Mary Sluder - Blog Post 3

In Moylan's "Preface", there are several ideas presented that align with many dystopias, but that may not pertain to all dystopian narratives. For example, Moylan discusses how there is "an unseen and unexamined social system," (xiii). In Divergent, the inhabitants are fully aware of the system that they live, the faction system. Some of the inhabitants do examine this system and want change, in favor of a more democratic political system where leaders are elected. Therefore, he should take this factor into consideration if he were factoring in works like Divergent, and specifically how the dystopia is made out to be a utopia, a better place, but it's inhabitants are not actually happy and free. It is in this way that the novel, Divergent, is a dystopia made out to be a utopia, and does not align with Moylan's definition of a dystopia, as he writes about dystopias that were written in the twentieth century. Moylan's definition should be expanded upon to incorporate works from the twenty-first century as well.