When I was 10 years old I looked up communism, and it meant ‘a society where property was public, and everyone would be helped according to needs.’ This confused me because I had always heard of communism in a negative context. Such a society would mean that, everyone would have food, water, shelter, an education and job. This is the ideal society. So why was it talked about with disgust and horror? Until reading Red Scarf Girl, I believed in that the ideal society could, no, would someday exist. But now I have been convinced otherwise.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is full of important morals and themes. The book is flooded with symbolism and meaning to both the real world and science fiction world that Bradbury has created. With so many themes in this book it is difficult to choose the ones that contain the most importance, but some of them can be picked out from all the rest, for example, you must have bad things to have good things, you have to earn your happiness and finally, your opinions are influenced by the people around you. These themes show up multiple times in the book and are expressed heavily in the story.
Throughout history there has been a constant, man’s desire to experience new things. Two men that come to mind are Chris McCandless and Henry David Thoreau. Both men shared a similar reason for traveling into the wild. The differences in their journey’s that led to McCandless’s death and Thoreau’s success is the preparation and approach to the journey’s. Even though Chris failed on his journey he still was very much like Thoreau wanting to leave society in search for enlightenment. The two men may have had different approaches, but their ideals were very similar.
Individualism is when a person has achieved non-conformity, self-reliance, free-thought, confidence, and finding one’s self through nature. Although individualism may be achieved in society, it cannot be fully achieved until one removes himself from society. Chris McCandless did exactly that; he removed himself from society by backpacking and hitchhiking throughout the United States to test and achieve individualism. McCandless’s last great adventure was to Alaska to fully obtain individualism, unfortunately, he died trying to find his spiritual belonging and individualism. Many people would think it was absurd that Chris left his family and threw his life away, and they would think that he was not justified in leaving society, however, Chris McCandless was justified in leaving society because by doing so he could achieve non-conformity and self-reliance without being oppressed.
In the Hunger Games series, a dystopian future is set up. The government of Panem, The Capitol, holds the wealth of Panem giving it the power to control all districts. In order to enforce this theory, they created the Hunger Games. They suppressed the rights of the citizen’s of Panem and selected their children in order to fight each other do death for survival. These games were created to scare the people and show them who was in charge. While these dystopian societies are going on, there are also utopian societies that we can see in our dreams. These societies are filled with what we think makes them perfect. For example, the utopian universe that can be brought to mind could be free of poverty, homelessness, war, racism ,etc. But, if we deeply think about it, if these problems did
In the book “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, Chris McCandless had many decisions to leave his old life behind and start over. Chris’ decision to leave was justified for the following reasons. When he suddenly disappeared, it made it easier for him to let go of his past and focus on what he wants to do in the future. McCandless could make all his own decisions, nobody had a chance to tell him that he could not leave and certainly did not allow anyone to find out where he was going. Finally he didn’t agree to social norms. Although some might argue that McCandless should have notified his parents that he was going to take this trip, however, if he would’ve told his family they would have gone out of their way to bring him back home. Furthermore Mccandless did tell his parents that he was going on this trip and didn’t find the need to tell them where he was going minute by minute. He was an adult and understood what the consequences were.
Throughout chapters 8 and 9, the author showed his bias towards Chris McCandless, which is an act of defiance to his position as an objective journalist, when he attempted to alter the readers’ negative point of view towards Chris by the introduction of different people who had similar experiences and characteristics as him and then making comparison.
Wouldn 't it be wonderful to live in a perfect world? Well it 's not one. This world has this history that is not perfect. There were wars, flames and much more, but the worst of all would have to be racism and the inequality we had just because the color of one 's skin. In the past, we have done things to people that were not fair or right just because their skin was different. They would have two different water fountains, for white people and one for black people. There were as well two different schools and restaurants for black and white. The Supreme Court has impacted many people 's decisions : Shelly vs. kraemer, brown vs. bored of education, loving vs. Virginia.
To what extent can a perfect society be possible? In the novel The Giver the society was established to be a utopian world but, ended up becoming not so perfect after all with terrible things hiding underneath the surface. Modern day society is far from perfect; however, it does have some similarities with Jonas´ home along with many differences.
There where many Utopias, here are a few. The Rappites. In 1816, the Rappites came from the Shakers, one of the bigger Utopian communities. They isolated themselves from other communities. George Rapp Lead 600 people to live in the community. The Rappites where known for their strict ideas on sex and marriage. They believed that marriage should be very stiff and strict in the manner that husband and wife stay away from each other until the end of the day. They only saw each other at meal times. They collapsed 3 years later after running into economical problems. Unlike the shakers, their life was not simple, they still did humanly things. The Shakers had 20 communities. They were known for their Christian guidelines and sect. The believed in labor, and ina strict diet and way of everyday living. They were the biggest
Similar to The Giver by Lois Lowry, the society (in The Giver) is built upon rules that restrict the motives and individualities of the people that live within the community. For example, in The Giver the Elders of the society took away the ability to see color and feel love for one another by making the people resort to sameness. The protagonist, Jonas, was special like Equality in Anthem, because both of the characters figured out the problems of their society and rebelled. In the novella, Anthem, Ayn Rand creates a character named Equality, also known as Prometheus, who conducts secret experiments that are genuinely motivated by the desire to prove self-worth
In the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Christopher McCandless came from a nice suburb of Washington D.C. He excelled in school and had been an outstanding athlete. He graduated with honors from Emory University in the summer of 1990, and soon after he dropped out of sight. He changed his name from Chris to Alex, gave his twenty-four- thousand dollar savings account to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, and burned all the cash in his wallet. He desired to live off the land and travel across North America. One explorer who is similar to chris is Reinhold Messner. Explorers are motivated to leave their life behind and go on an adventure because of them being the center of their own existence, their mistakes turning into misery and them rejecting the established norms in society.
In Harrison Bergeron they try to make it to where everyone is equal. Something that our society strives for today. You have women that want to be equal to men and African Americans and Muslims that want to be treated like every other American. Everyone being 100% equal would never work because like in Harrison Bergeron when the son rebels and tries to become the ruler people start to follow. While in the story he and his girl get shot in real life even with them getting shot more people will start to up rise. All it takes is one person to be unhappy for something like this to fail. Yes it would be nice if everyone was treated the same way and were capable of the same things but that is something thanks to genetics is never going to
There are people in this world who always seem to strive for perfection. A perfectionist is basically a person who who has extremely high standards, a person who believes that there is no room for mistakes, that everything must be flawless. So anything that is less than perfect is absolutely unacceptable.
Who has never dreamt about a society where everything would be perfect? A place where everyone would have what they want. While for some it would be about being rich, having a mutant society like X-men, others would ask for justice, freedom and equality. All of them are acceptable; it is your point of view of a perfect society. This type of society is known as Utopia (which, according to Merrian-Webster is “an imaginary place in which the government, laws, and social conditions are perfect”). Its complete antithesis is the Dystopia, a “futuristic, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control are maintained through a totalitarian control.” Moreover, a dystopian society is usually used in literature as a moral or political warning. However, I firmly believe that a dystopia goes far than that. There are other elements that shape a dystopian society, like nationalism.