I firmly believe that it would be virtually impossible to speak to a student at Ithaca College who has never heard of The Hunger Games. Or Divergent. Or The Giver, Mazerunner, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, or at the very least English curriculum classics like 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale. Our generation is notoriously obsessed with dystopian literature. And understandably so. Early exposure to role models like Katniss Everdeen and Hermoine Granger made middle school Eve feel like she could take on any challenge and come out on top. In Hermoine’s case, she also found kinship in being a little know-it-all girl with brown poofy hair. Then I got a little older. I perfected my curly hair routine and I realized I don’t know as much about the world as I thought I did. In the same year that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, I read The Handmaid’s Tale in my sophomore-year English class. I finished the book almost all in one sitting. And then I cried. Margaret Atwood has famously stated that her most prolific story is not a science fiction novel, despite its location on bookstore shelves. The state of our world is becoming scarily close to the dystopias we grew up reading about. Is it possible to emulate the heroic nature of our beloved heroes in a way that will change the trajectory of our country’s downfall?
Katherine Kittredge, professor of English and literature at Ithaca College is known for teaching classes such as survey of science fiction and feminist literature. She states “When I teach dystopian literature it’s to think about the links between dystopia and the experience of being a young person.” It’s important to be able to recognize the ties that these stories have and the unsettling relevance they have within our world. Especially as young people, we are looked to to solve these monumental problems and what are we equipped with? Blind confidence maybe. But also maybe a literature-infused understanding of the importance of standing up for what we believe in.
Kittredge continues to explain “Maybe you aren’t gonna get a chance to assassinate a dictator but if you vote against someone who has claimed that he will be a dictator you are acting for good.” At the end of the day, we don’t live in District 12 or attend Hogwarts. Most of us are not bow-and-arrow-wielding saviors. But many of us do have a strong sense of who we are and what we believe in, and that is more than can be said for generations past. Protesting and voting and having some sort of say in the policies our country puts in place can feel just as powerful as vanquishing an antagonist in a final showdown. This being a pivotal election year, there is tangible evidence of a new generation of active political voices. Young people want to have a say.
The part that literature and media play in rallying a society is undeniable. Kittredge recalls the many rebroadcasts of the novel turned fictional radio broadcast War of the Worlds by Arthur C. Clarke. War of the Worlds was written in 1898. Prussia has just taken over France and WotW is in response to this turmoil. The novel is one of the earliest stories to tell a tale of humankind against an alien race. Kittredge goes on to explain that a short fictional radio broadcast was created based on WotW. Its first broadcast was in 1938 as Hitler’s regime began to rise. It was then rebroadcast in 1953 after Stalin died and tension rose between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. And then finally, WOTW was turned into a feature film in 2005 following the events of 9/11. Only this time, the aliens had been living among the humans the whole time. This is an example of a story that has been retold throughout history when humanity’s fears about their own safety are brought to the forefront.
I reread The Handmaid’s Tale in Kittredge’s feminist fiction class last semester. The themes of the book rang truer than ever, but one thing was different. I was nineteen. I had been registered to vote for almost a year. And come November, I could use my voice to stop the power of Gilead from taking over. My experience with this novel only a few years later brought a new feeling, one that I hadn’t experienced in quite a while. For the first time in a long time, I felt hopeful.
Eve is a junior writing for film, TV, and emerging media major and believes all bookworms can be heroes. They can be reached at [email protected]