Character and Dystopia

Aaron Rosenfeld holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from New York University and is Associate Professor of English at Iona College, teaching classes in 20th-century literature.

• 1 Introduction: The Last Men in Europe2 The Character of DystopiaThe Language of DespairRealist DystopiaSetting and CharacterSetting as Character3 What We Talk About When We Talk About DystopiaThe Good PlaceAnti-utopianism and Anti-utopiasDystopian NarrativeDystopian LawPost-apocalypseFuture (Im)PerfectSection II De-forming Character4 The Last (Hu)Man(ist)Humanism in CrisisUtopian and Dystopian Humanism and Anti-humanismDystopianism, Naturalism, and ModernismDefensive Forms: Humanism, Anti-humanism, and the Dystopian NovelDystopian HumanismDystopian Anti-humanism5 Anti-Bildungsroman: Dystopia and the End of Character in Zamyatin, Burgess, and IshiguroThe Novel of De-formationAllegories of ProgressDivine Minus: Zamyatin’s Reverse BildungsromanThe Predator’s Progress: Burgess’s Satiric BildungsromanCrimes Against Posthumanity: Ishiguro’s Bildungsroman Incarnate6 Paranoid Plots: Dystopia and the Fantasy of Centrality in Dostoevsky and OrwellRomantic ParanoiaParanoid Poetics"Streets that follow like a tedious argument/ Of insidious intent"Diseased Romanticism: Dostoevsky’s Psychological DystopiaHe Loved Big Brother: Orwell and the Fantasy of PersecutionSection III Dystopian Variations7 American Anti-pastoral: Running Down a Dream in West and MametDystopian DesignWhat Happens to a Dream Deformed?West’s World: Dystopian Picaresque in West’s A Cool MillionUtopian Plots: Dystopian Capitalism in Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross8 Romancing the Child: First Teens in Lowry’s The Giver and Butler’s Parable of the SowerFirst TeensNew Worlds for Old DesiresA Family Affair: Romantic Humanism in Lowry’s The GiverOn the Road Again: Anti-romantic Anti-humanism in Butler’s Earthseed9 Epilogue: The Dystopian Real