Research On Dystopian Fiction’s Duality

The emergence of ’dystopian literature’ in the early20th century in the western academia, is thedeconstruction, subversion and reconstruction of the ’utopia’ dream which has lasted for thousands of years.Its emergence is not only the result of the development of ’modernization’, but also a reflection of it. Facingthe achievement of modernization, it criticizes the danger of modernization as well as reverts to thecharacteristics of modernization, which means, it not only embodies the modernity, but highlights thefeatures of post modernity. This characteristics reflects the dilemma of dystopian literature. Among them,’We’(1920) by Russian writer Zamyatin,’Beautiful New World’(1932) by British writer Huxley and ’1984’(1948) by British writer Orwell are collectively referred as the trilogy of dystopian literature, from whichwe can research on the duality of dystopian literature.This thesis focuses on the trilogy of dystopian literature to explore this issue from three levels. Thefirst part starts from ’utopia’ and ’utopia literature’, basing on the discussions of which to infer the reasonsfor the emergence of dystopian literature, and to further elaborate the rise and development of dystopianliterature. In this process, the important implications of the trilogy of dystopian literature---depicting thesins of utopian world by literature would be highlighted. The second part is the main body of this thesis,centering on the themes of deconstruction, reconstruction and subversion by these dystopian literary works,the duality of post modernity and modernity will be highlighted. In other words, dystopian literature’scriticism on utopia and its tradition is multi-level and multi-dimensional, in opposition to absoluterationalism and mono-politics as well as the politics of belief and totalitarianism, meanwhile, besidescriticisms, there is also a reverting of rationality. This will be the main content of the third part, namely,the dilemma of dystopian literature. Industrial civilization is the product of modernization, while dystopianliterary works are the negation, criticism and query of industrial civilization, which is the equivalent to thecriticism of modernity; nevertheless, paradoxically, the goals they are pursuing such as freedom, equalityand democracy also belong to the characteristics of modernity. In this way, the criticizing and reverting ofsome characteristics of modernity or modernism constitutes the dilemma of dystopian literature：on the onehand, by criticizing and negating the drawbacks of human society brought by industrial civilization, itimplies the factors of later post-modernity; on the other hand, the reverting to such characteristics offreedom and personality of modernity, such seemingly paradoxical dilemma highlights the anxiety andhelpless of the author and dystopian literature in the current situation which still has certain value andsignificance in the construction of today’s multiple values.