High-Rise

J.G. Ballard · 1975 · Novel

Explore this on the mapTrace its ancestors and descendants live in the tree.

Dystopian Societies & Totalitarian Control

It explores how an enclosed, stratified environment can rapidly devolve into a brutal class-based dystopia, where systemic inequalities and psychological pressures lead to societal breakdown without external totalitarian force.

What it is

Residents of a new, technologically advanced luxury high-rise apartment building descend into primitive tribalism and violence as the building's infrastructure begins to fail. It serves as a chilling allegory for class warfare and the fragility of social order.

↑Inherited from

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↓Passed on to(1)

Parasite· 2019↓ open

High-Rise provides a powerful literary precedent for depicting a contained environment where class divisions and systemic failures lead to a brutal, self-imposed dystopia, a thematic thread echoed in Parasite's exploration of the two families' intertwined lives.