The Delirium trilogy, set in a society that
views love as a disease in need of curing, has some interesting things to say
about love. I’ve already looked at these
a bit, particularly enjoying the fact that it explores different forms of love,
not just romantic connections. However,
while the series gets at some neat ideas, it also takes what I feel is a fairly
easy way out in a few areas (spoilers for Delirium
and Requiem.)
When I
find a dystopian story that views certain facets of life through a wildly
different lens than we do, I always like to look for how this change affects
the story’s society in everyday ways. A
police state moving at the behest of the combined medical/religious institution,
complete with resistance movements, neighborhood informers, and people being
“disappeared” is all well and good, but the details interest me too, the
mechanics of how life works outside of the big plot stuff. With Delirium,
one question that immediately came to mind was, in a world without love, what
do government-sanctioned relationships look like?
In this
case, the nuts and bolts are what you’d expect.
Prior to their cure procedure, teenagers undergo an examination that
“scores” them as members of society, and they are then assigned a pair that
they will eventually marry and have a designated number of children with. Naturally, the better their examination score
(which generally seems to gauge levels of conformity and looks for signs of
dissent,) the better their chances of getting an advantageous pair, and socioeconomic
factors come into play as well, keeping most people in their assigned “lanes.”
Lena is
assigned her pair, Brian Scharff, after she’s already met and fallen for Alex,
so she obviously would have been against the match no matter who it was. It bothers me, though, that Brian is such a
blatant non-catch. He’s described as a
sickly asthmatic with numerous indoor, outdoor, and food allergies – none are
which are actually criticisms against him as a person, but in fiction, asthma
and allergies are usually “nerd” and/or “loser” markers, and they really pile
it on Brian. Lena repeatedly notices his
wheezing breaths and seems grossed out by him in general, and that’s before he starts casually insulting her
appearance when he thinks she’s out of earshot.
I don’t like this, because Brian doesn’t need to be unappealing or rude for Lena not to want to be with
him. The fact that he’s not Alex should
be enough; he could have been a charismatic dreamboat and it wouldn’t have
mattered, because Lena would’ve already been in love with Alex and known there
was no point without love. To give Lena
additional non-Alex-related “reasons” to dislike him seems to flatten this plot
thread, reduces it.
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