The idea of utopias continued to be popular during the nineteenth century. For example, English author Samuel Butler wrote Erewhon (1872) ("nowhere" spelled backward) and Erewhon Revisited (1901), and William Morris wrote News From Nowhere (1891). In the United States, people have attempted to create real-life utopias. A few of the places where utopian communities were started include Fruitlands, Massachusetts; Harmony, Pennsylvania; Corning, Iowa; Oneida, New York; and Brook Farm, Massachusetts, founded in 1841 by American transcendentalists. Although the founders of these utopian communities had good intentions, none of the communities flourished as their creators had hoped.
Dystopias are a way in which authors share their concerns about society and humanity. They also serve to warn members of a society to pay attention to the society in which they live and to be aware of how things can go from bad to worse without anyone realizing what has happened. Examples of fictional dystopias include Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), Ray Bradbury's
Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and George Orwell's Animal Farm (1944) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
Lois Lowry chose to write The Giver as a dystopian novel because it was the most effective means to communicate her dissatisfaction with the lack of awareness that human beings have about their interdependence with each other, their environment, and their world. She uses the irony of utopian appearances but dystopian realities to provoke her readers to question and value their own freedoms and individual identities.
