Sunday, May 12, 2013

After having finished the novel, I was surprised at how different this novel was from all the other dystopian novels I have read. While books like The Hunger Games, Fahrenheit 451, or The Handmaid's Tale to name a few, have all been centralized around the conflicts present in the dystopian society, and the characters are used as foils to reveal the flaws in the super-controlled world, Super Sad True Love Story has the dystopian society as more of a backdrop and centralizes around the characters. Lenny's story is the focal point of the novel that acts as a mechanism to demonstrate the effect of the society on real people. This is different from other dystopian works, as Katniss becomes the mockingjay symbol of the rebellion against the Capital, or Offred is used to show how the society exploits women. It was a nice change from the other novels, because Lenny and Eunice were well developed and multi-dimensional. Suzanne Collins develops the characters and unravels an intricate plot, although she did have three books in which to work. Overall, I enjoyed the novel. It was definitely engaging and entertaining, sometimes a little bit strange. It was definitely super sad, but also funny and charming as well.

1 comment:

  1. I agree - and I think Shteyngart's point is made much more powerfully because his protagonist actually endorses some of the values espoused by his society. We actually pity Lenny for his pursuit of youth and perfection, rather than aligning ourselves with him as the "rebel." Of course, Lenny does rebel against his society, but almost does it as a quaint and funny character trait rather than a political charge.

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