I once took an English class about writing on Dystopian Societies. When I took the class, a lot of people asked me in the world that class would be about. Initially, I told them that dystopian is the opposite of utopian and the class would large be reading and discussing novels such as Brave New World, Hunger Games, etc. As I a began the class, however, I realized that calling a dystopia the opposite of utopia is not entirely accurate.
The word utopia was coined by a priest named Thomas More who published a novella in 1551. He created the word to purposefully have a double meaning. When pronounced in latin the term utopia means “good place”, or essentially “the perfect place”. But, he derived the word from two Greek words meaning “no place”. This double meaning implies that a utopia is a perfect society which does not, and cannot, exist. This is where the term dystopia comes into play. The word dystopia means “distanced from good”, or “distanced from perfection”. This is a different meaning than “opposite of perfection”.
Nearly every depiction of a dystopian society in literature is a society that attempted to create a utopia, but has unraveled over several generations because of the inherent imperfections in humanity, thus distancing itself from the perfection the society attempted to obtain. A dystopia is an attempted utopia where the inherent weaknesses of humanity have festered into new, and often worse, evils and degradation in human society. Therefore, the study of dystopian societies is not the study of utopian opposites but the study of how attempts to create a perfect society out of imperfect individuals is doomed to distance that society from the perfection it seeks.