How Is Utopia A Dystopia

The Secrets of Corruption in Utopian Lifestyles Vonnegut and Le Guin’s short stories about proposed utopian lifestyles are drastically different ideas of the perfect modern day “utopia”. These stories represent how two people may have contrasting ideas of the corruption that would be involved in a perfect world and lead us to question our own opinions of what part of ourselves we would be willing to give up. Kurt Vonnegut’s “2 B R 0 2 B” is a darker depiction of the human cost of living in a utopian civilization because of the idea of having daily actions controlled by a higher power. However, both of these stories explain a civilized world that the people perceive as perfection but contain many instances, such as sacrifice and inhumanity,

The story begins by highlighting the qualities that make this place seem utopian, such as the idea of immortality and only having to deal with death on a voluntary basis. The story 's main character is a man named Edward K. Wheling, waiting for his triplets to be born. More about their society is told through the hospital 's employee conversation. One of the men paints a disturbing mural on the wall that represents how it is possible to have immortality in their civilization; As new babies come into the world others have to die to keep the population at a stagnant forty-million people. If a volunteer wishes to die they have to call the “2BR02B” phone number and set up an appointment to die in a gas chamber. The triplets that being born only have one volunteer so the father kills Dr. Hitz, the creator of the gas chamber system, one of the women in the room and himself to sacrifice life for his children. The only way to speak out against the government and stand up to the lack of individuality is to commit suicide. This is ironic because to speak out against the government you must choose to die and that is what they are hoping for to bring someone new into the

In the city of Omelas people enjoy any luxury of life they wish to and have no set laws or hierarchical power, but in “2BR02B” the government has created a population control system and heavily monitors the people. Vonnegut criticizes the idea of control when he adds the employee singing a classic song with the words “I’ll go see a girl in purple, kiss this sad world toodle-oo. If you don’t want my lovin’, Why should I take up all this space?”(Vonnegut). In this society art or any kind of personal expression is censored and used to justify the acts that the nation has converted to in order to make it appealable to the people and have less governmental resist. He also adds the man painting the “Happy garden of life” for this same reason. Another difference in these cultures is the value of life. The governmental system believes that lives are “interchangeable” while the city attempts to appreciate life through their sacrifice. Their value of life is less cherished from the government because they deal with death often and have become accustomed to their corrupted