1984

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What do you know about dystopian fiction? List examples of books, TV shows, movies, or video games in this genre. What characteristics, conflicts, and images are common elements of dystopian fiction?

Teaching Suggestion: If your students are unlikely to know the definition of dystopian fiction, you might omit the first part of this question and offer a definition instead; consider listing a few examples of your own as a springboard if your students struggle to generate examples. Students might benefit from sharing their examples with one another in a small-group or whole-class discussion, as this will offer them a sense of how diverse and widespread dystopian fiction really is. Student input regarding common elements may create the opportunity to introduce a connected theme like Totalitarian Power Diminishes Individuality.

• This library guide from Miami Dade College defines dystopian fiction and offers annotated examples.
• This guide from Flagler College lists many examples of dystopian literature; examples can be accessed by decade or by country of origin.

2. Dystopian fiction offers readers uncomfortable visions of society’s future, but it also comments on society’s present. Choose a contemporary example of dystopian fiction and explain how this work comments on current reality.

Teaching Suggestion: If this question is too abstract for your students to tackle cold, you can lay groundwork by asking them why dystopian fiction is more popular in some eras than in others; what makes the people of a given time period more receptive to it, and what motivates authors to write it? Once they offer up the idea that a surge in dystopian fiction happens when people are worried about the society around them, you might then offer a specific example. For instance, many worried about the possibility of global nuclear war after the US used nuclear bombs to end World War II; the 1950s classic On the Beach was written about a post-apocalyptic dystopia resulting from nuclear war. 

• This 2017 New Yorker article by Jill Lepore offers insight into a resurgence of dystopian fiction.
• This Science Survey article by Katrina Tablang explores the relationship of particular dystopian works to their time periods.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

Young people often struggle with feeling controlled by their parents or guardians, by school, or by society itself. What are the rules that make you feel unnecessarily restricted? Who makes these rules, and why do they have authority in your life? What kinds of consequences might you face if you chose to disregard these rules?

Teaching Suggestion: With this prompt, students reflect on the many restrictions in our lives and the potential consequences for breaking even the rules that seem unnecessary. Students may answer in discomfiting ways, and if you prefer that they not share ideas about sexuality, drug use, and other sensitive topics, you might offer some guidelines for answering the question in advance. This prompt can serve as a useful springboard for talking about types of authority (authority that is seized versus authority that is conferred, for instance) and what kinds of rules authorities should be able to make in an ideal world. You can connect this conversation to the discussion of dystopia by asking for ways in which people might make or erase rules in the pursuit of a more perfect world; how might their choices inadvertently create a much worse situation?