Hungering for Dystopia?

The Silenced
by James DeVita

“I want you to ask yourselves something and really think about it. If I were to take away everything about you that you think is you, who would you be? Because that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to kill whatever you think is you. There’s no room for you anymore. There’s only room for us.”

In this quick-paced and deliberately written dystopian book, The Silenced, author James DeVita presents a nightmare-giving plot of a totalitarian land governed by the “Protectorate” who seek to eliminate all traces of individuality in society. Freedoms are stolen from people on mere whim, and laws are changed randomly to suit the wishes of the cruel government that wants complete control. The school work of students is strictly enforced and controlled by state-appointed instructors and cameras are placed in people’s homes to watch their every move. In the midst of it all is 16-year old Marena who fights every day for a way to resist. Along with her best friend Dex, they create The White Rose, a group that will undermine the government’s iron fist that is slowly crushing their lives.

Reading through the cliff-hangers on every page, this book will take you through the struggle to take back your freedom and save the people from a cruel life.

The White Rose WILL NOT be silent!

The Handmaid’s Tale
by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood incorporates real world events and puts a fantasy finish to them in the world-moving book of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Using traditional customs and creating this dystopian world where women have no rights to speak or think freely, Atwood describes what life would be like after a war that destroys almost everything — putting awareness to women to remember how important their freedoms are today and how easily stolen they can become.

In a place once known as the United States, Gilead has taken over as the government of a dying population. Desperate to get rid of the fast shrinking birth rate, the leaders of Gilead have created the Handmaids. Held up in high security prison-like communities, women are used only for reproductive purposes. With only one high rank male official and their wives who are unable to bear children, the Handmaids are forced to be the vessels for their Commander. If they are unable to bear a child, they are shunned and known as non-women.

Through Atwood’s inspiring words, the book puts awareness into the dangers of gender relations, ecological damage and the dangers of mixing religion and government. It touches on the struggle for an ordinary person who was stripped of life as she knew it, to survive a life that has forced her to become an object, not a person.

1984
by George Orwell

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

In the most well known and referenced to book in it’s generation, 1984 is the greatest dystopian book of all time. Written by George Orwell who creates a modern classic of a place that incorporates an imaginary world that has convinced its people that the wrong thing is the right thing. Taking control over citizens’ thoughts, actions and what they say, Big Brother is the biggest and baddest since Hitler himself.

From the first page of this masterpiece, Orwell describes the life of Winston Smith who struggles every day to not show resistance to the superstate of Oceania. With cameras always watching him and the things he does, there is little room for Winston to make mistakes. Once he meets a woman who hates Big Brother as much as him, they take the dangerous action of escape from their controlled life to be together.

Orwell will take you through a rollercoaster of emotions as he adds the suspense, controlling environment and horrid leader to the beautifully written pages of 1984.

The Maze Runner
by James Dashner

The Maze Runner is a teen science fiction novel where the characters come alive on every page. Author James Dashner writes in a way that makes his  readers feel the characters’ pain, their yearning to escape and their fear of the unknown.

The story begins with a boy named Thomas who wakes up with his world completely turned around. Forgetting the life he knew, he joins boys like him in the Glade, a place enclosed by stone walls and bordered on one side by a massive maze. Some of the boys are known as maze runners or explorers of the uncharted lands of the maze. With Thomas’ urge to escape from this living hell, he searches day and night for a way out and becomes a runner. But when a mysterious girl appears sending the message that everything is about to change, the need to survive becomes a life and death matter.

Join the maze runners in the heart-racing great dystopian novel that you don’t want to miss out on.

Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World opens in London, nearly six hundred years in the future . Human life has been almost entirely industrialized, and it is controlled by a few people at the top of a World State, the government of this dystopian world.

Author Aldous Huxley has brought together a place where humans are genetically bred to passively serve a ruling order in his masterpiece novel. This dystopian future offers many pleasures, while manipulating the people into mind-numbing dependence. Huxley explores the evils of a seemingly satisfied and successful society, because that stability is only derived from the loss of freedom and personal responsibility. None of the people challenge the caste system, believing they all work together for the common good.

Part of what has made this classic so controversial is the very thing that has made it so successful. We want to believe that technology has the power to save us, but Huxley shows the dangers in it as well.

This book has been entertaining readers for generations, and it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment for everyone.

(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)