these novels publications, these predictions were little more than just unfathomable technological predictions. But as time moved on, most of these predictions came to pass. Verne predicted the creation of automobiles about twenty years before the modern car was in its most rudimentary form. Verne also showed a rudimentary version of the Internet, that could process and transfer information long distance instantly. Orwell’s predictions were not of the technological way but more in the way of how the government controls the people. This government was a parallel to the USSR, but in an extremist way. Huxley had plenty of technological predictions, and predictions of the inner working of the populace and how society would work. Modern society becomes increasingly smothered by consumerism and instant gratification as Huxley suggested that it would. Huxley was near obsessed with the thought that people were indulging too much in consumerism, and was outraged at mass production, sexual promiscuity, and the impersonalness of the younger generation. Holding true to today, there is a more forward interest in self preservation and getting what someone wants, rather than their needs. Everything is becoming impersonal; there is no family, no monogamy, no attachments. Everything would become trivial and nothing would be special anymore.
There are many different degrees of what a dystopia can look like. There is the extreme of where the people are controlled by the government through complete fear, and there is also the extreme of their being no personalization to the individual. Paris in the 20th Century, 1984 and Brave New World are all examples of how technology and science and government can grow into an extreme form of control, in a worse case scenario. The world today is extremely close to the technology predicted by Verne, the consumerism of Huxley and the sense of fear of the government in certain parts of the world voiced by Orwell.
