The question I chose is “What lessons or warnings can be gleaned from the dystopian narrative, and how do they relate to contemporary society?”
I believe that “From Beyond” by H.P Lovecraft is a dystopian text because the narrator finds out that everything he has lived, felt and seen is not what it seems. The narrators best friend, Crawford Tillinghast, is a scientist who finds a way to see things that the human eye cannot naturally see. This makes a reader wonder if such things are possible. We know that other animals can see colors that are not visible to the human eye or that they can hear other frequencies that a human cannot. When the narrator experiments this himself, he fears the situation. Tillinghast ends up dying in the end but due to apoplexy. Even this cause of death makes the narrator wonder if that is an actual cause of death or is it because of what Tillinghast has witnessed too. The narrator becomes uncomfortable remembering that other things exist such a weird jelly like fishes brushing against him that should just be regular wind. A lesson that can be extracted from this dystopian text is that there are consequences when interfering with the unknown.
In “The Machine Stops” by E.M Forster, society relies on a machine that does everything for them. It provides food, clothing, entertainment and communication. The setting takes place under ground and people don’t ever go to the surface of the earth. It is actually “not safe”. However, Kuno wants to explore because he believes there is more to life than depending on a machine that can do everything for you. This is a dystopian text that relates much to the contemporary world because the use of technology is rising. People want to make things easier by making advances in technology to help them. This text itself is a warning that you shouldn’t rely on technology because once it stops working people wont know what to do.
In the text “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradburry the same concept is used. People rely on technology and they shouldn’t. In this text the setting takes place in the future where a house can do everything like make food and tell time. There is no one alive and it seems to be a nuclear accident because the house glows. In the future, technology might end up being a cause for no existence of human.
