Lois Lowry’s The Giver, and H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine both present ostensible utopias that are, in fact, dystopias. This makes sense given that a dystopia is defined by its status as a failed utopia. The shared paradox of the novels’ societies is that the repression of human imperfection that makes them initially appear utopian is the very quality that makes them dystopian. Both protagonists discover this through a horrifying realization that destroys their idealized visions of these societies.
In The Time Machine, the future world that the Time Traveller reaches appears ideal at first, as though “the whole earth had become a garden.” He initially interprets the abundance of flowers and the serene people as evidence of his theory that eventually “the whole world will be intelligent, educated, and cooperating; things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature.” Yet nature will not be suppressed. Beneath the Eloi, the “graceful children of the Upper-world,” lurk the Morlocks, the “bleached, obscene, nocturnal Thing” that is also “heir to all the ages.” Although the Morloks may be less beautiful than the Eloi, having “maintained them in their habitual needs, perhaps through the survival of an old habit of service,” the Morlocks are central to the lives of the Eloi. Although they live beneath the earth, the Morlocks will never be far from the minds of the Eloi because the Eloi are reliant upon them.
Furthermore, the Morlocks ensure that they are never forgotten by exacting a horrible revenge. The Time Traveller is disturbed to see the Morlocks eating meat underground and finally realizes that it’s the Eloi upon which they are dining. He concludes that, “man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow man, had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had come home to him.” In this way, he expresses his view that a society’s drive to reach perfection through the subjugation and repression of the citizens it deems lowest will destroy it in the end.
Similarly, in The Giver, Jonas lives in a society in which war and suffering don’t exist. In theory, the society should be perfect, so “meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made.” But, in practice, the unpleasant emotions are shown to have been removed at the expense of the pleasant ones. In this society “without color, pain, or past,” there’s no war, but there’s also no love. Families, holidays, happiness and love are but memories that no longer exist in the society.
Jonas’s society’s perfect order is achieved through an extreme filtering process. When a citizen fails to uphold the productive conformity of the community, they are released. In order to achieve this painless society, the memories of the world are entrusted to a lone citizen, knows as the Receiver. It is only when Jonas is appointed to the position of Receiver that he understands the extreme consequences of the elimination of all difference and emotion.
Both works were written for children, and therefore must be read for their moral message to future generations. The books warn young people of the risks of repression by presenting nightmarish visions of the results. In The Time Machine, the society’s covering over of one half of their society, and hence the other side of its nature, results in cannibalism; in The Giver, the society’s attempt to rid itself of all things human produces murderous suppression. Both works show that the repression of human nature results in a reality more frightening than that which the repression seeks to conceal.