LITR 4632: Literature of
the Future
Sample Student final exams 2007
Holly Bailey
July 1, 2007
Literature Awakening
I consider this class to be the most interesting literature class I have taken. This class definitely gave me a refreshing look into literature of the future. During the class I was introduced to books that I know I would not have gone into the library and checked out. However, because they were required reading I read them and surprisingly enjoyed them. These stories are definitely not the type of stories I would normally think or talk about when speaking to my friends or family about literature. However during the course of this class I recommended at least two books and one short story we read from class to my friends/family. There were a number of books and short stories which really grabbed my attention including: Parable, The Time Machine, The Poplar Street Study, Chocco, Draps and Folds, Newton’s Sleep and They are Made of Meat. I found one common link in all of these stories, the dystopia society in a utopia society. This utopia/dystopia society is the most fascinating aspect of literature of the future to me. I never really thought about the far future so when these stories were introduced I did not fully realize the coexistence of both utopias and dystopias in the future. From the stories we have read, I now know that one can not exist without the other.
If you would have asked me what the definition of a utopia society five weeks ago I could not have told you. Now I can tell you that a utopia society is an experimental community intended to improve or perfect human society. In the previous mentioned stories different forms of utopian societies are established. Some are established here on our earth, others are established on a different planet and some are established on spaceships in space.
In Drapes and Folds, a utopian society is trying to be created here on earth. However in creating this society, the people trapped in the utopian society are force to conform to the utopian standards. This causes a dystopia effect among some of the people. “The Powers”, who controlled the utopian society, enforced outrageous laws against fabric. The Powers said that “Stitches had to be hidden, as they were deemed “ornamental,” and pockets were outlawed for what they could hide. The Powers saw sumptuous clothing and fabric as part of the “anarchic individualism” that had poisoned the last half of the twentieth century.” The powers created a utopian society to prevent further “poisoning.” Therefore they created the “ten-inch lamina tablex of the FabricLaws.” This is ironic because most people associate laws with the Ten Commandments. The authors brilliantly made sure that they included the “ten” into their description of the FabricLaws to help give understanding to the unknown with the help of the known. The reader now knows how serious the “ten-inch lamina tablex of the FabricLaws” because they can relate it to the seriousness of the Ten Commandments.
Just like in Drapes and Folds, The Poplar Street Study setting was on earth. The utopian society was created by aliens because the humans living on earth were living in a dystopia society and the aliens wanted to do a study to see if they could make a utopia society for the humans. The aliens stated over and over again that only the information that would be provided would be purposeful. They took away everything they thought the humans were harming themselves with. The aliens told the humans; “We are taking care of you. We have assumed responsibility for you.” They even took over their nutritional aspects of life. “We are prepared to assume the responsibility of your nutritional needs.” “The foodstuffs are of a high quality. They are noncarcinogenic and contain slight doses of fluoride in addition to vitamins….” The people in the study obliviously were not happy with the study. We saw the dystopia still existing even in the study when the residents of the street banned together to try to get rid of the aliens.
Additionally, In Parable, the family established their own little utopia society, again on earth. They provided almost everything for themselves. They grew their own food, looked out for one another and basically experiment to see what worked and what didn’t work for the community. In this story their utopia society was so well maintained the dystopia society surrounding them did everything in their power to destroy the utopia community and eventually succeeded in its destruction. What I love about Parable and the reason why I recommended it to my mother-in-law (who loved it by the way) is that the utopia society did survive, just in a different place and with some different people. However, both societies still existed just not side by side anymore. Even thought they were able to get out of the dystopia society and re-establish another utopia society doesn’t mean that the dystopia went away, they were still co-existing.
A co-existing society between the two societies is also seen in The Time Machine. The Time Machine also explored the utopia society coexisting with a dystopia society on earth. As stated before all of these stories are very similar in plot and theme. The time traveler left his dystopia world, by the way of the time machine, and found a utopian world in the future. However the future utopian world still had to deal with a dystopia community. The time traveler realized this and went back to his time to gather tools then went back to the future so he could help eliminate the still existing dystopia society.
Another utopia world is seen in Chocco. Chocco survived a dystopia world and became a utopia world on another planet. Their world survived by what their ancestors left them. In this story we again get the picture of the Ten Commandments. The author of Chocco stated the “Ancestors left us their tested commandments” this again lets us identify with the unknown with the known. They did this by learning what did and did not work from the “machine people.” In this case the utopian society would not have existed without the dystopia.
Again in Newton’s Sleep, one society would not exist without the other. In Newton’s Sleep we see a utopia society within a spaceship. The people on the ship left earth to create a utopia of there own. They were escaping a rapidly mutating virus that caused 2 billion human to died. There utopia society failed once “ghost” started disrupting the society creating a dystopia effect. Another instance of a dystopia effect in the utopia society is Easters malformed eyes. This prevents her and her parent from having a completely utopia society. Newton’s Sleep reminds me of the Future Vision Presentation made by Dana Stephens on the series “The Island.” In this series an artificial utopian world was set up for the dystopia world surrounding them. The people in the island are clones of the people in the dystopia world. They are basically for extra parts for the original person in the dystopia world. However it does not work because the clones find out what is going on and try to break up the island. Both Newton’s Sleep and The Island utopian societies are disturbed by the dystopia societies.
Sara Brito referred to They’re Made Out of Meat as being part of a dystopia society, she states: “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”. I never really thought about this until I read Sara’s final. The aliens did not want to mess up their utopian world; therefore they did not take the chance to explore a species made out of meat. They preserved their utopia world.
All of the above stories have some aspect of utopia and dystopia societies within them. I found these different societies the most interesting part in literature of the future. I realized through the readings of this class that the two societies, utopias and dystopias complete each other. You can’t have one without the other in literature of the future.