Bloom's Literature is a great resource for students when studying authors and texts in-depth.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (AUDIOBOOK) by
For use in schools and libraries only. Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities. 1984 is still the great modern classic of "negative utopia" in its representation of an imaginary world that is completely convincing.
Brave New World by
Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free.
A Clockwork Orange by
A vicious fifteen-year-old "droog" is the central character of this 1963 classic, whose stark terror was captured in Stanley Kubrick's magnificent film of the same title.
In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to "redeem" him—the novel asks, "At what cost?"
Fahrenheit 451 by
In a society in which books are outlawed, Montag, a regimented fireman in charge of burning the forbidden volumes, meets a revolutionary school teacher who dares to read. Suddenly he finds himself a hunted fugitive, forced to choose not only between two women, but between personal safety and intellectual freedom.
The Handmaid's Tale by
The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.
STUDY GUIDES
USEFUL WEBLINKS
These links are to resources produced by HSC teachers and students, not from this College. Please read all material with a critical eye.
Listen to the first chapter read by Peter Capaldi.
