LITR 4632: Literature of
the Future
Sample Student Final Essay 2003
Sara Brito
Craig White
Litr of Future
27 June 2003
Final-Lit of Future
The narratives writers tell about the future usually take two forms. There is one called utopian, in which all humanity, or sometimes a select group, attempts to overcome the shortcomings of society. The other is called dystopian, in which we thought we had it right and it collapses or blows up in our faces. Usually utopias lend themselves to becoming dystopias as the writer finds problems that humans will have with even the most perfect societies.
Why do most utopias become dystopias? In most of the portrayals we have seen this semester, utopias have so many rules, structure and planning that no one can be happy accept for the rulers and planners. Utopias become dystopias because of what they do not account for. The change, chaos and diversity, that make humans what they are, are usually unaccounted for in utopian scenarios. These societies have been structured and planned so that the changes and chaos are not allowed to flourish within. So people who see the good in change and diversity usually wind up rebelling or opposing the main force driving the utopia and creating a dystopia.
In “The Onion and I” the reader sees change and diversity through the father and son trying to perfect the onion in the matrix world. The dad, though he can not express it because of his lack of right words, needs the onion to have a contingent variable to be considered perfect. He even keeps the odd onions he had grown that resembled people created through natural evolution or mutation. The father, as a farmer, knows that in nature contingency happens and it can be beautiful. However, since the matrix is computer generated, it does not allow for the same changes nature produces. While the matrix becomes the farmer’s wife’s utopia, the farmer sees the matrix as a dystopia because it is unnatural. In essence, each of us has a goal, something we want. If it can be achieved, the world is friendly and utopian; however, if it cannot be achieved our world becomes a dystopia.
Later, readers see the forces that limited chaos and change in the shape of aliens. In “The Poplar Street Study” the selected group becomes the “control” group for an experiment run by aliens. Many have guessed at the reasoning behind the experiment but seeing that this is first contact it is likely that the aliens want to understand human behavior. However, the aliens do not understand that, as we saw in Parable of the Sower, adaptability, change and chaos are the most basic human components. By cutting off outside contact, not letting the humans leave and watching the humans every move, the aliens could not have gotten a true glimpse of human existence. This is true mainly because whether it is embraced or not, all humans change and die. Even in death change occurs. The aliens did not allow for change in their experiment. Thus, the Poplar Street study becomes a dystopian society living in isolation and unable to flourish. We also see this scenario in “Speech Sounds.” Though the power separating the people stems from a disease a reader gets the feeling that resentment will not allow the talkers to help the non-talkers. People are killing other people, even their wives, as Rye believes, over the talking separation. The disease holds back the society in a way no one is responsible for.
In “They’re Made Out of Meat” we see, as Sandra Murphy said in discussion, another, supposedly superior race operating on the basis that different is bad. Having come to Earth and probed a few humans the aliens realize that to them we are made out of meat. They discriminate against the humans, knowing that they are intelligent enough to send signals into outer space, because we are not made of the same biological matter. It is easy to wonder if it truly matters that they discriminate when there is no chance we will ever see these aliens again but it is also easy to wonder what could have happened if the two species were made to be in contact. Because the aliens thought it too chaotic to take a chance with meat, they may have missed a valuable learning experience and even a moral experience. Discrimination is always a dystopian idea.
Again, we see this in “Newton’s Sleep”. Though, scientists have brought in only the brightest people and kept out disease and given them everything they could have possibly needed, prejudice gets in. The utopia quickly gives way to dystopia as Esther becomes discriminated against for religion. Religion affords diversity. Knowledge can only be gained from examining all possibilities. It seems as though the bright people in the bubble should have figured that out. Instead the opportunity to learn about another culture, in a place that is lacking culture, is discriminated against again affording dystopia to a once “utopian” ideal.
It is easy to see the government fearing change in “Drapes and Folds”. In this story, clothing becomes the chaos element. The government wants everyone to look the same and act the same. They have even begun manufacturing people to achieve their “utopia”. The designer in the story obviously sees this community as her own personal dystopia. Free expression is evident in clothing and while the designer is advocating freedom to wear what she wants she is also advocating the right to go against the norm and create controversy and chaos. It is every citizen’s right to think, but in this world the powers that be can even get into your head and limit that. But, humanity by it’s definition is a differing concept. The color of our skin changes across the globe for reasons of adaptability and comfort. When society becomes so restrictive as it does in this story, with the bracie, it loses the variety that nature places in the human race, but that we seem intent on destroying instead of appreciating. I have to agree with Keely Coufal in her final exam when she said, “If the human existence could be calculated, programmed, and formatted then there would be no point of existence. It is the ebbs and flows in the human spirit that gives us life.” So, in essence, if individuality and change are not embraced we become inhuman. If we are willing to become inhuman then what are we fighting against the aliens in so many books for?
The only story viewed this semester where the inhabitants can embrace change and individuality was seen in “House of Bones”. The narrator is of a completely different era than the one the mainstream culture operates in but they take him in and respect him. When the narrator gets sent to find another stranger who appears to be lurking in the shadows, he thinks it is his duty to kill him since in the time he comes from differences are not always looked upon as beneficial. The “tribe” he is with has specific jobs for specific people and therefore anyone who is different will always have a job. The singer is beautiful to the tribe because he can sing and it makes him different, the architect is beautiful to the tribe because he can design things and the narrator is beautiful to the tribe because he can help track strangers since he once was a stranger. This is the one example of a true utopia viewed this semester, unless simplistic and agreeable can be a dystopia to anyone.
It all becomes relative in the story “Homelanding.” Margaret Atwood says, “Instead I will say, take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths.” Atwood has identified what makes humans. It is the natural, the common and the different that makes us run. We all share the trees and yet nature can tear them down, most of us have breakfast but some like breakfast food for dinner. We are all supposed to be born with fingers but some people have mutated or evolved past it. The only things that are certain are change and death. Chaos? Humanity. Beauty.