Dystopia is Disturbing

The other day I was scanning through Twitter and I ran across a recent academic conference on the novel. (Shut up. I know.) There was an entire section dedicated to the dystopian novel of the twenty-first century, and one of the panelists had either written something or was presenting something called “Dystopias are Disgusting.” 

Since I was not actually at this conference on the novel (because I am a lowly MA graduate, affiliated with no university, invited to no conferences, sitting around my parent’s house and watching way too much reality television) I can’t speak to the panelist’s presentation. What I do know is that her title—“Dystopias are Disgusting”—stuck in my mind for more reasons than the alliteration. However, I didn’t really think too deeply about it until Sarah told me about meeting Station 11 author Emily St. John Mandel. 

Station 11 was one of my favorite books of last year. It is astounding, and beautiful, and sparks all sorts of questions in the mind of the reader (spawning one of my favorite articles, about how women’s dystopia differs from men’s dystopia. That, however, is another dissertation). And its writer is just as quirky and memorable and thoughtful. 

Sarah went to see Emily St. John Mandel speak in Royal Oak a week ago, and she told me about it later. She talked about the writing process, and how Mandel really wanted to write a story about an acting troupe, but that element was, on its own, boring. So she added in a horrific plague that devastates humanity and leaves only a handful of survivors. However, the characters spend a lot of their time looking back, remembering, missing the past. (This is why many critics have started compiling lists of what occurs in men’s versus women’s dystopian fiction; this nostalgia is considered feminine as it is lacking in male dominated dystopia.) 

The point of Station 11, then, is to be a love letter to modern society. To take time to be grateful for electricity, and credit cards, and modern medicine, and the fact that any one of us can get on a plane and fly to Australia tomorrow. 

That was when I realized something fascinating about dystopia.

If you look at three of the most seminal dystopias—Orwell’s 1984 , Huxley’s Brave New World, and Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale—both end horrifically. In 1984, Winston and Julia do not end up together; they actually betray each other and reveal that the world they live in is one where love will never succeed. The only love that exists is the love for Big Brother, to whom Winston happily returns at the end of the novel. In Brave New World John accidentally joins in on the bacchanalian festivities and, filled with regret, hangs himself the next day. Neither of these are positive takes; Orwell and Huxley both believe that humanity is headed towards a fall, and that humanity will not survive the crisis. Atwood’s book is, of course, a little different. Her narrator makes it out of her horrific situation, but because the author is Margaret Atwood, a note at the end pokes fun of academia and tells the reader that despite the handmaid’s chilling explanation of how misogyny and war destroyed the planet, no one has learned a thing—academics are too busy trying to prove or disprove the veracity of the handmaid’s tale than they are with learning from it. 

Modern dystopias seem to be more positive than these classics—at least, the ones I find in the YA section seem to be—but at second glance, I am not sure if this is so. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, ends with the districts winning back their independence, but in doing so two dictators must be brutally murdered, and many of Katniss’ friends are killed, including Katniss’ sister, Prim. The death of Prim is especially troubling, as Katniss’ revolution stems entirely from her decision to save her only sister’s life by volunteering to take her place at the Reaping. In participating in the Hunger Games, Katniss is able to liberate the districts, but her initial reason for volunteering—love of a sister—fails; Katniss is unable to protect her sister. In fact, Katniss watches her sister die just as she would have if she had not volunteered at the Reaping and had let Prim participate in the Hunger Games. As the novel ends, Katniss shows she is still conflicted about her role in the revolution, as she has chosen to marry Peeta, who played no political role in the novel, rather than Gale, who was active in political intrigue. Katniss grudgingly gives birth to children who, Katniss notes, play in graveyards. Even though the districts no longer sacrifice their children to play in sadistic games, the death toll has been high and Katniss will always suffer from PTSD; she has perhaps suffered more in overthrowing the Capitol than she would have if she had stayed in her place.

Another popular dystopia, Lauren Oliver’s Delirium trilogy, also seems at first glance to end positively, but underneath the surface it is not so. Delirium is about a future where America has found a cure for love, and at a certain age all citizens must be “cured” of romantic feelings. Lena, our main character, ends up breaking away from this mindset and joining an underground rebellion. Lena is able to marry the man she loves, but in order to do so there is a bloody revolution and many lives are lost. Like The Hunger Games, Delirium features a gruesome war in which a small minority overthrows the dominating power structure, and the novels end on a bittersweet note.

This plotline—of a small group of teenage revolutionaries attempting to overthrow the system—is nothing new; teenagers have been attempting to take down the man since the 20^th century was in its infancy. The Hippies believed that all the world’s problems could be fixed with peace and love (and a lot of drugs), but the 21^st century seems disillusioned with peace and love; 9/11 especially has convinced my generation of nothing if not that guns will always be necessary, and that violence is a given. 

One of my favorite dystopian novels is the Vivian Apple books by Katie Coyle. Like The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, they are environmental books, showcasing the fears of climate change and its effects on our planet. Vivian Apple follows the traditional YA plotline of a small group of revolutionaries—these ones ranging from 18 to about 30 instead of focusing solely on insanely mature high school students like in Delirium—taking on a religious structure that has convinced everyone that the rapture will occur on a certain date. Like YA novels, Vivian Apple seems to end positively, as the evil religious overlords with their capitalist agendas are destroyed and the people are liberated from a market-driven economy and from forced belief in a misogynistic god. However, Vivian is told that even though the Church has been destroyed and life should go on as usual, planet Earth is beyond repair; there is no saving it. The end of the world is coming, even if there is no prophet of the Lord giving specific dates. Vivian is forced to accept this knowledge, choosing to life day by day and not worry about the end of the world, whenever that may be.

None of these novels, most of them marketed towards teenagers, end positively. Perhaps post-9/11 we none of us can believe that America (and the planet) is able to be saved; perhaps we have come to believe that our own efforts to conserve water, to vote conscientiously, to eat non-GMO products, will not save us from ourselves. California will succumb to the fault line; the Middle East will blow up; Jesus will return and collect His chosen few. This is the true fault of dystopia—it teaches us that the only way to make positive change is to rely on weapons and war, that no matter what we do we will not save our planet. This defeatist attitude is nihilistic and perhaps leads our generation to the belief that nothing we do will matter anyway, so why do anything at all? 

Most of us are probably familiar with the story of the girl on the beach who, at low tide, sees hundreds of starfish slowly dying on the sand. She starts throwing them, one by one, back into the water when a man comes along and says, “What are you doing? There are so many starfish; you’ll never save them all.” 

The girl, however, tosses another starfish back into the ocean and says, “I just made a difference for that one.” 

This story resonated with me when I read The Age of Miracles, which has its own twisted version of the starfish story. Julia goes to the beach one day and discovers ten beached whales. People run around the bank, attempting to throw water over the whales and drag their heavy bodies back into the ocean. Julia joins in, using small cups to toss water over a whale’s body, until a man tells her to stop wasting her time; “that one’s already dead” (194). 

Julia does not record whether or not she tries to save other whales, but she does report that hundreds of whales would later wash up on the beach, and that “Eventually, people stopped trying to save them” (194). Starfish Girl does what she can; Julia realizes that she can do nothing and, collectively, Californians decide let the whales die. 

Like Vivian, Julia waits for the world to end, although she ends her narrative with doubt. Vivian will live life day by day until the end comes and looks forward to spending what little time she has with her friends; Julia seems to be waiting for the end to release her from a life she is tired of living. This is why Emily St. John Mandel’s novel is so liberating; her characters are rebuilding the world, and they are going to make it better than before. In Station 11, Shakespeare has survived, and so have the wonders of our modern world—the love of flight, of Star Trek, of poetry, of music. Her characters are not resigned to the end; they are anticipating the beginning. 

Dystopian novels are often reassuring in that they grapple with issues that plague us today. Religion, the environment, our lack of water, the slow loss of oil, the skyrocketing population, famine, our loss of trust in our leaders—all of these factors are frightening and make good scary stories to read before bed. But the real reason dystopia is disturbing is because so few of them end with hope. They end with resignation, with the sense that the world we millennials are inheriting from the baby boomers is destroyed, and nothing we do can fix the mistakes of those who came before us. 

So maybe dystopia is disgusting, after all. But that doesn’t change my love for it. Dystopian novels stem from our cultural fears the same way Dickens’ novels stemmed from cultural fears, and if we are going to talk about how to improve this place 6 billion people call home, we might as well start with the disturbing belief that there is nothing we can do to fix our mistakes.