ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER: A FOUCAULDIAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE DISCIPLINARY SYSTEM IN DYSTOPIAN NOVELS

The study is concerned with the rigid stnictures of dystopian societies and its effects to the heroic and personal journeys of the dystopian heroes in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Veronica Roth's Dam/goof sedes By employing Michel Foucault's Concept of Discipline and Punishment, his modalities of power. Normative Cultural Relativism, and Joseph Campbells Monomyth, this analysis attempts to show how a totalitarian dystopian society shapes a dystopian hero as he embarks on a journey both heroic and personal. Through the particular disciplinary methods, these existing regimes, Me Republic of Gilead and the governance of the Bureau of Genetic Welfare, are able to induce fear and submission among the populace, consequently building a technology of power over its constituents. This form of social control, as it turns out, although widely acknowledged as a brutal phenomenon and is by no means unacceptable. proves to be a complex social function and political tactic that has a dearly-defined structure. In addition, as all these thorough exarninations were made, further definitions of dystopian societies and dystopian heroes arise. In more ways than one, elements of these novels could not be defined and categorized only by the classifications and definitions that were already set by other writers. Thus, the dystopian societies and dystopian heroes in these novels create their own reality of a dystopian literature. The definition of dystopian literature, therefore, is but a mere description of such a broad field of literature. In conclusion, a dystopian hero in a dystopian society wit always strive to survive through the disciplinary system of his world which operates along the society's watchtower.