Dystopian Fiction Flashcards

Grade 12 · English · Flashcards

12 flashcards on the key texts, concepts, and vocabulary of dystopian fiction.

Flashcards

Dystopia: An imagined society characterized by extreme oppression, suffering, and loss of individual freedom.
Utopia: An imagined perfect society — the opposite of dystopia.
Totalitarianism: A system of absolute government control over all aspects of public and private life.
Newspeak: Orwell's invented reduced language designed to prevent independent thought.
Thoughtcrime: In Nineteen Eighty-Four, any thought contrary to Party doctrine — an unenforceable but terrifying concept.
Soma: In Brave New World, the state-issued pleasure drug that keeps citizens content and incapable of rebellion.
Big Brother: The omnipresent authoritarian figurehead of Oceania in Nineteen Eighty-Four — symbol of surveillance and control.
Gilead: The theocratic patriarchal nation in The Handmaid's Tale that replaced the United States.
Fahrenheit 451: Bradbury's 1953 novel about a future society that burns books to prevent uncomfortable ideas.
Sameness: In The Giver, the elimination of all variation — color, emotion, memory, choice — to prevent conflict.
Propaganda: Biased or misleading information used by totalitarian regimes to manipulate citizens and maintain control.
Surveillance state: A society where the government monitors all aspects of citizens' lives to detect and suppress dissent.