Paradise

The cost of perfection

A world that in which everything is perfect: utopia. What is the cost if such a great idea? For when everything is perfect do you want to understand it and fix it? Another word for utopia is paradise. A place that is perfect in a way that makes it a heaven to be in. If humans were in utopia or paradise would we even know it? The more important question is what is the cost of a perfect place?

When you find utopia it’s never really utopia. For humans are imperfect so what is perfect, that we humans bring ourselves into becomes imperfect. Literature shows this in many books written by many different people over time, the world is imperfect and so are we. Yet in a sense every person wants utopia or finds it and realizes paradise isn’t what the character thought.

Most often what seems to be a utopia is really a dystopia in disguise. In books these factors, ruin the perfection in what the character is living in. another way is that the dystopia was there the whole time but by outside forces the character is brought to see the corruption.

In “the giver” (http://www.shmoop.com/the-giver/summary.html) you see a kid who is growing up in what appears to be a utopian society, but what is really not. The shock of what his life has been brings Jonas to a change in perspective: and in the end he runs away from the community to free the people of their ignorance.

Dystopia’s are easier to find in both life and literature. The hunger game is an all-out dystopia with only utopia for the citizens of the capitol who live in wealth and don’t have to work hard for anything because the districts create everything for them. What makes it worse is that with the rebellion the government controls the districts with brute forces and control of the emotions of its people. This plays on the people make them controllable on a large scale and they can’t escape this control. Nor can they run away from it because district thirteen does about the same thing, controlling its people with survival and living underground to protect themselves.

Utopia and dystopia are opposites of each other. One is perfect and  the other imperfection. Is one better than the other? Can without becoming inhuman can we find perfection and paradise? The cost of paradise is too much in retrospect; to be perfect is boring and with it we lose our identity.