Partake or Be Departed: Insularity of Setting within the Dystopian Imagination and The Mark: The Beast Rules the World

Abstract

Insularity of setting within the dystopia is a motif that is shared between works of dystopian fiction and works in the utopian imagination as a whole. Each dystopia or utopia is unique in how it creates and uses insularity of setting to facilitate the confinement of its subjected society to a prescribed set of social, political, religious, and economic practices. Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins use the framework of rapture fiction and the motif of insularity of setting to create an international dystopia in their novel The Mark: The Beast Rules the World. The global insularity conceived within The Mark is unique in light of the traditionally isolated insularity found in classic dystopian and utopian works. The study of insularity of setting in the works of More’s Utopia, Orwell’s 1984, and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 can be applied to the insularity found in The Mark, contributing to a better understanding of how this motif is used in dystopian fiction and how it works to create a globally insular dystopia in The Mark