The individual versus society
The tension between a person's freedom or conscience and the demands, conformity, or control of the collective they live in.
The individual versus society in fiction: 20 works
Odysseus must reclaim his kingdom and family from the numerous suitors who have usurped his place, representing a corrupt social order.
The poem follows individual knights on quests to embody virtues that are presented as societal ideals for the Tudor dynasty.
Pamela, a servant girl, resists the repeated sexual advances of her master, Mr. B, highlighting the tension between her personal virtue and societal power structures.
The Eloi and Morloch castes extrapolate class division into an evolutionary split.
An ordinary man, Richard Hannay, finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy involving German spies and a secret organization, placing him against a powerful collective.
D-503's awakening desire for privacy and love sets him against the collective.
A stratified city divides thinker-elite above from worker-masses below, dramatizing class conflict.
The "disillusioned timber merchant" struggles against the racial prejudice and hypocrisy demanded by colonial society.
Winston's private rebellion against the collective is crushed by the state.
Societal collapse forces individuals to redefine their roles and relationships within new, fragmented communities.
Montag's awakening sets private conscience against an anti-intellectual mass culture.
The novel argues a civic ideal in which citizenship is earned through military service.
A human's struggle within an ape-ruled order inverts and critiques human social hierarchy.
Those who leave reject the collective's bargain, choosing conscience over comfort.
Shevek's science and conscience strain against both his egalitarian and capitalist societies.
Offred's private inner resistance strains against the totalizing regime.
The colonists split over whether to preserve or remake Mars, and over independence from Earth.
Vincent defies a genetic caste system to pursue a life it forbids him.
A poor family's infiltration of a wealthy household lays bare a rigid class divide.
The games stage a brutal allegory of economic inequality and human desperation.
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