Trailing the Totalitarian Novel

The Odd Shelf #74
By Mara Wiley

The dystopian genre is as time-honored as Prada at the Oscars, with standards like 1984 and Brave New World drawing attention and triggering knockoffs with each high-heeled dig into that red carpet. But A-list dystopian novels of mid-20th-century fame aren’t quite enough for me. My fascination with oppressed individualism and the horrors of absolutism has me looking into the shadowy cordoned-off rows below the award podium. You know, to the “friends and family” section — the grandfathers, cousins and eccentric uncles of these dystopian icons. If "done to death" is the word on totalitarianism in literature, I deleted the memo, because when it comes to roasting The Man, I just can’t get enough.

• Siegfried by Harry Mulisch
Hitler is “My Baby Daddy” in this esoteric imagine-if novel. The servants of Eva Braun tell the story of the eponymous Siegfried, Hitler’s fictional son. The best part? Commentary on Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and the nature of evil give strapping philosophical muscle to this waifish novel.

• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
This graphic novel about a young-adult girl growing up during the Islamic Revolution was recently made into a well-reviewed animated movie. But the simple black and white drawings on each page give the book a more authentic school-girl charm and an innocence hard to achieve in movieland.

• We The Living by Ayn Rand
Yes, Rand’s novels are fictionalized screeds against totalitarianism. But you know you like them. Accompanied by her lover, strong-willed Kira runs away from oppression toward her tragic (or is it transcendent?) end. This is Rand when she first broke into the literary scene, in her most virginal state and minus about 300 pages.

• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
This fully regimented society is thrown into chaos when a man falls in love with a woman and discovers that he has an imagination. Rebels infiltrate, people start having sex (without coupons!), but not without a price. We is admittedly clunky but, written in the 1920s, it is easily recognized as an epicentral “badda” to Orwell’s “boom.”   

• The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
“They murdered him,” begins this YA ’70s classic. Remember those boxes of chocolates you had to sell for your chorus trip or band uniform? Well, what if they symbolized the struggle of individualism against the tyranny of the establishment? Who’s The Man this time? Priests, junior dictator types and prep school lemmings. Fight the power.

• I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier
Totalitarian governments in dystopian novels are always so obvious, so extreme. Well, what about the ones that look just like us? The protagonist this time? Moody kid on a bicycle. Where is he going? He’s not too sure. The villians? A government with too much power that will do anything to keep its secrets. And, yes, the cheese stands alone.

• The Giver by Lois Lowry
There’s soft rock, soft-core porn, soft drinks and this: a soft-dystopian novel for pre-teens. This one doesn’t have an obvious bad guy. People actually seem legitimately content and they aren’t even on drugs. But! It does deal with infanticide and achieves a depth and level of subtlety that makes it recognized as one of the only YA novels in a league with other works in the dystopian genre.

—Mara Wiley is a regular in the Readerville Forum.

Comments

[Kat Warren]

>But you know you like them

Ayn Rand -- feh, I don't think so.

Fun list; a few more titles: Jack London's The Iron Heel, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon.

[Tom D]

I'd also recommend Jennifer Government for your list. It's satire, but still feels right up your alley, Mara.

[mara]

Huh. That looks perfect - and different. Thanks Tom.

Kat, Fahrenheit is in the "queso" family for me - but has one of my favorite opening lines ever. "It was a pleasure to burn" - mm!

[Kat Warren]

Okie dokie.