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Neal Shusterman's Unwind: Dystopian Themes

1446 Words6 Pages

The government is coming to take you away! Many people on this planet fear government control, so it is often a common dystopian theme. Some people, such as the residents of North Korea, already are in complete government control and brainwashing. A recurring idea in government control is the government wiping out a certain percentage of people to keep the population down, which is usually the people with less intelligence than average. In Neal Shusterman’s “Unwind” the parents get to choose if they want to get rid of their child between the ages of 13 and 18, but there’s a catch. The “unwind” doesn’t necessarily die, rather his/her body parts are put up for sale, and a bit of the unwind’s consciousness gets put into each part. In Henry Slesar’s “Examination Day” children at the age of twelve take a test to determine their intelligence. The catch is though, and the children don’t know this, the government take away people who are smarter than they like to be and they’re presumably killed. Lev from “Unwind” and Dickie from “Examination Day” are both blinded by what is actually about to happen to them, unlike Connor from “Unwind”. Lev had Connor, Pastor Dan and Marcus to help him realize what was happening to him, but Dickie couldn’t get help from anyone because of the truth serum. In “Examination Day” when the children take the test they drink something called the “truth serum” which makes sure they answer each question truthfully in case the parents told them to do

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