Review of Dystopian Novels

What’s expected when one goes to pick up a novel categorized under dystopia? Well, by definition, dystopia means a society characterized by human misery, oppression, disease, and overcrowding. Using this, it’s safe to assume a reader is expecting to find waiting for them a futuristic society with a controlling government and restricting rules. But is this exactly what you get?

Authors Scott Westerfeld, Ally Condie, and Lauren Oliver all decided to take a swing at writing a teen dystopian novel. As a group, Westerfeld’s Uglies, Condie’s Crossed, and Oliver’s Delirium, represent the dystopian genre well. They all have strong female leads that throughout the novel start to discover exactly what the cost is to live in a quote on quote “perfect society”. Whether they’re forced to disobey their controlling government or do so because of found love, each girl comes to find that they no longer want anything to do with their safe life and will do anything to obtain their freedom. But is this all you get when you read one of these novels? A bunch of books about teenagers rebelling against unwanted rules and regulations? Hopefully not, since after a while their anguish must get old. So exactly how well do these books stand on their own; what makes them different from the others in their genre?

Westerfeld starts off his dystopian series with Uglies. He writes about a society where everyone is turned pretty at the age of sixteen, and allowed to live the dream in New Pretty Town – partying, drinking, and hanging out with friends 24/7. And everyone below that age is left across the river in Uglyville, counting down the days until they are given the operation to be pretty. Tally Youngblood is no different. She can’t wait to be pretty. But when one of her friends runs away from the town, to the mysterious civilization of the New Smokes, where everyone stays Ugly, Tally is left to deal with the consequences. This is where Westerfeld’s novel starts to branch off from the others in this genre: Tally doesn’t want to rebel against her society. She wants to be turned pretty, to have the life she’s been promised. When her friend Shay asks her to come with her, Tally replies with “I don’t want to be ugly all my life. I want those perfect eyes and lips, and for everyone to look at me and gasp” (Westerfeld 92). So when Shay runs away, the people in Special Circumstances makes Tally go to the New Smokes to find her. Despite being conflicted with the thought of betraying her friend, Tally goes anyways, because it’s either that or never turn pretty. Uglies is a nice breath of fresh air from all the other novels with girls rebelling because they want to be with the one they love. Tally’s mind set changes because she finds out that the operation not only changes your face, but it changes the way you think, too. Yeah, she does fall in love, too. But he’s just a side note in the plot. So that doesn’t count.

Crossed is the second book in Ally Condie’s Matched trilogy. It follows Cassia as she turns away from her perfect life of having everything picked out for her: her job, where she lives, and who she marries. Cassia gets herself sent off to the war in the Outer Provinces (where the society sends its unwanted members to get killed by the enemy) in search of her beloved Kai. Kai isn’t Cassia’s match, though. Her childhood friend Xander is. And Kai is even an Aberration, someone who never had the chance to be matched. But Cassia fell in love with him anyways, fell in love with how he knew how to write, his mysterious past living in the Outer Provinces, and how he was the one thing that wasn’t picked out for her by the Society. But when they take him away to “fight” in the war, Cassia manages to find a way to chase after him. They both end up meeting up after going through adventures of their own, and decide to travel together to find the mysterious Rebellion that they’ve each heard about. While Crossed is well written, and gives you the viewpoint of both Cassia and Kai, it’s generic. Cassia rebels because she wants to be with Kai, to be given the option to choose. Kai is that dark soul with a mysterious past, that wants nothing more than for Cassia to be safe. And then there is Cassia’s actual match, Xander, who makes the third point yet another love triangle. Cassia says about her friend “I love Xander in ways that are perhaps more complicated than I first expected” (Condie 473 of 4176)*. Insert groan from readers here.  But wait! Don’t mark this novel off your list yet, because as Kirkus Review says “Condie’s [triangle] is complicated and particularly human, involving real emotional scars.” Crossed’s plot may be your generic dystopian novel / love story, but Cassia’s conflictions are understandable. She loves Xander because he’s her best friend, and she wants to rebel because it’s the only chance that she’ll be with Kai.

The last novel in this review is Lauren Oliver’s Delirium. Delirium is about Lena, who lives in a futuristic America where love has been classified as a disease. Everyone at the age of 18 is given an operation that cures them of this disease, but as Lena comes to realize, also leaves them completely void of any emotions needed for a healthy relationship. This government is also one that chooses your job, your home, and who you marry for you. And Lena is yet another teenager who wants this life, but everything starts to unravel when she meets Alex. From the beginning she knows there is something different about Alex, and throughout the novel she learns that he is from the Wilds, the part of the country that isn’t controlled by the government. So, this means that Alex isn’t cured, which enables the two of them to fall in love. Lena realizes that although the chances of them being able to end up together is very slim, what with the government thinking Alex is cured and what not, she still dares to hope that they’ll be able to run away together. “He who leaps for the sky may fall, it’s true. But he may also fly” (Oliver 5420 of 6139)*.While summarizing the plot makes it sound just like other dystopian novels, it’s really not. Delirium shows the downfall of a society. The country has to ration out electricity, and having a car is considered a luxury. In this novel, there are no hover cars, or medicines that can be given to erase your memories of the past few hours. Instead, Delirium gives you another option, where maybe in fact life doesn’t get better, the only thing that changes is that we are, in their case, forced to not care.

While it’s correct to guess that if you read a bunch of books from the same genre, after a while you’ll find a pattern and make connections between the different books. But it wouldn’t be correct to assume that they’re all the same. Each novel is written by a different author, and each has their own idea of how the world will turn out in the next few hundred years. Uglies, Crossed, and Delirium, all maybe be a part of the same genre, but they aren’t to be considered pretty much the same book.

*these locations are based on the Kindle editions

My Top 5

Non-fiction

                I agree with what Aimee Bender had to say: as long as the work is interesting, I really don’t care. Even though they are listed as non-fiction, they’re still books. They still have to engage the reader and make them want to keep reading, and to do so they need an interesting plot. If maybe ninety percent of the novel is true, then who cares if the other ten percent is just to make things interesting? The author is doing us a favor, really. They’re adding that ten percent into the plot line because that means there wasn’t enough action to keep us interested the whole way through the story they had to tell.

                Now, I do mind if only half of the novel is true. Then it shouldn’t be labeled as non-fiction writing. When you’re only getting half of the story, but you are lead to believe that it’s the whole story, then that’s a bit deceiving and I’d feel like I was being lied to or cheated. If half of the story didn’t happen, then really that should be labeled as fiction, and the author can make a side note that some of the events in the plot were based off something that really happened. This way the author isn’t being deceptive but can still let their readers know about some things that occurred in their life.

                But in the end, though, it’s the author’s choice. If they want their readers to believe a bunch of false facts that are labeled as true then fine, go ahead and write them. All that matters is at the end they can be happy and proud of the story that they’re telling to their audience who trustingly believe that it’s true.

Readicide

                I think schools should swap out some literary fiction for genre fiction. Not all students like to read the books we read in school, so they just generalize that feeling with all books. But since they’re limited to only one genre, how are they supposed to know if they’d like other types of books or not? I know that my sister hates to read. And the only time she reads is in school, where she’s reading horribly boring books that she doesn’t care about. If schools taught genre fiction, maybe she’d have the chance to realize she actually likes to read, just not reading literary fiction.

                Schools should give us options. Maybe we could read two books a tri – one literary and one genre fiction. And if they give us options for what we can read, then they wouldn’t have to cut out any of the literary ones. They would still give us the option to read it, but not everyone would pick to read each one. For example, when it’s time to read the first book of the tri, we could be given the option between Of Mice & Men and The Great Gatsby. Students will pick which one sounds better to them, and then read it. This way they don’t feel as forced to read something they don’t want to, since they were given an option. Also, it wouldn’t completely replace Of Mice & Men for Twilight. You are still given the chance to hear about it and choose to read it. For the second book that tri, you can be given the choice between, for example, The Hunger Games and Twilight. This, once again, gives options for the kids who aren’t really a fan of the popular books and can pick to not read the one that sounds completely horrid to them.

                I would love if schools could actually do this. I think it would expose the students to more types of books other than literary fiction. But in order for the students to actually enjoy this, and not just end up hating genre fiction, too, then notes and quizzes would have to be limited. Who would want to take notes over Twilight any ways? It ruins the fun of reading. I think an in-class worksheet or two would be good enough. This way it once again takes away the thought of ‘I have to read this book’ since there wouldn’t be a test over it, but still would be enough incentive for the student to read at least some of the book in order to answer the questions on the worksheet right.

Shutter Island Movie Trailer

Adapting My Book

                I don’t think there would be many challenges adapting this book into a movie. Shutter Island seems like one of those books that was written to be a movie. I think the only challenge would be to be able to capture the creepy and eeriness of the book. The island itself needs to just look off, like something isn’t right about it. And all of the people need to have a feel to them that makes you weary of their character. To make this happen I think that personality and appearance changes of the characters should be kept to a minimum. They’re what adds to the feel of the plot and without it you would almost never guess that something is not right with the facility. If changes with them did have to be made then it should only be done to the way they look, because then at least you can still judge their personality by their dialogue and the way they interact with each other.

                One scene that I think would be essential to keep would be when Teddy and Chuck interview the patients to find out where Rachel is. It’s important because it is the only chance you get to hear from the patients and find out what they have to say. This is the part where Teddy starts to develop a hunch that people are scripted, since one of the patients says something almost word for word from what Dr. Cawley had said earlier.

                Another vital scene is when Teddy talks to Noyce. Noyce says some things that are really important when it comes to the ending of the book, and cutting this conversation out would almost eliminate that ‘oohhh’ feeling you get when you realize the twist at the end. The movie didn’t leave this out, and I thought they did a good job with it because it definitely got the point of the dialogue across and then they referenced to it at the end.

                The last scene I would want to be kept would be one of the last ones where Dr. Cawley tries to explain to Teddy that he in face it Andrew Laeddis. Obviously, the movie didn’t cut this out since it’s the whole ending, but they didn’t really change any of the dialogue which I thought was important. This part could be a bit confusing as your try to comprehend it, so the more dialogue they keep the better chance you have at completely being able to wrap your mind around the idea.

                If a scene had to be cut I think it would be fine if it were the one where the two marshals and the two orderlies were playing cards in their room. I didn’t really see much point to it in the book, and without it the plot would still make sense. All that I had gotten out of it was that Chuck was good at reading people and being able to decide if they were bluffing or not.

                Another scene the movie could do without is when Teddy wakes up after having his migraine to find Dr. Cawley watching him as he slept. This part didn’t have any importance to me, and as long as they got across the point that Teddy gets migraines, this scene wouldn’t be needed. All it does is add to your suspicions of Cawley, but I think there are already enough parts in the book that you would be fine if this wasn’t included. 

Book 1 Project

Book: Looking for Alaska by John Green

Idea: Looking for Alaska TV show

                Looking for Alaska is filled with many scenarios and topics relatable to teens. So why not broadcast it to every teen out there, instead of just the ones who like to read? A TV show directed towards young adults could be created, bringing all of the characters from the book to life. The pilot episode could start off with Pudge heading off to boarding school, and meeting all of the characters. Then the rest of the season could play out the book, ending with Pudge reading off his concluding essay about Alaska’s death. But the show wouldn’t have to stop there. Season two could open up to Pudge and the Colonel  going through Alaska’s stuff and discovering, under a pile of her books, a journal she kept labeled “Pranks”. From there on out the show could show Pudge and all his friends trying to play out all of Alaska’s pranks also with, of course, normal school teenage drama as a sub-plot.  

How does this relate to the book?

                When Pudge spends his first night at his new school, he soon learns that pranks are a way of life there. He awoke to people grabbing at him, leading him out to the lake, and tying him up. From there “they picked [him] up and hurled [him] into the water” (25). This was the first and last prank played against Pudge. He then proceeded to team up with the Colonel, Alaska, Takumi, and Lara to prank these kids back. In the Colonel’s words, the point of it was to “prove once and for all that [they] are to pranking what the Weekday Warriors are to sucking” (102). Then, only a day after the pay back prank was played out, Alaska dies in a car accident. The group wants to do something in her honor, so they carry out a plan that Alaska had wanted to do her senior year. They call it “The Alaska Young Memorial Prank” and decided to make it an annual event. They did it because they said “it would be etched in the memory of everyone at the Creek, and Alaska deserved nothing less” (201). So season two would come from the boys deciding to make the memorial prank more than an annual thing, and instead a weekly thing. They want to make sure the school never forgets Alaska, and they do so by carrying out pranks in her name.

Will the show be successful at reaching a wider audience?

                Not every teenager enjoys reading, nor do they always have info on the latest and best-selling books. A TV show would be a great way to get word about Looking for Alaska out there. It would draw in the young adults that watch TV more than read. Then, if the audience really likes the show, they can go pick up the book at their local bookstore and get a more in-depth viewpoint on Pudge’s first year at the school (since the TV show would not only show Pudge’s viewpoint, but the other character’s too). People who have already read the book can, obviously, watch the show too. With the help of the author the actors and actresses will portray the characters accurately, so the readers will enjoy watching the characters they came to know come to life in the show. The show will give them an image to go with the words they read, and hopefully they will enjoy it. Then, if the show becomes widely popular, the network can start selling other things such as t-shirts or journals made to look like the one Alaska kept as another way to bring in the audience and advertise for the book/show.