~Author's Note: This was a compare/contrast essay about dystopian worlds. We had to compare characters and/ or worlds to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradburn. In this piece, I compared the Holocaust, Slavery, and Fahrenheit 451. It is one of my longer pieces. If you have any comments/ suggestion about my piece, please comment.
Nazis. Slavery. In the world, there are many examples of dystopian societies; these stories might be fictitious, such as the world of Guy Montag in the book Fahrenheit 451. These all happen at different points of time: two in the past and one in the future. However, they all seem to be related in one way, a dystopian universe.
A dystopian world is a world where the government has an enormous amount of power, almost limitless, over the citizens. One example is the Nazis. The Nazis, Adolf Hitler, ruled a society and turned it into a nightmare for many people. Jews in particular. Nazis tried to get "rid of" Jews in Germany. Thousands of Jews lived in constant fear of the Nazis, something that slaves around the world can relate to.
Slavery has been one of the biggest problems the known Earth today has had to deal with. Slavery in the United States started when traders brought African Americans from Africa to help in cane plantations and farms. Soon, it was an accepted practice and social status was placed on how many slaves you had. Many people disagreed on how to treat the unfortunate slaves. Some were treated with respect, yet many were treated harshly, and were abused. Many were afraid of the law, and what it represented.
Finally, Guy Montag lives in a world where imagination is discouraged. Books are banned, and the firemen do their jobs differently that those of today. The firemen of today put out house fires. The firemen, Montag included, create fires in the houses of which there are books. This is a dystopian world as it is completely controlled by the government, and the citizens have no power. Montag makes history in his time when he burned his commander and "broke" a metal hound, the machine used to track fugitives.
These compare in the way that they all produce a story about government controlling worlds. The government could be white people, Adolf Hitler, and just the plain government in Fahrenheit 451. They try to make their version of paradise in the real world and might succeed, yet will make millions terrible and frightful. In Fahrenheit 451, everyone sticks to a schedule, and do everything the same; nothing new is learned and if it is… you are finished. For slavery, the white men had their version of paradise and got it, at the expense of the slaves. Finally, the Nazi's tried to gain control by getting rid of the Jews. This all shows how the government makes the citizens suffer, of ignorance or of too much knowledge.
One way these are different is the fact that two of these events have happened in real life, the Holocaust and slavery, and one is a piece of fiction, Fahrenheit 451. The Holocaust and slavery are two pieces in history of terror; hopefully, now that they ended, they wont start again. Fahrenheit 451 is an art of fiction set in the future, where people burn books, instead of people.
Together and separately, these three worlds are dystopian societies. Guy Montag and the slaves and Jews also have something in common, they wanted to escape the harsh world of reality and have freedom to speak and move. Eventually, they were all granted this but it was a long, grueling process of which many were lost. Thankfully, the world has learned from its mistakes and is changing for the better.
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