Y9: Introducing Dystopia (Week 1)

Hello Y9!

Welcome to Downstairs in H Block, the new English Department Blog where we'll be posting tasks and resources to keep you going with Year 9 English until we're back in school.

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You've now reached the final unit in our KS3 literary odyssey. Here's a reminder (Year 7 has changed a little since you did it):

We're sorry we had to cut the War Poetry unit short. If you didn't get the chance to see it, I'd strongly recommend watching this brilliant documentary about the life of the great war poet, Wilfred Owen.

Now, on to 'Dystopia and Freedom'. In this first blogpost, you'll learn about the conventions of dystopian literature and read an extract from a first dystopian text.

Task 1:
Read the following explanations. It would be a good idea to make notes, write down definitions etc. You might want to use Cornell notes to do this. The title is underlined below: 

So, what is a DYSTOPIA? 

To put it as simply as possible, a dystopian novel can be described as a dark vision of the future.

Here are a few other definitions:

 

·        "An imaginary, wretched place, the opposite of Utopia."

·        "An imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives."

·        "The word 'dystopia' is the commonly used antonym of 'eutopia' [i.e. utopia] and denotes that class of hypothetical societies containing images of worlds worse than our own. [...] Dystopian images are almost invariably images of future society, pointing fearfully at the way the world is supposedly going in order to provide urgent propaganda for a change in direction."

·        "[...] dystopian fiction looks at totalitarian dictatorship as its prototype, a society that puts its whole population continuously on trial, a society that finds its essence in concentration camps, that is, in disenfranchising and enslaving entire classes of its own citizens, a society that, by glorifying and justifying violence by law, preys upon itself. [...] dystopian society is what we would today call dysfunctional; it reveals the lack of the very qualities that traditionally justify or set the raison d'être for a community."                  

·        "A dystopia is any society considered to be undesirable, for any of a number of reasons. The term was coined as a converse to a Utopia, and is most usually used to refer to a fictional (often near-future) society where current social trends are taken to nightmarish extremes. […] Often, the difference between a Utopia and a Dystopia is in the author's point of view. […] Dystopias are frequently written as warnings, or as satires, showing current trends extrapolated to a nightmarish conclusion. […] A dystopia is all too closely connected to current-day society."   

Task 2:

Have a read through this introductory powerpoint. Again, jot down anything you find useful or interesting.

Task 3: Watch this clip on YouTube to develop your understanding...

How to recognise a dystopia - TED-Ed

Some optional extras:

- 10 terrifying fictional dystopias that could come true

- Top 10 dystopian movie futures

- Top 10 British dystopian movies 

We'll be back next week with an extract from George Orwell's 1984.

Stay safe,

THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT