Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day (1970) And Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993): A Comparative Study

Résumé: This dissertation is a comparative study of two American dystopian novels namely Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day (1970) and Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993). Focus has been laid on the affinities between the two author’s representation of surveillance as a strategy for building sameness and conformity. To examine this point, this dissertation has brought into focus the way the governments depicted in the novels seek to manipulate language/knowledge to construct a falsified reality. It has also dealt with the use of technological surveillance to control the public and private spaces. The last section has dealt with the use of medical surveillance to better control individual’s bodies rendering them docile. To carry out this study, I have relied mainly on Michel Foucault’s concepts of “procedures of external exclusion” and “the medical gaze” as well as David Lyon and Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of “post-panopticon”. After a thorough analysis of Levin’s and Lowry's novels, I have come to some conclusions. Both narratives have revealed that surveillance in all its aspects is a major entity in dystopian texts to show how intertwined it is with the future of humanity, and in what manner it is viewed as the sole solution to many of contemporary world's afflictions.

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