Jorie Pollard Blog Post 3

In Moylan’s Preface, Moylan discusses the qualities of twentieth century dystopias in literature. As one of those qualities, Moylan claims that the “truth lies in its ability to reflect upon the causes of social and ecological evil” (Moylan, xii). This idea focuses more on what had happened. With being able to identify the “causes”, there’s more of a relationship with the past. Whereas in Divergent they don’t dwell or even really mentioned what had happened but more so only talk about preventing themselves “from what, [they] don’t know” (Roth, 7).  Divergent started off with a system, not really explaining the cause of it, but they continue to explain the importance of having a system that “persists because…of what might happen if it didn’t” (Roth, 33). The dystopia functions off of the future and what could happen rather than what was it like before.

If Moylan was writing about 21^st century dystopia instead of 20^th century, he should take into consideration the present and the future. Dystopian narratives today are more about what is happening in the moment and what it could lead to. This brings along a factor of the unknown that Moylan should also take into account. Dystopias don’t know exactly what is in the future. That is the premise around modern day dystopias. They build around a society that eventually fights against a system that they believed to be true but really was the unknown that they should be afraid of.