This document provides definitions and information about dystopian and utopian societies in literature. It defines dystopias as fictional futures where oppressive control is exerted over society through illusion of perfection. Characteristics of dystopian societies are described, such as propaganda, lack of freedom, constant surveillance, and conformity being enforced. Common types of control in dystopian works, like corporate or technological control, are outlined. Examples are given of classic and popular dystopian novels that use exaggerated scenarios to critique aspects of current societies.

1. Definitions
Images
Titles
UTOPIA VS. DYSTOPIA
IN LITERATURE

2. • A futuristic, imagined universe
in which oppressive (cruel)
societal control and the
illusion (impression) of a
perfect society are maintained
through corporate,
bureaucratic (governmental),
technological, moral, or
totalitarian (dictatorial)
control.
• Dystopias, through an
exaggerated worst-case
scenario, make a criticism
about a current trend, societal
norm, or political system.
UTOPIA VS. DYSTOPIA
Utopia Dystopia
• A place, state, or
condition that is
ideally perfect in
respect of politics,
laws, customs, and
conditions.
• An imagined
universe/world.

3. Characteristics of a Dystopian Society
• Propaganda is used to control the citizens of society
• Information, independent thought, and freedom are
restricted.
• A figurehead or concept is worshiped by the citizens of the
society.
• Citizens are perceived to be under constant surveillance.
• Citizens have a fear of the outside world.
• Citizens live in a dehumanized state.
• The natural world is banished and distrusted.
• Citizens conform to uniform expectations. Individuality and
dissent are bad.
• The society is an illusion of a perfect utopian world.

4. TYPES OF DYSTOPIAN CONTROLS
Most dystopian works present a world in which
oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect
society are maintained through one or more of the
following types of controls:
• Corporate control: One or more large corporation
controls society through products, advertising, and/or
the media.
• Bureaucratic control: Society is controlled by a
mindless bureaucracy through a tangle of red tape,
relentless regulations, and incompetent government
officials.
• Technological control: Society is controlled by
technology—through computers, robots, and/or
scientific means.
• Philosophical/religious control: Society is controlled by
philosophical or religious ideology often enforced
through a dictatorship or theocratic government.

5. THE DYSTOPIAN PROTAGONIST
• Often feels trapped and is struggling to
escape.
• Questions the existing social and political
systems.
• Believes or feels that something is terribly
wrong with the society in which he or she
lives.
• Helps the audience recognize the negative
aspects of the dystopian world through his
or her perspective.

6. EXAMPLES OF DYSTOPIAN NOVELS
• Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant by Veronica Roth
• The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mocking Jay by Suzanne Collins
• Legend, Prodigy, Champion by Marie Lu
• The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, The Death Cure by James Dashner
• Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, Fairest, Winter by Marissa Meyer
• City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass, City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls by
Cassandra Clare
• Gone, Hunger by Michael Grant
• I’ve already shown a presentation for these titles, so we will look at
some different books!

7. • The Giver, Gathering Blue, The Messenger, Son by Lois Lowry
• Blackout, Deadzone by Robison Wells
• Contaminated, Mercy Mode by Em Garner
• Birthmarked, Prized, Promised by Caragh O’Brien
• Stung, Cured by Bethany Wiggins
• The Bar Code Tattoo, The Bar Code Rebellion, The Bar Code Prophecy by Suzanne Weyn
• Dark Inside, Rage Within by Jeyn Roberts
• The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch
• The Darkest Path by Jeff Hirsch
• The Death Catchers by Jennifer Kogler
• Ship Breaker, The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigulpi
• The Eighth Day, The Inquisitor’s Mark, The Morrigan’s Curse by Dianne Salerni
• Elemental, Firebrand, Renegade by Antony John***
• Matched, Crossed, Reached by Ally Condie
• The Enemy by Charles Higson
• The Testing, Independent Study, Graduation Day by Joelle Charbonneau
• The Lives We Lost by Megan Crewe
• Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
• Partials by Dan Wells
• Sky Jumpers by Peggy Eddleman
• UnWind, UnWholly, UnSoulded, UnDivided by Neal Shusterman

8. THE GIVERBY LOIS LOWRY
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• Lois Lowry's 1994 Newbery Medal–winning tale has become
one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting
story centers on Jonas who lives in a seemingly ideal, if
colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he
is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does
he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind
his fragile community. Lois Lowry has written three
companion novels to The Giver, including Gathering Blue,
Messenger, and Son.

9. MATCHEDBY ALLIE CONDIE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaeNWL8rlBI
• In the Society, officials decide. Who you love. Where you
work. When you die.
Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s hardly any
price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate.
So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen,
Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the
one…until she sees another face flash for an instant before
the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with
impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the
only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared
follow—between perfection and passion.
Matched is a story for right now and storytelling with the
resonance of a classic.

10. THE ENEMYBY CHARLIE HIGSON
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• Charlie Higson's The Enemy is the first in a jaw-dropping
zombie horror series for teens. Everyone over the age of
fourteen has succumbed to a deadly zombie virus and now
the kids must keep themselves alive. When the sickness
came, every parent, police officer, politician - every adult
fell ill. The lucky ones died. The others are crazed, confused
and hungry. Only children under fourteen remain, and
they're fighting to survive. Now there are rumours of a safe
place to hide. And so a gang of children begin their quest
across London, where all through the city - down alleyways,
in deserted houses, underground - the grown-ups lie in wait.
But can they make it there - alive?

11. UNWINDBY NEAL SHUSTERMAN
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• The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The
chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of
conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and
eighteen, however, parents can have their child "unwound,"
whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different
donors, so life doesn't technically end. Connor is too difficult for
his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state, is not enough to
be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to
be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to
survive.

12. MORTAL ENGINESBY PHILIP REEVE
• The great traction city London has been skulking in the hills to
avoid the bigger, faster, hungrier cities loose in the Great Hunting
Ground. But now, the sinister plans of Lord Mayor Mangus Crome
can finally unfold.
In a stunning literary debut, Philip Reeve has created a painful
dangerous unforgettable adventure story of surprises, set in a dark
and utterly original world fueled by Municipal Darwinism -- and
betrayal.
• In the distant future, when cities move about and consume smaller
towns, a fifteen-year-old apprentice is pushed out of London by the
man he most admires and must seek answers in the perilous Out-
Country, aided by one girl and the memory of another.

13. PARTIALSBY DAN WELLS
• Humanity is all but extinguished after a war with Partials—
engineered organic beings identical to humans—has decimated the
population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by a weaponized virus
to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in
North America have huddled together on Long Island. But sixteen-
year-old Kira is determined to find a solution. As she tries
desperately to save what is left of her race, she discovers that the
survival of both humans and Partials rests in her attempts to answer
questions about the war's origin that she never knew to ask.
Playing on our curiosity of and fascination with the complete collapse
of civilization, Partials is, at its heart, a story of survival, one that
explores the individual narratives and complex relationships of those
left behind, both humans and Partials alike—and of the way in which
the concept of what is right and wrong in this world is greatly
dependent on one's own point of view.

14. 1984BY GEORGE ORWELL
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•
Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in London,
in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own
home, the Party watches him through telescreens; everywhere he
looks he sees the face of the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader, a
figure known only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything in
Oceania, even the people’s history and language. Currently, the Party
is forcing the implementation of an invented language called
Newspeak, which attempts to prevent political rebellion by
eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is
illegal. Such thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes.

15. FAHRENHEIT 451BY RAY BRADBERRY
• Set in the twenty-fourth century, Fahrenheit 451introduces
a new world in which control of the masses by the media,
overpopulation, and censorship has taken over the general
population. The individual is not accepted and the
intellectual is considered an outlaw. Television has replaced
the common perception of family. The fireman is now seen
as a flamethrower, a destroyer of books rather than an
insurance against fire. Books are considered evil because
they make people question and think. The people live in a
world with no reminders of history or appreciation of the
past; the population receives the present from television.

16. A BRAVE NEW WORLDBY ALDOUS HUXLEY
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• Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the
ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering,
brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs, all its
members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone
harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one
of the few remaining Savage Reservations, where the old,
imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his
distress...

17. A CRACK IN THE SKYBY MARK PETER HUGHES
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• Recently, Eli noticed that there’s something wrong with the artificial
sky. It keeps shorting out, displaying strange colors and random
images. And though the Department of Cool and Comfortable Air is
working overtime, the dome-city is hotter than it’s ever been.
Eli has been raised to believe that the dome-cities are safe, that the
important thing is to keep working and consuming, and that everyone is
secure and comfortable in InfiniCorp’s capable hands.
But now he begins asking questions.
All of a sudden, operatives from a dangerous band of terrorists keep
contacting him. The Friends of Gustavo—or Foggers—want to tear down
everything InfiniCorp has created. They promise Eli that they have the
truth he seeks—if he’s brave enough to handle it.

18. SKINJACKER SERIESBY NEAL SHUSTERMAN
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• Nick and Allie don't survive the car accident...
...but their souls don't exactly get where they're supposed to get
either. Instead, they're caught halfway between life and death, in a
sort of limbo known as Everlost: a shadow of the living world, filled
with all the things and places that no longer exist. It's a magical, yet
dangerous place where bands of lost children run wild and anyone
who stands in the same place too long sinks to the center of the
Earth.
When they find Mary, the self-proclaimed queen of lost kids, Nick
feels like he he's found a home, but allie isn't satisfied spending
eternity between worlds. Against all warnings, Allie begins learning
the "Criminal Art" of haunting, and ventures into dangerous territory,
where a monster called the McGill threatens all the souls of
Everlost.
In this imaginative novel, Neal Shusterman explores questions of life,
death, and what just might lie in between.

19. ELEMENTALBY ANTONY JOHN
HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=Z-DUHZHYLR4
• Sixteen-year-old Thomas has always been an outsider. The first
child born without the power of an Element—earth, water, wind
or fire—he has little to offer his tiny, remote Outer Banks
colony. Or so the Guardians would have him believe.
In the wake of an unforeseen storm, desperate pirates kidnap
the Guardians, intent on claiming the island as their own.
Caught between the plague-ridden mainland and the advancing
pirates, Thomas and his friends fight for survival in the battered
remains of a mysterious abandoned settlement. But the secrets
they unearth will turn Thomas’ world upside-down, and bring to
light not only a treacherous past but also a future more
dangerous than he can possibly imagine.

20. DARK INSIDEBY JEYN ROBERTS
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• Moments after several huge earthquakes shake every
continent on Earth, something strange starts happening to
some people. An inner rage has been released and some
people cannot fight it. For those who can, life becomes an
ongoing battle to survive - at any cost!

21. AMONG THE HIDDENBY MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX
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• SHADOW CHILDREN Luke has never been to school. He's
never had a birthday party, or gone to a friend's house for an
overnight. In fact, Luke has never had a friend.
Luke is one of the shadow children, a third child forbidden
by the Population Police. He's lived his entire life in hiding,
and now, with a new housing development replacing the
woods next to his family's farm, he is no longer even
allowed to go outside.
Then, one day Luke sees a girl's face in the window of a
house where he knows two other children already live.
Finally, he's met a shadow child like himself. Jen is willing
to risk everything to come out of the shadows -- does Luke
dare to become involved in her dangerous plan? Can he
afford "not" to?

22. SKY JUMPERSBY PEGGY EDDLEMAN
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• 12-year-old Hope lives in White Rock, a town struggling to recover from
the green bombs of World War III. The bombs destroyed almost everything
that came before, so the skill that matters most in White Rock—
sometimes it feels like the only thing that matters—is the ability to invent
so that the world can regain some of what it’s lost.
But Hope is terrible at inventing and would much rather sneak off to cliff
dive into the Bomb’s Breath—the deadly band of air that covers the crater
the town lives in—than fail at yet another invention.
When bandits discover that White Rock has invented priceless antibiotics,
they invade. The town must choose whether to hand over the medicine
and die from disease in the coming months or to die fighting the bandits
now. Hope and her friends, Aaren and Brock, might be the only ones who
can escape through the Bomb’s Breath and make the dangerous trek over
the snow-covered mountain to get help.
For once, inventing isn’t the answer, but the daring and risk-taking that
usually gets Hope into trouble might just save them all.

23. THE ELEVENTH PLAGUE
BY JEFF HIRSCH
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• In an America devastated by war and plague, the only way
to survive is to keep moving.
In the aftermath of a war, America’s landscape has been
ravaged and two-thirds of the population left dead from a
vicious strain of influenza. Fifteen-year-old Stephen Quinn
and his family were among the few that survived and
became salvagers, roaming the country in search of
material to trade. But when Stephen’s grandfather dies and
his father falls into a coma after an accident, Stephen finds
his way to Settler’s Landing, a community that seems too
good to be true. Then Stephen meets strong, defiant,
mischievous Jenny, who refuses to accept things as they
are. And when they play a prank that goes horribly wrong,
chaos erupts, and they find themselves in the midst of a
battle that will change Settler’s Landing--and their lives--
forever.