Psychology of Dystopian Mass: A Study of Sowmya Rajendran’s The Lesson

In dystopian fiction, repressive regimes form a stringent system through which they control their subjects. The control is in the form of manipulation through propaganda, re-writing of history to suit regimes' agenda, creating artificial enemies to unite their subjects to redirect their hate away from the regimes. Also, use of mass psychology, especially the idea of one identifying oneself through many and many acting as one, is one of the primary end-goals of such regimes – a collectivist dystopia. These end-goals become reality when majority of subjects, who once dreamt of living in a utopian society, are convinced to unanimously agree to adapt to a fundamentalist or totalitarian ideology. Beginning of a dystopia is acceptance of an extremist ideology by the majority along with the rise of a didactic authority. In the light of this hypothesis, the present paper analyses, with the help of theory of Mass Psychology that it is not the power alone, but people living in fictional world are to be blamed equally for the ultimate demise of the society they live in. The paper analyses the behaviour of the society through its members in the dystopian novel ‘The Lesson' by Sowmya Rajendran, published in 2015. The paper also aims at comparing behaviour of the mass in ‘The Lesson' with other dystopian novels written by foreign authors namely ‘WE' by Yevgeny Zamyatin, ‘Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley, ‘1984' by George Orwell and ‘Fahrenheit 451' by Ray Bradbury; and with Indian Dystopian novels – ‘Leila' by Prayaag Akbar, ‘Escape' and ‘The Island of Lost Girls' by Manjula Padmanabhan. The study also takes into account how the already marred protagonist living in dystopia, struggles against fellow individuals and authority in order to break the chains of submission and manipulation in the novels mentioned above.