You know, I don't think I ever really got dystopias.
Actually, I think this dystopias might just be too familiar to a kid.
The people in charge have weird arbitrary rules about what kind of things you can draw or say,
they insist that you treat them with respect, even though the only thing they have over you is age and authority,
they don't tend to be as objective or fair as one would like, and, to top it all off, you live with the knowledge that
if you step out of line, one of your fellow kids might tattle on you.
A dystopia is written with the overwhelming attitude that the characters are largely powerless,
but a kid already knows what that's like.
It's only when you become an adult and get used to having some kind of power that a dystopia really starts to sink in.
After getting used to having autonomy, a story where autonomy is impossible
stop sounding like so much fun, and it becomes less 'sticking it to your mean school principal'
and more 'getting your kneecaps confiscated by the secret police'.
I'd say out of all the modern dystopias, the one with the least potential for fun is probably 1984.
Now, 1984 was written in 1949 by George Orwell, and it was pretty much 100% social commentary on Orwell's criticisms of both Hitler and Stalin, who,
despite being in opposite ends of the political spectrum, struck him as frighteningly similar. As a result,
the antagonist of the story, the Party in control, manages to be completely unidentifiable party wise,
and could fall on either extreme of the spectrum. Un-personing, the Thought Police and the Party interrogation methods
are all thinly veiled re-skins of Stalinist Russia,
but Newspeak, doublethink & the Ministry of Truth have shades of Nazi Germany in their influences.
It's kind of an apolitical fusion of both totalitarian regimes.
Our POV character, Winston, is basically a conduit by which Orwell can discuss his thoughts on the political climate.
The book is essentially a series of events interspersed with inner monologue essays
as Winston tries to reconcile his thoughts on the Party and the nature of reality.
Now our story begins with our hero Winston writing down his thoughts on life in his personal illegal diary, hidden from the camera in his room.
Winston is just your average Joe government worker. He's got a job he hates, a coworker he's got a crush on,
and a crushingly dystopic government hovering over him that has him and everyone else under the constant monolithic surveillance of the godlike Big Brother.
Truth is whatever the Party claims it to be, and the only entertainment to be found
is in the regular public executions of prisoners and war and citizens that dared step a toe out of line.
Mondays, am I right? So Winston is an employee at the Ministry of Truth,
the innocently-named government agency in charge of dispensing truths to the eager citizens at large.
But of course, the normal truth is nowhere near accurate enough for the illustrious Party.
So instead of relying on the facts of reality to conform to the narrative they need,
the Party instead makes liberal use of, shall we say...
'alternative facts,' in order to keep their citizens quote/unquote "informed".
That way, if the Party benefits from the citizens believing that 2+2=5 for a day, the Party can say it with confidence and their citizens will happily oblige.
Or at least they'll be smiling.
So the citizens are routinely subjected to this thing called the Two Minutes Of Hate,
wherein Goldstein, the Party traitor supposedly bent on bringing Oceania to its knees,
spews a whole mess of propaganda about the Party and how it's wrong and evil and tyrannical and junk.