LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Sample Student Final Exams 2011 Essay 1

Jennifer Summerlin

You Can’t Have One Without The Other

          My twin sister sat in on one our classes this semester and thoroughly enjoyed the lecture and class discussion about the day’s assigned readings.  Though she had read the stories we discussed, she seemed to be a little confused about one topic brought up in class.  On the way home, she relayed her confusion when she asked me why someone in the class said that in order to have the concept of utopia, there must also be a dystopia.  In essence, the idea of someone’s utopia being someone else’s dystopia did not make much sense to her.  In my feeble effort to explain the concept to her, I gave the examples that in order to know what true goodness is, there has to be evil in the world.  Likewise, for people to know what is right, they must also know what is wrong.   Though I am sure I did not do a great job of explaining my meaning to her, our conversation made me think about these two dueling concepts.  I realized that several of the stories we have read this semester have elements of both utopian and dystopian worlds and that, in part, is what makes them work as well as they do.

          The Onion and I by Thomas Fox Averill is one story that encompasses both of these opposing themes.  In this tale, the narrators’ mother is completely fascinated by what the author refers to as “cyberlife”, or life inside the world of virtual reality.  She convinces her husband, who is less enthusiastic, to move into the virtual town of Bidwell.  This, for the mother, is the picture of utopian life.  Here she is able to create a world of her own making full of virtual environments, vacations, and even friends.  But, for her husband, it becomes a very dystopian world – a world of boring, mundane days filled with all the same food with all the same textures.  He is miserable because he is unable to do that which makes him truly happy – grow onions.  In this story of opposing lifestyles, the utopia/dystopia theme blends in the end to bring about a life in which the family balances the best of both worlds.

          Drapes and Folds is another story that builds on both utopian and dystopian themes.  The idea of an epidemic or large scale catastrophic event bringing about a turning point in time is a dystopian idea.  This is seen with the Women’s Epidemic which causes a wide spread outbreak of breast cancer.   In an effort to bring about conformity and harmony, the powers that be set up rules eliminating everything that makes people individual and unique.  This world of fabric law and approved nutrition is utopian in structure, but for Pearl, like the father in The Onion, it took from her the one thing that made her happiest and that was her fashion.  Again, by the story’s conclusion, a kind of utopia is realized as Pearl, Diana, and Xera come together for liberation sake and form an extended family bond.

          Some of the stories we have read this semester seem, at first glance, to be completely dystopian in nature, but surprise the reader with sparks of utopian elements from time to time.  The two works by Octavia E. Butler do just that.  In Speech Sounds, visions of dystopia are prevalent throughout with the stroke epidemic, the lawlessness and animalistic behavior among people, and the food and water shortage.  These aspects were seen also in The Parable of the Sower.  With scenes like the fighting on the bus and the killing in the streets in Speech and the fires and looting in Parable, one might wonder where the utopian aspects are hidden in these stories.  I think the visibility of utopian life in these stories lies in the connections that are made among individuals and the family bonds that are put together in both stories.  Rye finds this bond with the two young children at the end of the story while Lauren finds it with the group she travels with along the northern road.  In no way are these ladies living in worlds we consider to be utopian, but they both find a small slice of utopian life in the end.

          Good/ Bad.  Right/Wrong.  Heaven/Hell.  Utopia/Dystopia.  We think of these concepts as opposing, never meeting and always on different sides of the spectrum.  This may be true, but what I have learned with the readings in this class is that they actually work together and need each other to exist.  I can no longer blindly lump novels or stories into the category of either Utopian or Dystopian.   I have learned it is not that simple.   In her essay One and the Same?, Veronica Nedalin makes this point clear when speaking about The Onion and Drapes saying, “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.”   That is what these stories did for me.  They made me think more clearly about the distinctions between the two scenarios and helped me understand that they can coexist in the same work of literature.