Rachel Wilkinson
Teaching Dystopian
Literature to a
Consumer Class
M any students are struggling with
more depression and anxiety than
ever before. These are characteristic
dangers of the “consumer class”—
1.7 billion people worldwide who are “character-
ized by diets of highly processed food, desire for
bigger houses, more and bigger cars, higher levels
of debt, and lifestyles devoted to the accumulation
of non-essential goods” (Mayell). Mindless consum-
erism threatens physical, social, and psychological
health; total abstinence, on the other hand, means
starvation. How do we guide students to navigate
such treacherous, shifting seas?
I teach dystopian literature, which exagger-
ates our modern context so that we can challenge
it. Providing for its readers a glimpse into a horri-
fying but fully possible future, Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World and M. T. Anderson’s Feed show
how unrestrained industry often relies on manipu-
lation and herd mentality, an unspeakably grim
encroachment on the individual. When the impor-
tant thing is selling and buying, the individual be-
comes nothing more than consumer or worker.
This is where it gets tricky: Young people love ad-
vertising, consuming, entertainment, and technol-
ogy. If we attack these trappings of modern life, we
risk nurturing defensiveness. The challenge is to
focus on the dangers, demands, and opportunities
common to the “consumer class” without alarm-
ism—difficult terrain to navigate. It’s a matter of
human nature, not stuff: “man in using his reason
to create the ultimate life of pleasure has ceased to
be human” (Greenblatt 97). Dystopian literature
22 English Journal 99.3 (2010): 22–26
Copyright © 2010 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
EJ_Jan2010_B.indd 22
Wilkinson teaches
Brave New World and
Feed to attune students’
sensibilities to consumerist
culture.
such as Feed and Brave New World is to consuming
as Frankenstein is to cloning—theoretical explora-
tion and warning.
Four important traits of modern consumerism
that these two novels address are powerful advertis-
ing and industry, mindless consumption based on
instant gratification, reliance on technology, and the
resulting atrophy of language. English teachers can
explore these important concepts with their stu-
dents, as I explain below. Using these texts, we can
meaningfully discuss what it means to be responsi-
ble, aware, knowledgeable, and moral consumers.
Advertising and Industry:
“A fantastic denial of humanity”
Industry is driven by two things: supply and de-
mand. Huxley’s Brave New World (BNW) explores
what happens when the supply side is sinister and
revered. God has been replaced by a golden idol,
Henry Ford, who was famously so focused on profit
and efficiency that he sacrificed empathy, morality,
and the health and happiness of his workers. Unfor-
tunately, pursuing economic wealth at the expense
of ethical behavior is today a real occurrence, as the
Enron and Madoff scandals prove. Fathers, mothers,
retirees—people are reduced to the role of dupable
consumer as captains of industry thrive. Ford’s most
important contribution to industry is, of course, the
production line. Significantly, the first two chapters
of BNW take place entirely in The London Hatchery
and Conditioning Centre where “the principle of
mass production [is] at last applied to biology”
12/16/09 9:33:55 AM

(Huxley 7). As the Director says with a certain, jus-
tified arrogance, “What is an individual? . . . We can
make a new one with the greatest of ease—as many
as we like” (148). This is an attack on Henry Ford’s
mass-production model of consumerism. Individu-
als are not important members of loving families,
but they are prized as consumers.
While BNW explores supply, Feed explores
demand. In Anderson’s dystopia, advertising is
rampant. And it sells something familiar: coolness.
Apathetic and oblivious to the world around him,
the teenaged Titus heeds the feed’s call: “Sometimes
that made me feel kind of tired. It was like I kept
buying these things to be cool, but cool was always
flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly
catch up” (Anderson 279). Nor does he possess ei-
ther the skills or the character to awaken to reality.
Consuming goods and entertainment is all he
knows to do. School™ doesn’t help; it’s subsidized
by corporations: “Some of the big media congloms
got together and gave all this money and bought
the schools so that all of them could have comput-
ers and pizza for lunch and stuff, which they gave
for free, and now we do stuff in classes about how to
work technology and how to find bargains and
what’s the best way to get a job and how to decorate
our bedroom” (110). Because School™ is more
about marketing than educational effort, academic
rigor is less important than consuming.
This is, again, not pure fantasy. I remember
the faculty meeting at a school where I used to
teach: We were asked by our principal to “drink
Coke,” which had just helped pay for a scoreboard
for the football field. Certainly, we do drink Coke:
every day several machines provide hundreds of caf-
feinated sodas, purchased by students who will find
themselves, just minutes later, too restless to work
on a research paper. It’s not just sodas. Many drinks
sold in cafeterias exacerbate or perhaps even cause
ADD and ADHD, which is linked to difficulties in
school (Berner). Lately, school cafeteria food has
been in the headlines, criticized for being fattening
and enervating. Shouldn’t the food help students
concentrate? Shouldn’t it be nutritious? When what
we sell in schools leads to hyperactivity and obesity,
what messages do we send about our educational
priorities? In another example, NCTE has long op-
posed the inclusion of Channel One in the class-
room because of the “intrusions of commercial
EJ_Jan2010_B.indd 23
Rachel Wilkinson
television advertising.” Yet Channel One remains.
As these stories prove, exaggerating schools into an
economic instead of intellectual marketplace is just
that—exaggeration, not fiction.
Instant Gratification: “A hard master”
In BNW, those elements that most challenge and
define us have been extirpated; purpose is replaced
with hedonism, substance with artifice, and aware-
ness with oblivion: “One believes things because one
has been conditioned to believe them” (Huxley 234).
The people are expected to
have whatever they want, Instant gratification
or, more precisely, want thrives on mindlessness.
whatever they have. They
are happy. But they have no
choice: “they get what they want, and they never
want what they can’t get. . . . They’re so conditioned
that they practically can’t help behaving as they
ought to behave” (220). That’s what keeps the econ-
omy strong: “Industrial civilization is only possible
when there’s no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to
the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics.
Otherwise, the wheels stop turning” (237). As a re-
sult of this instant gratification, people are unable to
think for themselves, because there’s no time for re-
flection and nothing but desire.
Instant gratification thrives on mindlessness.
Anderson’s dystopia envisions children and adults
so fully hooked up that information and advertise-
ments pour directly into their brains. Titus, the
teenaged protagonist, is aimless and unintentional
in his decisions, waiting for instructions from the
feed to tell him what to say, do, and think: “[I]t
knows everything you want and hope for, some-
times before you even know what those things are.
It can tell you how to get them, and help you make
buying decisions that are hard. Everything we think
and feel is taken in by the corporations . . . all you
have to do is want something and there’s a chance it
will be yours” (48). People are so dependent on
these transmissions that education, awareness, and
language decay.
In both BNW and Feed, it is nearly impossible
not to be assimilated because no space lies between
wanting and having. There’s simply no time for
anything to deepen. Again, this is not a far cry from
modern society. Concentration is getting harder, in
English Journal 23
12/16/09 9:33:55 AM
 Teaching Dystopian Literature to a Consumer Class
part due to the Internet. The BBC recently reported
that our attention spans can be as short as nine sec-
onds when we’re surfing the Web (“Turning”). We
skim rather than read, which mirrors how we think:
“In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, un-
distracted reading of a book, or by any other act of
contemplation, for that matter, we make our own
associations, draw our own inferences and analogies,
foster our own ideas. Deep reading . . . is indistin-
guishable from deep thinking” (Carr). Not only are
abilities to read and think changing, but how we
interact with each other is, too. Instead of waiting
days, weeks, or months for letters, we are updated
instantly with text messages. Students receive count-
less updates on rumors and relationships every hour
on their cell phones. I asked my juniors how many
times they check their texts during school: “I don’t
think you can count it.” “It’s 11 a.m. and I’ve al-
ready checked it, like, 20 times.” “Seriously, during
the day, it’s like a million times.” “At least 50, 60
times a day—that’s not an exaggerated number.”
My school, by the way, has a “no cell phone” policy.
Reliance on Technology:
“An ever intenser boredom”
In BNW, people are generally unable to perform
even small tasks for themselves. They’ve given those
tasks to the machines. John the Savage, however,
maintains his independence and frees himself from
the oppressively thoughtless and hedonistic society.
He cannot assimilate. Raised in a world without
machines, where life is hard and not always pretty
and where the value of a man is based on strength,
courage, skill, and other characteristics absent in
his new home, John refuses the life of idleness and
pleasure. This young “savage” sees the weakness in-
herent in the society where “nothing costs enough”
(Huxley 239). He seeks meaning and depth and fi-
nally retreats to a place outside the decadence:
“After those weeks of idleness in London, with
nothing to do, whenever he wanted anything, but
to press a switch or turn a handle, it was pure de-
light to be doing something that demanded skill
and patience” (247). He had atrophied in the land
of easy living. Only his outsider status allows him
to understand what the natives never do.
Reliance on technology is typical of modern
dystopias. In Feed, Titus cannot imagine life with-
24 January 2010
EJ_Jan2010_B.indd 24
out machinery. When a hacker disrupts Titus’s
transmission, he panics in his freedom. He falls into
a coma and, when he awakens in the hospital, his
reliance on the feed is so strong that it is his second
or third impulse to open his eyes. First, he tries to
get his bearings from the feed: “Everything in my
head was quiet. It was fucked” (Anderson 44). He’s
like a boat without a pilot, “the sails were up, and
the rudder was, well, whatever rudders are, but
there was no one on board to look at the horizon”
(49). The expulsion does not last long. He is quickly
reassimilated, dependent once again on his feed for
information, understanding, and desire.
Again, this is not merely science fiction. In
his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas
Carr notes, “Over the past few years I’ve had an un-
comfortable sense that someone, or something, has
been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neu-
ral circuitry, reprogramming the memory. . . . I’m
not thinking the way I used to think.” The article
cites the evidence that thought is being traded for
efficiency: “When we read online . . . , we tend to
become ‘mere decoders of information.’ Our ability
to interpret text, to make the rich mental connec-
tions that form when we read deeply and without
distraction, remains largely disengaged.” We’ve all
seen indications that students’ lives are dominated
by technology. One student said to me years ago,
when I challenged him to turn off his television, “If
there were no TV, what would I do with my time?”
I’m not suggesting that we are so fully assimilated
by technology that we cannot operate without it,
but we certainly would not recognize our lives de-
void of it.
Atrophy of Language:
“Always diminishing”
Although BNW does not directly address language
entropy, Feed questions technology’s impact on in-
dependent thought. George Orwell investigated
how language affects thought in Nineteen Eighty-
Four. In “The Principles of Newspeak,” a history of
Oceania notes that “the expression of unorthodox
opinions, above a very low level, was well-nigh im-
possible. . . . It would have been possible, for ex-
ample, to say Big Brother is ungood. But this
statement, which to an orthodox ear merely con-
veyed a self-evident absurdity, could not have been
12/16/09 9:33:55 AM
 Rachel Wilkinson

sustained by reasoned argument, because the neces- trustworthy, and flaccid language fails to form and
sary words were not available” (Orwell 309; empha- inform internal landscapes. Approximate becomes
sis in original). I’ve been astonished over the years “like, good enough.”
to learn that many students see this type of malevo-
lent governmental control as laughable—comically
Discussion Starters
evil. They doubt an outside force could wield this
kind of control. Dystopian visions can help students deconstruct
They may be on to something. In Feed, the lan- their contexts, which is crucial now more than ever.
guage atrophies as a result of laziness and ignorance, Unrestrained, the worst of the “consumer class”
not by fiat. Like BNW’s John the Savage, Titus’s girl- habits devastate the environment, deter critical
friend Violet is not assimilated. She understands that thinking, disable language,
when “you have the feed all your life, you’re brought and, some say, contribute to The immediate access of
up to not think about things. . . . Because of the feed, terrorism in developing information on the
we’re raising a nation of idiots. Ignorant, self-cen- countries (“Diamond”). The
Internet reduces the need
tered idiots” (Anderson 113). One symptom of Ti- BBC’s documentary Shopol-
to seek and delve.
tus’s ignorance is that he cannot find words for what ogy highlights some addi-
he wants to say. As a result, he knows only to articu- tional truths about our Everything is available:
late what he wants to buy, wear, or watch because the consumerist, pleasure-seek- blogs, articles, novels,
feed is focused solely on advertising, entertainment, ing society. The documen- study guides—all
and consumption. Consequently, Titus both con- tary notes that what we buy without primacy and
sumes and is consumed. defines how we see our- without hierarchy.
Fortunately, I don’t think language entropy selves, our lifestyles, our
happens exactly as Anderson predicted. But it hap- peer groups, and our moods
pens. Writing for The Atlantic, Carr finds himself (Shah). In a real way, consumerism affects how we
thinking differently because “media are not just see and interact with the world. As educators, we
passive channels of information. They supply the should help students question and challenge the so-
stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of cial forces that are informing their habits, decisions,
thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is and personalities.
chipping away my capacity for concentration and I use a variety of discussion starters to get stu-
contemplation.” The immediate access of informa- dents thinking about consumerist culture before we
tion on the Internet reduces the need to seek and read BNW and Feed:
delve. Everything is available: blogs, articles, nov- 1. Is life easy for us today? Is it too easy?
els, study guides—all without primacy and with- 2. Give examples of how people escape from
out hierarchy. On the Internet, information no everyday life. Is it necessary to do so? Why or
longer has to wend its way past editors into a book why not?
or journal, so students don’t always understand that 3. Is our nation too focused on consumerism?
an article on a database yields more qualitative in- Explain.
formation than a plot summary on SparkNotes. 4. What have you bought this week? Why? Do
This results in students asking why they can’t just you need these things?
read the SparkNotes instead of the assigned novel. I 5. Do you own any clothes, electronics, etc. that
concede: if all the students are getting from reading you rarely or never use? Why?
is plot and theme—and not the subtle force of 6. Read and respond to Hillary Mayell’s “As
Consumerism Spreads, Earth Suffers, Study
beautiful prose—they have a point. For another ex-
Says.” What, if anything, surprised you?
ample of language losing power and reliability, How might we solve some of these issues?
challenge students to delete like from their vocabu- Are you concerned? Why or why not?
lary. Some find it impossible to speak. They cannot
find the words to say exactly what they mean. Like During the reading, I bring in current songs or
allows them to launch their words near a target satiric mock ads from Adbusters magazine to ensure
without even hoping for a bull’s-eye. Inexact, un- that class discussions are lively; television programs,

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 Teaching Dystopian Literature to a Consumer Class

such as Family Guy and The Simpsons, which will
need to be previewed for appropriate content; and
documentaries, such as Super Size Me and The Corpo-
ration. To me, this is more than just pedagogy, so
I’ve also started a daily carbon emissions website
with a blog that addresses consumer and environ-
mental issues (http://www.salamanderpoints.com).
I also assign meaningful writings: Walk out-
side at night to watch the stars for an hour; write
about it. Walk around the mall and people-watch;
don’t buy anything. Learn about propaganda tech-
niques and analyze commercials; what are they re-
ally selling? The list is almost endless, but the
important thing is to identify challenges and look
for solutions to life in the “consumer class.” Do not
simply condemn modern life. Students are eager to
make an impact; we should call on them to act.
Conclusion
Teaching BNW and Feed is my favorite part of the
year because I get a chance to talk to students about
their real lives and how they can make meaningful
changes. These dystopias are not just science fic-
tion; Huxley was a satirist, and he took seriously his
duty of reflecting the flaws and imperfections of a
society beset by industrialization. In his biography
of Huxley, Stephen Jay Greenblatt wrote that the
novel “is primarily concerned not with what will
happen in the future but what is happening to man-
kind now” (96). Huxley was attacking a present,
immediate danger of overdependence on technol-
ogy and consumerism in the hope that “by height-
ening our awareness of the demonic circles in which
we ourselves are trapped” (Greenblatt 117), we can
become more fully human. He felt he was only
moral when he wrote (Montagu vi), attacking soci-
ety’s vices and paths with the tenderness of a would-
be savior. For his part, Anderson introduced his YA
satire with the poem “Anthem for St. Cecilia’s Day”
from W. H. Auden that speaks sadly of children,
“so gay against the greater silences / Of dreadful
things you did . . .” Both authors warn us against
ourselves. Ultimately, as teachers, we must model
for students lives that are not merely satiated but
wildly meaningful.
Works Cited
Anderson, M. T. Feed. 2002. Cambridge: Candlewick, 2004.
Print.
Berner, Karen. “ADHD: 7 Suspect Food Additives.” The
Daily Green. 12 Sept. 2007. Web. 4 Oct. 2008.
<http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating/eat
-safe/6390>.
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlan-
tic. July/Aug. 2008. Web. 27 Mar. 2009. <http://
www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google>.
Diamond, Jared. “What’s Your Consumption Factor?” New
York Times. 2 Jan. 2008. Web. 6 Jan. 2008. <http://
www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02diamond
.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all>.
Greenblatt, Stephen Jay. Three Modern Satirists: Waugh,
Orwell and Huxley. London: Yale UP, 1965. 75–117.
Print.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. 1932. New York: Harper,
1998. Print.
Mayell, Hillary. “As Consumerism Spreads, Earth Suffers,
Study Says.” National Geographic. 12 Jan. 2004. Web.
31 Mar. 2009. <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/
news/2004/01/0111_040112_consumerism.html>.
Montagu, Ashley. Introduction. Brave New World. By
Aldous Huxley. Avon: Cardavon, 1974. Print.
NCTE. “NCTE Position Statement: Resolution on Ad-
vertising in the Classroom.” 1992. Web. 24 Mar.
2009. <http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/
advertisingclassroom>.
Orwell, George. “The Principles of Newspeak.” Nineteen
Eighty Four. 1949. New York: Signet, 1977. Print.
Shah, Anup. “Creating the Consumer.” Global Issues. 14
May 2003. Web. 30 Mar. 2009. <http://www.global
issues.org/article/236/creating-the-consumer>.
“Turning Into Digital Goldfish.” BBCNews. 22 Feb. 2002.
Web. 31 Mar. 2009. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
science/nature/1834682.stm>.

Rachel Wilkinson is a teacher at Loyola Blakefield High School and at the University of Maryland–Baltimore County. She also
blogs regularly about sustainability, consumerism, and the new local movement on salamanderpoints.com. She may be reached
at rwilkinson@loyolablakefield.org.

R E AD W R IT E T H IN K CO N N E C T IO N Lisa Storm Fink, RWT

“Decoding The Matrix: Exploring Dystopian Characteristics through Film” further explores dystopian works.
At its core The Matrix is a dystopian work with many of the same characteristics found in dystopian novels such
as Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World. In this lesson, students are introduced to the definition and
characteristics of a dystopian work by watching video clips from The Matrix and other dystopian films. http://
www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=926

26 January 2010

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