English Question

Dystopia. It’s the genre of warning. ⚠️ Neil Gaiman writes,

“What speculative fiction [dystopia] is really good at is not the future but the present – taking an aspect of it that troubles or is dangerous, and extending and extrapolating that aspect into something that allows the people of that time to see what they are doing from a different angle and from a different place. It’s cautionary.”

I’m finding way too many overlaps between dystopia and reality 😭. As we watch governments collapse, laws passed, and a global pandemic rage on, it’s hard to not feel the deep parallels between our world and the worlds of dystopian literature. It’s hard to feel like it’s too late – the “cautionary” aspect of these novels has been ignored and now we’re knocking on the door of our doom. (A bit overdramatic, but you get the point 😝)

The Huxleyan Warning 🚨
From Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

“Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell (author of 1984) did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity arid history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

🛑 “There are two ways by which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first – the Orwellian- culture becomes a prison. In the second – the Huxleyan – culture becomes a burlesque.”

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💡 Prompt | Essential Question: To what extent is America a dystopia? Using evidence from both the novel, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and outside research to connect to today, write a multi-paragraph essay in which you answer the extent to which fiction blends into reality.

Requirements:

• Intro (hook, strong thesis, novel title, name of author, preview of paper)
• 750 Word Maximum (3 pages, double-spaced) MLA format (not including Works Cited page)
• MLA Works Cited page + parenthetical citations (not included in page count)
• Evidence /Research: Novel + minimum of 2 outside sources (for a C) (+3 for a B) (4+ for an A)
  🚨* You can use ONE of the three BraveNewBlog topics (genetic engineering, drug abuse, or sex/ monogamy), but it must be a DIFFERENT article and angle). Other parallels must be original.
• Correct Punctuation (be resourceful, google)
• Review Rubric 👀