Why do we as a society love dystopian future stories such as Divergent and the Hunger Games?

Recently I have read the Divergent trilogy written by Veronica Roth.  The two follow up books are Insurgent and allegiant. The Divergent trilogy is based on a dystopian future where the population is separated by personality traits; Dauntless (the bravery), Abnegation (the selfless), Erudite (the intelligent), Amity (the peaceful) and Candor (the honest). In the past 3 years dystopian future stories have become so popular and mainstream.  I have pondered why the idea of what kind of society gets formed after our life time is so appealing. Other popular dystopian future stories are the ‘Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins and ‘The Maze Runner’ James Dasher. I have also read the Hunger Games but have yet to read the Maze Runner. The Hunger games have been a very successful movie and book franchise, with Mockingjay part 1 coming out this year.  

  

After pondering on why we as society love dystopian future novels, I have come to believe that we as a society love dystopian future stories such as Divergent because we see our society in it. The dystopian future stories often mirror our own societies but often just exaggerated. For example ‘the Hunger Games’. Obviously we don’t send children to fight to their death but we are doing something very similar. Panem is the setting for the story and the people who live there are wealthy, powerful and are very self-conscious about wrinkles, weight and other things they believe to be flaws. Does that sound familiar to you? While the surrounding districts are very poor and don’t have enough to eat and just barely survive. The Hunger Games is reflecting on our society and Panem is the big powerful countries like America, England, Canada and Australia. While the districts are the developing countries where so many people barely have enough food to eat and will often starve to death and we aren’t doing much to stop it, but we have a society have been trying to donate money to charity but it’s not helping as many people as we would like to.        

In Divergent the factions are like the social groups of high schools. Today in high schools teenagers are pressured to act a certain way to fit in to a group of be an outcast. One of the factions in Veronica Roth’s Divergent is Dauntless. The Dauntless kids are the reckless and often irresponsible teens. They are often the ones who don’t care about school and will often drink and smoke underage. Then there is Erudite, the intelligent teens who are always seeking out new information and intellect. You will often find them in school libraries reading, doing homework, studying for test and worrying about their grades. Next is Candor, the truthful. They are the teenagers who are usually very blunt and straight forward. In today’s society you will often find these teens gossiping online, spreading rumors in school corridors and very often going up to their peers who they don’t know that well and start pointing out their flaws. Next there is Amity the peaceful. In our society they will be seen as the hippies who love the environment and world peace. They will often be the teens who are being supporting equality, started the peaceful protests and the teens who are becoming vegans and vegetarians. The last official faction is Abnegation the selfless. They are the teens who are joining protest, volunteering for charity and defending the awful teachers. If you do not fit in one of those groups but multiple groups you are an outcast, you are divergent, but unlike the book, being a divergent in real life isn't fun, because people will often pick on you. 

I strongly believe that we love dystopian future stories so much is because they mirror our society. Also when we read and watch a society with even more flaws than our own we feel smarter than those people. We can relate to the stories so well because most of the dystopian mirror our own society so well it is almost scary.  Other times the dystopian futures ARE our society. I feel like divergent is like a metaphor of adolescence and the Hunger games is an exaggeration of the unjust and tension between the wealthy and the poor. In dystopian genre I believe that behind the black ink on pages are flaws in our society and a call for change. Whether or not the authors of these dystopian stories intently put the message and metaphors in their stories I do not know, but what I do know is that we as society love reading dystopian stories and now I have at least some an idea why.  
-The girl with her head in the clouds