Dystopia

So I learned something new the other day and wanted to share it. And yes, I'm also going to talk about books! Anyone surprised by that? lol On the website for my online book club, you can track all of the books that you read. Rate the books, write reviews, read other peoples, and other things like that. Also, you can make as many categories, or bookshelves, that you want to sort out your books. In other words, like I have a bookshelf that is audio books. So, if you wanted to know every book that I've listened to on audio, you'd just click on that shelf.

Well, several of the books that I've looked at and read recently, one of my friends has added to a bookshelf that she titled "Dystopia". I had no idea what Dystopia was, so I finally got curious and had to find out! According to wikipidea, "a dystopia is the vision of a society in which conditions of life are miserable and characterized by poverty, oppression, war, violence, disease, pollution, nuclear fallout and/or the abridgement of human rights, resulting in widespread unhappiness, suffering, and other kinds of pain." So basically, the opposite of Utopia, and somewhere that you would never want to live! Why in the world would someone want to read about a world like that? Except, then I started looking through all of the books that I have rated on the website, and was shocked when I realized just how many of them could really fit into that category, especially books that I 've read lately. So why is it that I keep reading these kinds of books? What about them makes it worth it?

I was thinking about all of the different types of worlds that some of these books portray. In "The Hunger Games" and it's sequel "Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins, the world is a vicious place where the government controls everything. The citizens can't even stop the Capital from taking 24 of there children every year, and basically murdering them for sport. All while the citizens of the country have to watch and pretend to enjoy what they are seeing. (Quick side note, I just finished reading "Catching Fire" and it was better than I'd hoped for! Fantastic!) I also just recently read the first book of the "Ender's Game" series by Orson Scott Card. In that world setup, when children are just toddlers, a device is implanted in the back of their neck so that they can be watched and examined at all times. Then the smartest, most promising children are taken away from their families at around the age of 6! They are thrown into Battle School, where they learn war techniques at a time in their life when they should be just enjoying being kids. They have no contact whatsoever with their families and probably wont even see them until they are 12-16 years old. In the "Shadow Children" series by Margaret Peterson Haddix, the government wont allow people to have any more than 2 children. So any additional children that are born are forced into hiding. Imagine the type of hiding that the Jews experienced in Germany during WWII, but it has to happen for a child's entire life! If anyone learns about them, they and their families will be killed. And the list just keeps going on! Including, "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer, the "Uglies" series by Scott Westerfeld, "Poison Study" by Maria V Snyder, or "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury and more.

Why do I read these? Why would I want to read a book about kids having to kill other kids just to try to survive? These worlds and situations are horrific, but there is just something about them that is compelling! I think that it must be the triumph of the human spirit that I love. These are characters that you feel like you can identify with in some way. Then you watch them be put into an impossible situation, and you just have to hope that they can survive and thrive! You get the chance to watch how someone can rise from the worst situation and become great! There is just something about this genre that is so heartbreaking and yet completely wonderful! And after reading some of these books, all that I can say is that I sure am glad that they are just fiction!