Dystopian Character Development
The One Who Felt Everything
Jana Ahmed
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What does your protagonist want?
What my protagonist wants is to convince people and show them that keeping their emotions won’t make them weaker but will actually make them much stronger people. In this world, only happiness and joy are accepted and anyone who shows any other emotion that is negative or will impact someone else’s mood gets punished. The protagonist wants people to keep their emotions so that they can grow as people and not only focus on the perfect things in society. Those who get rid of their emotions simply talk about the most useless things and don’t have a care in the world for any issues that they see around them. For instance, if they see an animal being abused, for example, they can get rid of the emotion of sadness and simply not help that animal. It’s situations like these they do not care about or try to solve because they do not have the feelings that drive them to make a change. The protagonist keeps all of these harsh emotions so that he can help solve the problems in society and wants to convince others to think the same way that he does. Keeping his emotions makes him a better person and a stronger person because he knows how to handle any obstacle. This is the mindset that he wants to get across to all people.
What obstacles stand in your protagonist’s way?
In this dystopian society, anyone gets rid of any unwanted emotion that they do not want to feel. Most people get rid of emotions such as fear, sadness, regret, or madness due to the fact that they think that this would make them “stronger people.” These people see that getting rid of the feeling of fear for example would make them stronger and more powerful people than if they were to keep that emotion. He tries to convince people to not get rid of these emotions but instead to feel them because this would change the way they view life and make them much more powerful.
Specific Characteristics of your protagonist (appearance, special skills/abilities, knowledge)
My protagonist is a male character called Stefan. Stefan is a young man in his 20’s that grew up watching everyone get rid of the emotions that are hard to deal with. He watched people simply get rid of their emotions and disregard important problems that he faces every day. The special ability that makes him different is that he decides to keep all of these emotions. He’s a tall boy with green eyes and brown hair. Stefan tries his best to persuade people to keep the emotions that would make them stronger in order to solve problems that are in critical need to be done. He is very perseverant and won’t stop until he gets his message and point across.
Image Citation: “Putting Emotions in a Box.” The Confidence Experts, 20 Feb. 2017, www.theconfidenceexperts.com/putting-emotions-in-a-box/. Accessed 14 Feb. 2021.
Class Notes 10/01/2021). In the novel, Mildred is one of the characters that is a basic and the perfect example of an ideal person that lives in the society that she lives in. This time period that Mildred lives in was written to be set in the future which is also another Dystopian element. In this world, books aren’t allowed to the extent that firefighters are responsible for burning houses that have books in them. Mildred as a character that is set in the future agrees that books should not be allowed and instead spends her entire day simply watching TV. Mildred watches TV all day and spends her day not doing anything productive. She relives this day over and over again while staring at 3 different TV screens in one room. The setup of Mildred’s TV room is that 3 of the total of 4 walls have TVs on them. These walls are fully made up of TVs. The remaining wall that isn’t like the rest is a wall that Mildred also wants to turn into a wall with TVs. In our modern time, it is clear that it is almost impossible to walk into someone’s living room and find all walls except one covered with TVs that Mildred spends the entire day looking at. This is an extreme exaggeration that is presented in the book which clearly makes Mildred a perfect citizen of this dystopian world. Not only that, but Mildred is one that shows zero emotions when it comes to sensitive topics or serious things. For instance, Clarrise was a unique girlthat went against all her dystopian society stood for. She had the complete opposite thoughts that Mildred had and wasn’t a basic part of this messed up society like Mildred. Montag, who is Mildred’s husband found Clarrise quite an interesting girl. However, one day she disappeared and Montag was in complete and utter shock. He needed to know what happened to her and was greatly affected by her disappearance. The problem is Mildred knew that, but time after time when Montag brought up Clarisse, Mildred would simply stay silent even though it turns out she knew exactly what happened to her. When she broke the news to Montag that she got into