Genre Conventions
Features of a specific type of book, film, text (e.g. darkness, flickering lights, candles, ghosts, etc. in horror films)
What are genre conventions?
This term literally means "No Place."
What is Utopia?
This current societal issue appears most obviously in this quotation from The Marrow Thieves: "The Melt put most of the northlands under water, and the people moved south or onto some of the thousands of tiny islands that popped up out of the Melt’s wake across the top of our lands" (25).
What is climate change or global warming?
This is another word for a problem a character faces in a story.
What is the conflict?
When the narrator of the story is not a character in the story.
What is third person point of view?
This convention of dystopian fiction features total control by government or other power.
What is Totalitarianism?
The term dystopia literally means this.
What is "bad place"?
This current societal issue appears most obviously in this quotation from The Marrow Thieves: "I’d seen the Great Lakes: Ontario when we were in the city and Huron when we lived on the New Road Allowance. The waters were grey and thick like porridge" (24).
What is pollution?
This type of conflict is between a character and some part of themselves.
What is an internal conflict?
When you are the narrator of the story.
What is second person POV?
This convention of dystopian fiction features citizens being observed (watched, tracked, listened to, etc.)
What is surveillance?
Thomas More called his fictional perfect world "utopia" to emphasize this reality.
What is that a perfect society cannot exist?
This current societal issue appears most obviously in this quotation from "The Veldt": "'I locked the nursery up,' explained the father, 'and the children broke back into it during the night'" (9).
What is addiction to technology?
This is made up of location, time of day, year, season, geography, and culture/values.
What is the setting?
These conflicts are often between a character and another character, a character and society, or a character and nature.
What are external conflicts?
This convention of dystopian fiction has people lose personal identities & access to what makes them unique.
What is Lack of Individuality or Dehumanization?
The author of "Someone Might Be Watching" compares dystopian fiction to this to show how dystopian fiction exaggerates real aspects of society.
What is a funhouse mirror?
This current societal issue appears most obviously in this quotation from The Marrow Thieves: "Soon, they needed too many bodies, and they turned to history to show them how to best keep us warehoused, how to best position the culling" (89).
What is residential schools?
When a character in the story is the narrator.
What is first person point of view?
These narrators are not characters in the story but only know the thoughts and feelings of one character.
What are third person limited narrators?
This convention of dystopian fiction includes false or misleading information spread by government, business, AI, etc.
What is misinformation, disinformation, or propaganda?
The idea that you may not own something, but you are responsible for it and can use it
What is stewardship?
This current societal issue appears most obviously in this quotation from "The Veldt": "I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid" (3).
What is the fear of technology taking our jobs or purpose?
A quotation that is included at the beginning of a piece of writing
What is an epigraph?
These narrators know everything.
What are omniscient narrators?