LITR 4632 Literature of the Future

Sample Student final exams 2009

Veronica Nadalin

Essay 1: One and the Same? The Complexity of the Terms Utopia and Dystopia

I would like to structure my essay about a point made in class, that I have not been able to stop thinking about, that is, the idea that one person's utopia is another person's dystopia.  After that was said in class, I took a new approach to reading the works assigned since the midterm, as well as going back to materials read before the midterm to look and think at this paradox.  Thinking that there is one utopia that would make everyone happy is far-fetched and, with the reading of this course, impossible.  No matter how hard a person, group, or government tries, not everyone can be pleased.  Even attempting to make everyone homogenous to try to better the odds of finding such a utopia (“Drapes and Folds" comes to mind), could never work because the human psyche is far too complex for humanity to understand it.  Laura Moran stated in her essay, "a common thread that keeps one grounded is that of the middle group; the heart of humanity."  I agree with her statement and would also like to add that humanity is what prevents the existence of an all-encompassing utopia or dystopia.  The stories we read either focus on the argument of perception of utopia/dystopia or are set in such environments where debate over whether or not the world is "utopian/dystopian" are futile.

 To begin with, I feel that the story, “The Onion and I" tackles the issue of a universal utopia head on.  While the mother of the story feels that virtual reality is all a person could want or need, because an individual choose what they want or need, the father that virtual reality is not all that it is cracked up to be.  He feels lost and is depressed by the fact that there is no way the virtual world could ever reciprocate an onion.  This is the appearance of the story on the surface.  However, the story goes much deeper than that.  In virtual reality, humans and their environment become one dimensional beings, unlike in the real world, where everything has depth and layers, like onions.  So, in the story, instead of choosing a radish, an onion is used to show that virtual reality cannot create an onion because an onion is multidimensional and virtual reality cannot create anything beyond a single layer.  Thus, the argument of the story: is virtual reality really such a utopia since everything is flat and emotionless? From the conclusion of the story, the author seems to believe that virtual reality is not what is all cracked up to be, and is in fact, less utopian than actual reality itself.

"Drapes and Folds" examines the concept that once everyone has become the same, then it will be easier to find a utopia for all to be happy with, because everyone will act, look, and think the same.  However,  the character, Pearl, is holding on to humanity and her own identity, by keeping clothes, and hiding a kimono when the people (government) behind the FabricLaws seek out to destroy individuality because it is thought that the main issue with the late twentieth century dealt with accepting individuality—where mankind went wrong.  While attempting to create a utopia, people like Pearl who wish to cling to some sort of humanity and individuality despite the cold world around them, feel like they are existing in a dystopian two people are the same, no matter how similar they may seem. "You are who you are. Who else could you be?" (127) emphasizes the point that no matter how much people try to control and change mankind, the variable of self is volatile and the factor in which prevents being able to make everyone "happy" or unhappy," 

            In both “The Onion and I” and in “Drapes and Folds” the main characters of the stories are the ones that realize that their individual concepts of an utopia, do not match the standard of what makes a utopia with the rest of the world that they live in.  These stories take the concept of utopia/dystopia one step farther from the rest of the stories read this semester by not creating environments that are obviously either utopias or dystopias, leaving the reader to think more about the story long after it was originally read.

Other stories of this part of the course create settings that are hard to argue as either utopia or dystopia, for they are obviously one or the other. "Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler places the world in an undoubtedly classifiable dystopia.  In this world, the only people that seem like they could be happy are people that never wanted to amount to anything. Yet, despite all of the chaos, like in "Parable of the Sower" the main character manages to find a silver lining in the world around her; she finds something to hold on to, in this case, the two children, for hope of a better future "Homelanding" can be classified as searching for a utopia.  From the context of the story, there is a search for a utopia, humans hoping to find it on another planet despite the fact that humans may have to establish a society with a relationship with another species.

My curiosity of the challenges that exist when trying to create a utopian society intrigued me throughout the second half of the course. Although all of the stories I found to be interesting and entertaining in some fashion or another, with their focus on the various themes of the course (high tech/low tech, warm/cold, etc) the ones that focused more on an individual’s struggle with finding peace in their environment appealed to my nature the most.