Bounding the Plotline: The Development of Hope Out of Popular Dystopia

This thesis will discuss the popular transition from utopian contemplation to dystopian representation in contemporary fiction, with a focus on the hidden significance of antebellum American racial history in this regard. In examining the interwoven meaning of dystopia and utopia I argue that America’s slave past forms a hidden backdrop that challenges the desire to evade what I call the contemporary trend toward dystopia, which, because of its popularization as a result of commercialization, has blocked the exercise of utopic possibility. By analyzing this problem in the vector of America’s problematic past, my project asserts that despite the trend toward dystopia, utopic possibility is still to be found nevertheless, hiding deep within dystopia itself.