Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. If a utopia is a world where everything is perfect, a “dystopia” is a world where everything is imperfect. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a “dystopia” as “an imaginary place or condition in which everything is as bad as possible.” Dystopian fiction is a popular subgenre of fiction, and one that is typically used to critically comment on human nature and the state of society. What other dystopian books, TV, and/or movies have you read or watched before? What sort of message did those works teach you (or attempt to teach you) about the human condition and/or culture?

Teaching Suggestion: Students will most likely have had some exposure to dystopian media before. If the classroom discussion is slow to start, you can ask students if they’ve read or seen the following hugely popular works of dystopian fiction: (1) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, (2) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, (3) 1984 by George Orwell, (4) Uglies by Scot Westerfeld, and (5) The Giver by Lois Lowry.