So, I was sitting minding my own business, eating dinner in a local favorite restaurant of mine, when a mother and her three children sat down in the booth next to me and started talking about their school lives. I won’t go into the conversation they were having, but let me tell you, I wanted in on it. I wanted to ask them questions. I wanted to add input that would rock their teenage brains and get them really thinking. And what were they talking about? Two of my favorite dystopian books: The Giver by Lois Lowry and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. If there were a third book I would have added to this list, it would be A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
Yes, they were entering the tempestuous world of speculative fiction. Ah, if only I could have talked to them. If only I could have relayed to them how much these books changed my perspective of the world around me. They were the books that asked the important question: What if this were true and what if it continues?
Shall we start with The Giver? Lovely.
Lois Lowry’s false utopia, seen through the eyes of a boy named Jonas, cautions the reader on the dangers of censorship and the possibility of living in a world where everyone lives exactly the same as everyone else. Everything from the sound of an airplane flying overhead, the feel of the sun on skin, puberty, and even colors – all of it has been washed from human memory through the use of hormone suppression drugs and communistic government (or what communism believes it should look like), leaving everyone to live lives of relative “sameness.” Something as simple as the word “fear” is considered strong language and should be toned down to so-called “exact language.” As the book opens, Jonas tells himself to change the word to “apprehensive,” even as he races home to meet his newest family member – a third child, a rare if impossible occurrence in his world.
The child, named Gabe, is not developing as fast as he should be and Jonas’ father was given special permission to bring him home to see if being away from the laboratory where all children are born and live for their first year is enough to spark Gabe’s development.
It’s only after Jonas is chosen to become the Receiver, a job that has remained empty for decades, that he comes into contact with the Giver, who tells him the truth of the world in which they live. He is told to stop taking his suppression drugs. And the world around him comes to life. He starts to see in color. He can feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, through the transference of memory from the Giver. And he watches a video of his father killing a baby, because it was a twin and twins weren’t allowed.
Jonas finds out soon after that Gabe is still not developing as well as hoped. He takes the baby and leaves his life behind.
There are four books in the Giver Quartet, all told from different perspectives and with different ways of living in this world, but out of all of them the first is still my favorite.
Speaking of censorship, the second book on my list, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, literally rocked my world when I first read it in tenth grade. I immediately latched onto the story of Montag, a fireman who starts fires for the purpose of burning books. But it wasn’t just the idea of censorship that led me to love Bradbury’s iconic novel. The vivid details of a world ruled by television and the obsession of needing the latest and greatest, of always being plugged in, was decades ahead of its time.
Back in 1999, when I was a precocious high school student, the fact that the world depicted within those futuristic pages was almost an exact replica of the one I lived in blew my mind. The boxes on the wall that could talk to you reminded me of the first flatscreen television that I saw hanging in someone’s living room. The small screen by Montag’s wife when she went to bed was so similar to sleeping with the radio on, which was soon replaced by my very own tv when I was in college.
I was even surrounded by a world where words were being replaced with pictures. There’s a commercial that came out for KitKat back in 2017, maybe you’ve seen it, where these two medieval men are trying to put together a “Kätapult,” and the instructions are all pictures. The funniest line in the commercial (“Where are the words?”) echoed everyone’s confusion and frustration with assembling furniture that they bought from Ikea and to this day I still associate those instructions to Bradbury’s imagery.
Unfortunately until the 2018 movie starring Michael B. Jordan was released, I couldn’t say there was a good movie that depicted Montag’s world. The 1966 version was a bit cheesy, even for a movie of the time, and a bit boring to boot. Now, with the revamped movie that added the complications of social media to the world, I can finally say that yes, I recommend the movie. Is it as good as the book? That’s up to interpretation. As always, I would say, if you weren’t subjected to the novel in high school, read the book beforehand and make up your own mind.
As for Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World, if you’re interested in a world full of sex, violence, cloning, mixed with the idea of humanity losing its creativity and sense of family, be ready for a wake-up call. You might be looking in the mirror. Are you a clone? Or do you have what it takes to pave your own path?
Thank you for joining this month’s edition of all things surreal and speculative. Fly away my pretties. Be free.
Book Gnome 