Dystopian Essay
By David
“The right to choose a leader is not freedom, its democracy. The right to
choose whether you want a leader is anarchy”-David Kan
Since the second half of the twentieth century, the world has been dominated by
ever growing political and corporate greed. The world is becoming a different place,
people are growing ever more distant from their governments and corporations are
getting ever greedier. These all these issues are the concerns of the authors writing
these dystopia novels, such as Bradbury.
A very troubling and disturbing thought is the ever growing influence of the
government and the governments’ distancing itself from the people. This theme is
discussed within Harrison Bergeron and is slightly mentioned in A Sound of Thunder.
The stories were written in the 1970s, when the Soviet Union was still strong, and the
fear of communism taking over the world was a real and frightening risk to the
dystopian authors who wrote during that time. A Sound of Thunder depicts an
dictatorial government as a path that we don’t want to follow. He shows it as an
alternate future and what could happen if we don’t change our ways. Bradbury
mentions in the story: “We're lucky. If Deutscher had gotten in, we'd have the worst
kind of dictatorship. There's an anti everything man for you, a militarist, anti-Christ,
anti-human, anti-intellectual. People called us up, you know, joking but not joking.
Said if Deutscher became President they wanted to go live in 1492.” He describes the
dictatorship as so awful, that one would rather live in 1492, the Middle Ages.
Harrison Bergeron also contains elements similar to that of dictatorship and
communism. The government in Harrison Bergeron is similar to that of communism
and it rules the future America with an iron rod. Ray Bradbury is trying to warn us if
we are continuously unaware towards the government’s behaviours then we shall
become a an ignorant society similar to that of Harrison Bergeron. We shall believe
whatever they are doing to us they are doing for our own good. For example, in reality,
does America’s general public even realise what America is up to or what their
government is secretly doing behind their backs. This is not just America this is
happening around in most governments around the world. Democracy is no longer
what it used to be and what we are living in today is quite a different matter. To quote
anonymous: “The worst that can happen under a monarchy is rule by a single imbecile
but democracy often means that the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred
imbeciles.”
The second factor of modern society that the authors of these dystopian futures
are worrying about is the advancement of human technology beyond the reaches of
humanity. This worrying factor is shown in most of the dystopian novels, such as
There will Come Soft Rains and A Sound of Thunder. In A Sound of Thunder, the story
shows the consequences if technology advances beyond human regulation and moral
limitations. The story is an exaggeration of human technology, but is a great example
of what humanity is doing in modern times. Humans are constantly “raping” nature
and the world for all it is. We are abusing the innovation of our technology, and just
like what Bradbury said, it is beyond our regulations. Even now, without Bradbury’s
time machine, there are and items and inventions of modern technology that are out of
the reaches of law and have the ability of evading the law. A great case of this
situation is that of anti- personnel mines. Although this is not considered “new
technology”, this is a great example of an item evading law. In the Ottawa Treaty, the
UN wished to ban anti-personnel mines, yet the United States refused to sign along
with many countries. If humanity doesn’t unite and work together to form rules that
protect mankind itself from technology, then humanity will be brought down by its
own ignorance of its inventions. Another issue is mentioned in There Will Come Soft
Rains, the development of robots, is a commonly discussed topic. There are many
similar movies and novels, such as I Robot and Surrogates. The robots in There Will
Come Soft Rains are just empty shells programmed to do their jobs, without
compassion and feelings. In There Will Come Soft Rains, Bradbury mentions that
without humans machines will crumble and come to a halt. A quote from Robert
Hughes strengthens the fact that it is the human behind the scenes that really matter
not the machine: “A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a
loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.”
The last aspect of the dystopian future novels is that of corporate greed. As a
matter of fact statistics show that 42 percent of America’s wealth is held by 1 percent
of the whole population. Corporate greed is a real and ready threat. It is like a leech,
slowing sucking away your blood without you ever knowing it; and the only way to
get it off is to burn it with a lighter. This topic has also been slightly mentioned as a
subtopic within A Sound of Thunder: “The government doesn't like us here. We have
to pay big graft to keep our franchise.” This quote is a excellent example to the
methods corporate companies use to make as much money as possible, and is a topic
that Bradbury wants to bring to light. In my opinion Bradbury may be also hinting to
the fact that if corporations are in control over dangerous things and the government
chooses to turn a blind eye, then it is a recipe for trouble.
“Men must not check reason by tradition, but contrawise, must check tradition by
reason.”-Leo Tolstoy. This is how the authors of these novels saw their surrounding
“climate” and what it would lead to in the future.