Dystopian Essay Example: The Hunger Games and Divergent

A dystopia is a place that is undesirable and frightening to live in. The word dystopia translates to “bad place”. In a dystopia, people have an upsetting lack of personal freedoms. They are oppressed by their governments and subject to their government's total control and they are discriminated against based on gender, age or how smart you may be. There are places in the world that can be considered more dystopian than others but no place can ever be considered truly dystopian; or utopian for that matter. Although the world we are living in today is not considered a dystopia, it does contain aspects that would be considered dystopian in nature such as the monitoring of citizens, war, and the division of citizens by class or ability which facilitate the institution of a dystopia.

In the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and her family go through many hardships surrounding their government. This is what defines this series of books and movies as a dystopian genre. “When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So, I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.” (Collins 1.11) This is insinuating that the people who live in this society do not have the choice of freedom of speech without punishment from their government. In our case, we do have freedom of speech without punishment from our government, instead we can pay the price of our fellow societal members for our thoughts and feelings so just like Katniss’s mother feels, sometimes it is better to just bite our tongues and keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves. As this series as a whole plays out, you find a common understanding that the government has total control over these citizens by separating them into districts one through twelve with one being a thirteenth, but is considered to be the “the forgotten district” and is unspoken about, these are the people who have fought against their country for their freedoms causing the government to completely eliminate what they thought was everybody from this district. “All I can think is how unjust the whole thing is, The Hunger Games. Why am I hopping around like some trained dog trying to please people I hate? The longer the interview goes on, the more my fury seems to rise to the surface, until I'm literally spitting out answers at him.”  (Collins 9.22) This is alluding to the annual “Hunger Games” the government is hosting which is crafted to make two arbitrary people from every district fight to the death with one another until there's one left standing to entertain the capital's people and promising a better life with money and nothing to ever long for.  In the Hunger Games, it is very well understood that the people are not only at war with one another, but they are completely brainwashed to not understand the fight shouldn't be within themselves and the differing districts, it should be with their own government.

In Divergent, the people are at war with only their government, not themselves. This is insinuating this series would fall under the dystopian class due to the sheer fact of government control and advancement of technology that is unfathomable to us living in the present time. These people are forced to take a test that allows the operator to see into your mind and how you handle fear, that tells you where you belong, but the government leaves the choice up to you as to where you will live out the rest of your life. These factions consist of five factions: Abnegation (selfless) these people take care of everyone but themselves and are currently facing some hardships as they are who rules the world around them due to their kind nature, Erudite (intellectual) this group is made of people who are extremely smart and continue to want to grow their knowledge, for example, most are scientists, Dauntless (brave) these people enjoy the rush of doing things that take nothing but integrity and bravery, they honor their faction and protect the surrounding ones by extreme training and dedication to the people, Candor (honest) this would almost be considered like todays justice system, these people swear to always tell the truth and are honored by many due to this, and Amity (peaceful) these are the people who dedicate their lives to keeping the peace between factions and making sure everything is going as smoothly as it can. There is also one more faction, kind of like the forgotten district of The Hunger Games, the factionless, these are the people who live in severe poverty and fit into none of the listed factions above “I feel like someone breathed new air into my lungs. I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless. I am Divergent." (Roth 35.442) This is signifying that Tris is panic stricken about her test results. This is all due to the known fear of the divergent kind. The government is frightened by these people with these results because they don’t fit in any of the factions created for them, they have a mind of their own that cannot be controlled, which implies the government can't control their lives by shoving them in a box with a faction. “Beatrice 'Tris' Prior: And what if they already know? Tori: Then you're already dead.” (Roth 8.69) What the government does with these people is eliminate them so there are no uprisings and they can remain in control of their people out of fear. 

To conclude, the difference between our today's life and the lives we are reading about in these dystopian novels is only that our government controls us in a subtler way and our technology is nowhere near as advanced as the kind in these societies. These people we are reading about lives have been stolen from them and in most cases, it goes unacknowledged or realized because this is how they are raised from birth. For the authors behind these words, it feels almost like a warning to us reading to be cautious of our actions and actually pay attention to the world around us. As once stated, the world we are living in today is not considered a dystopia but it does in fact contain aspects that would be considered dystopian in nature such as the monitoring of citizens, war, and the division of citizens by class or ability which facilitate the institution of a dystopia.