The diploma thesis Modern Dystopias and Theories of Totalitarianism deals with comparation of this two phenomena. The thesis is based on the concept of Giovanni Sartori. He understands the phenomenon of totalitarianism as ideal ending of the axis totalitarianism- democracy. Extreme points of this axis fulfill the role of unrealizable ideal regimes. In reality we can only move closer to them but modern dystopias may represent these ideal regimes. The diploma thesis is divided into theoretical and practical section. There is the analyse of five books in the theoretical section which deal with the theory of totalitarianism. The analysis contains the work of Sigmund Neumann, Hannah Arendt, Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew K. Brzeziński, Giovanni Sartori and Juan J. Linz. Each theory of totalitarianism is supplemented by reflection from other authors. There is the analyse of five dystopias (J. Zamjatin - We, A. Huxley - Brave New World, G. Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-four, M. Atwood - The Handmaid`s Tale, A. Moore, D. Lloyd - V for Vendetta) in the practical section. The analysis contains the storyline of the book, elements of totalitarian regime in the dystopia and inspiration of author for the world of dystopia. There is elaborated final comparation between theories of totalitarianism and modern dystopias...

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze how the contemporary western society is reflected in the modern dystopian works' perspective. Key problems and aspects defining today's western society, e.g. consumerism and the role of science and technology, are specified in the introductory part of the thesis. The next part concerns with dystopian creation. Firstly there is focus on dystopian genre characteristics and its roots and typology. Secondly there is introduced a triad of classical dystopian works' representatives: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1984 by George Orwell and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Every work is shortly introduced with its synopsis in the beginning and key features of described visions of society follow afterwards. Then the thesis speaks about chosen modern dystopian works' representatives in detail: The Matrix by the Wachowskis, Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Divergent by Veronica Roth. After the synopsis summary of each there is an analysis of key features, a comparison with classical dystopias and a search for parallels in the contemporary western society. Questions how modern dystopias reflect modern society and how they correlate with classical dystopias and expert literature concerning contemporary social phenomena are answered in the conclusion of the thesis.

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"In From Eden to Dystopia: An Ecocritical Examination of Emergent Mythologies" "in Early Los Angeles Literary Texts, ecocriticism and critical regionalism were utilized" "alongside other American Studies practices to analyze nineteenth- and early-twentieth-" "century depictions of nature in Los Angeles. Specifically, these tools were applied to" "travel guides and narratives of the 1870s and 1880s, the turn-of-the-century magazine" "The Land of Sunshine, Upton Sinclair’s Oil! (1926) and Raymond Chandler’s The Big" "Sleep (1939), and other non-fiction publications of the 1920s and ’30s to track an" "evolving narrative of Los Angeles as a paradise and later as a place perched on the edge" "of ecological ruin. Key themes included nature as aesthetic or health-related amenity vs." "exploitable resource, along with both subtle and overt class- and race-based" "environmental exclusions. The chief aim of this thesis was to elucidate how Los Angeles" "went from a “new Eden for the Saxon home-seeker” to the place where its river was" "paved with cement and virtually forgotten for decades. This thesis concluded that with" "the Los Angeles River’s recent revitalization efforts, there could be future gains made for" "other aspects of the city’s environment, with the hope that uncovering past idea-shaping" "narratives of nature in Los Angeles may help illuminate how current ideas of Los" "Angeles as a place without nature came to be and how that city-versus-nature dichotomy" "can be both damaging and false."

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Through an analysis of the depiction of female protagonists in young adult dystopian and speculative works of fiction, this thesis establishes leadership studies as a theoretical framework for literary study. Leadership studies is a relatively young branch of academic inquiry, using interdisciplinary approaches to investigate the phenomenon of leadership. From psychology, sociology, and philosophy, to education, business, and history, leadership studies has both drawn from and provided insight into a variety of disciplines; however, these theories have not yet found their way into conversations about literature. My thesis pulls leadership studies away from its corporate connotations to establish it as a valid and valuable addition to our literary analysis repertoire through a demonstration of its potential to further conversations about texts. This analysis is positioned within the contexts of children’s literature, feminist theory, and practices of reading for ideology, anchoring leadership studies in already-established modes of inquiry while demonstrating how this field offers valuable insight into them. My focus on dystopian and speculative young adult novels reflects the recent surge in dystopic/postapocalyptic texts that feature strong female protagonists, presenting potential leadership strategies for young girl readers during an important stage of development. Thus, this thesis uses leadership studies to further our analysis of how agency, power, and gender are represented within children’s literature.

In his Truth and Method, Gadamer explains that subjectivity is the everyday understanding that allows us to engage with the world. Gadamer identifies three main aspects that effect our understanding, namely history, language and dialogue. Dystopian fiction is in a unique position to portray how systems of societal control affect and effect understanding, and thus subjectivity, because dystopian fiction primarily explores societies rather than only individuals. This dissertation applies Gadamer’s framework of subjectivity to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to analyse their portrayals of subjectivity critically. Huxley’s imagined world of test-tube births, rampant consumerism, feelies and orgy-porgies depicts a subjectivity that is nearly completely controlled through the manipulation of history, language and dialogue, with the exception of a few rebellious characters. But Orwell’s Oceania is far grimmer, and the systems of control in place to manipulate history, language and dialogue create a harsh environment in which Winston Smith, the protagonist, struggles to assert his individuality, his own subjectivity, until the liberating sexual relationship he has with Julia. Although both novels depict stringent measures of control, the possibility of rebellion is present in the worlds depicted in both novels, suggesting that despite the manipulation around subjectivity’s three main pillars, as identified by Gadamer, something else provides the impetus for the characters’ understanding of rebellion. Therefore, the study also analyses the characters’ pre-understandings, as explained by Nietzsche and Heidegger, as sources for a wider framework. Through the novels’ portrayals of rebellion, these pre-understandings are shown to complement and inform Gadamer’s framework of subjectivity. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2015. / English / MA (English) / Unrestricted

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Uppsatsens syfte är att analysera samt jämföra två svenska dystopiska romaner, De kommer att drunkna i sina mödrars tårar av Johannes Anyuru (2017) och Händelsehorisonten av Balsam Karam (2018). Analysen består av två delar: den första delen undersöker i vilken mån romanerna kan beskrivas med hjälp av teorin om ”critical dystopia” och den andra delen undersöker aspekter av intersektionalitet i romanernas gestaltning av etnicitet och kön. I varje del görs först en analys av varje roman, följt av en jämförande analys. I analysen framkommer att hoppet är ett återkommande tema i de båda romanerna och någonting som kan säga driver intrigen framåt. Den intersektionella analysen framhåller hur romanerna på olika sätt lyfter frågor om etnicitet i förhållande till kön, men även klass. Könsaspekten är särskilt framträdande i Händelsehorisonten, men mer nedtonad i De kommer att drunkna i sina mödrars tårar. Analysen visar på två tillvägagångssätt för diskussion av rasism, klass och kön och antas vara två exempel på vad samtida dystopilitteratur anser relevant att lyfta i vårt samhälle.

We live in an age of rapid change. The advance of science and technology, throughout history, has culminated in periods of transition when social values have had to adapt to a changed environment. Such times have proved fertile ground for the expansion of the imagination. Utopian literature offers a vast archive of information concerning the relationship between scientific and technological progress and social change. Alterations in the most basic machinery of society inspired utopian authors to write of distant and future worlds which had achieved a state of harmony and plenty. The dilemmas which writers faced were particular to their era, but there also emerged certain universal themes and questions: What is the best organisation of society? What tools would be adequate to the task? What does it mean to be human? The dividing line on these issues revolves around two opposed beliefs. Some perceived the power inherent in technology to effect the greatest improvement in the human condition. Others were convinced that the organisation of the social order must come first so as to create an environment sympathetic to perceived human needs. There are, necessarily, contradictions in such a division. They can be seen plainly in More's Utopia itself. More wanted to see new science and technique developed. But he also condemned the social consequences which inevitably flowed from the process of discovery. These consequences led More to create a utopia based on social reorganisation. In the main, the utopias of Francis Bacon, Edward Bellamy and the later H. G. Wells accepted science, while the work of William Morris, Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut rejected science in preference for a different social order. More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis were written at a time when feudal, agricultural society was being transformed by new discoveries and techniques. In a later age, Bellamy's Looking Backward and Morris's News From Nowhere offer contrary responses to society at the height of the Industrial evolution. These four authors serve as a prelude to the main area of the thesis which centres on the twentieth century. Wells, though his first novel appeared in 1895, produced the vast bulk of his work in the current century. Huxley acts as an appropriate balance to Wells and also exemplifies the shift from utopia to dystopia. The last section of the thesis deals with the work of Kurt Vonnegut and includes an interview with that author. The twentieth century has seen the proliferation of dystopias, portraits of the disastrous consequences of the headlong pursuit of science and technology, unallied to human values. Huxley and Vonnegut crystallised the fears of a modern generation: that we create a soulless, mechanised, urban nightmare. The contemporary fascination with science in literature is merely an extension of a process with a long tradition and underlying theme. The advance of science and technology created the physical and intellectual environment for utopian authors which determined the form and content of their visions.

By examining critical studies of the dystopian genre from Gregory Claeys, Fátima Vieira, and Keith Booker as well as the studies of young adult dystopian novels from Roberta Trites, Kenneth Donnelson, and Sean Connors, I argue that young adult literature (YAL) has literary merit and is worth studying. This literariness stems from a novel's ability to explore complex themes like religion, sacrifice, and societal contracts. I introduce and analyze a subgenre of YA dystopian literature, which I classify as the medical dystopia, a genre that is uniquely positioned to explore the complex moral questions that surround advancing medical technologies and their impact on society. To demonstrate how YAL can deal with the complex ideas inherent to themedical dystopian genre, I analyze Neal Shusterman's Unwind and Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion. The analysis concludes that novels like these do not lack substance and have literary value due to their ability to invite young adults to view the darkness that exists within society from a position of safety and light.