Critics Quotes

Question 1

Alex Gendle

cautionary tales

Answer 1

“dystopias are cautionary tales, not about some particular government or technology, but the very idea that humanity can be molded into an ideal shape”

Question 2

Syreeta McFadden

anxieties and realities

Answer 2

“dystopian stories used to reflect our anxieties, now they reflect our reality”

Question 3

Lauren Oliver

hope

Answer 3

“dystopian novels… show that there is always hope, even in the bleakest future”

Question 4

George Orwell

image of the future

Answer 4

“if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever”

Question 5

Tom Moylan

terrors of the twentieth century

Answer 5

“dystopian narrative is largely the product of the terrors of the twentieth century”

Question 6

Brady Gerber

no escape from the dystopian state

Answer 6

“there is no way out of the dystopian state, even in thought”

Question 7

Amin Malak

power

Answer 7

“dystopias essentially deal with power… power as the prohibition or perversion of human potential”

Question 8

E M Forster

hateful apocalypse

Answer 8

“there is not a monster in that hateful apocalypse which does not exist in embryo today”

Question 9

Alan Kennedy

the boot and the face

Answer 9

“for the boot to feel power it is dependent on the existence of the face”

Question 10

Erika Gottleib

degradation of human beings

Answer 10

“man is nothing but a beast, and like a beast, can be degraded until he is deprived of his will”

Question 11

Margaret Atwood

importance of language

Answer 11

“the importance of language is highlighted as the main instrument of ideological and social control”

Question 12

Tim Crook

purpose of propaganda

Answer 12

“the purpose of propaganda is to narrow and limit human consciousness, confuse human consciousness and control and narrow the range of thinking”

Question 13

Mary McCarthy

dystopias are a reflection of our own society, functioning as a warning

Answer 13

“we are warned by seeing ourselves in a distorting mirror, of what we may be turning into if current trends are allowed to continue”

Question 14

George Orwell

opposition to totalitarianism

Answer 14

“every line of serious work that i have written since 1936 has been written, directly and indirectly, against totalitarianism”

Question 15

Richard Clay

utopia as an engine of cultural change

Answer 15

“that yearning, that shared hope for better, is like a current that runs throughout history… the idea of utopia has been an engine of cultural change, spurring human imagination”

Question 16

M Keith Booker

unfamiliar settings

Answer 16

“dystopian literature works by a process of ‘defamiliarisation’ in which unfamiliar settings provide the backdrop to explore social and political practices that might otherwise be taken for granted in a familiar setting”

Question 17

M Keith Booker

dreams becoming nightmares

Answer 17

“if a utopia is an imagined ideal society that dreams of a world in which the social, political and economic problems of the real present have been solved, then a dystopia is an imagined world in which the dream has become a nightmare”

Question 18

Margaret Atwood

ustopia

Answer 18

“ustopia is a word i made up combining utopia and dystopia — the imagined perfect society and its opposite because, in my view, each contains a latent version of the others”

Question 19

Tom Moylan

political opposition

Answer 19

“a new space for a new form of political opposition”

Question 20

Tom Moylan

ambiguous endings

Answer 20

“critical dystopias are texts that maintain a utopian impulse… allowing both readers and protagonists to hope by resisting closure: the ambiguous, open endings of these novels maintain the utopian impulse within the work”

Question 21

Tom Moylan

modern society

Answer 21

“dystopia expresses a simple refusal of modern society”

Question 22

Ursula K Le Guin

extrapolating current trends

Answer 22

“to extrapolate imaginatively from current trends and events to a near future that’s half prediction, half satire”

Question 23

M Keith Booker

social criticism

Answer 23

“the role of dystopian fiction is social criticism… the treatment of imaginary societies in the best dystopian fiction is always highly relevant to the specific ‘real world’ societies and issues”

Question 24

Phillip Rahv

utopia betrayed

Answer 24

1940s texts tend to be about “the melancholy mid century genre of lost illusions and utopia betrayed”

Question 25

Marge Piercy

purpose of creating imagined futures in dystopias

Answer 25

“the point of a novel about the future is not to predict it… the point of creating futures is to get people to imagine what they want and don’t want to happen down the road — and maybe do something about it”

Question 26

Margaret Atwood

the power of names

Answer 26

“the names people are given determine the way they perceive themselves”

Question 27

Margaret Atwood

optimism in THMT

Answer 27

“The Handmaid’s Tale is optimistic… it shows that the writer retains three attributes that power-mad regimes cannot tolerate: a human imagination; the power to communicate; and hope”

Question 28

Anthony Burgess

free will

Answer 28

“is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?”

Question 29

Charlie Brooker

technology

Answer 29

“it’s hard to think of a single human function that technology hasn’t somehow altered”

“if technology is a drug - and it does feel like a drug - then what precisely are the side-effects?”

Question 30

Robert Stevenson Brown

pessimism in 1984

Answer 30

“Orwell’s vision is more pessimistic than that of Huxley. Winston is not allowed to make his final tragic stand against society, as John does in Brave New World by committing suicide, instead he is exposed as a traitor and tortured until he renounces always rebellious thoughts, even his love for Julia”

Question 31

Robert Stevenson Brown

technology

Answer 31

“one of the vital functions of dystopias is to make readers re-evaluate their relationship with the machines and technology of the modern world”

Question 32

Robert Stevenson Brown

communicating fears to the reader

Answer 32

“in dystopias, authors take beliefs and trends within their own societies which they find worrying and extrapolate and exaggerate these aspects to create a nightmarish society of the future”

“this allows them to communicate their fears to the reader”

Question 33

Peter Firchow

the present

Answer 33

“most of the memorable utopian and dystopian fictions of our time are largely pessimistic — not of course about the future, but really about the present”