“We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality; we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable.”(Lynda Barry) Dystopian stories are an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic. This type of literature has grown very popular in adults and adolescents because it is the way we escape the reality of the real word.

Being able to read into the future gives an escape from the real world and gives us a better understanding of how quickly things can change. From the dystopian story “Ten with a flag” The, government knows everything about everyone before they are even born. The government knows how good you will do in school, the job you will have, and everything else about your potential in society. With the government knowing everything about everyone’s potential obviously some people have jobs worse than others. The government created a rank system for everyone who lives in this dystopia. The rank goes from 1-10, one being the lowest rank and ten being the highest rank.

Having the luxuries of doing absolutely nothing and having it all done for you. The happy life house from “The Veldt” literally does everything for you such as make your food, do the dishes, clean the house and everything in between like tying your shoes for you. The nursery is also apart of the house and shows anything your imagination can come up with, you think of it and the nursery displays it on the walls and creates sounds and smells to go with it.

Reading about technological advancements that could actually happen and how they could possibly affect our society. Such as self-driving cars in “Ten with a Flag.”They have self-driving cars, and they tell it were to go and it does so on a track at around 120 miles per hour, but if the government wants you to go somewhere else at any point they can override it and make you go where they want you to go. You don’t really have control over where you're going. Everything is extremely organized maybe even to organized. The government has a place for everything, and everything is in its place. If it’s not where it should be then they get rid of it. An example from the story, Johnnie questioned the government and the government put him in a very low rank in the society knowing he could never make it back to the rank he was initially before his life was over.

Reading about a so-called “perfect” world and self-consciously compare it to the real world. Much like in Harrison Bergeron. The 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments of the Constitution. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. When people disobeyed the law, they would get two years in prison and two thousand dollars for each ball taken out of their handicap bags. When Harrison disobeyed the laws by taking off all his handicaps and trying to take the government over. He and the woman he chose as his mistress were shot dead because they were going against the law and everyone needed to say equal to one another.

Dystopian literature has seen a huge uprise in popularity. The main reason for this uprise is because people want to escape the reality of the real world we live in. Everyone has their own personal reasons for wanting to escape but honestly that is what all of us want, a temporary escape from the world we live in.