When protection becomes imprisonment

Protection vs imprisonment, another theme which features heavily in my book.

I love all things dystopia, so I started watching Silo on Apple TV last night. If you haven’t watched it (and I’ve only seen the first episode), I’d recommend it. The idea alone is brilliant: people live in a giant silo where they have everything they need. They don’t know why or what’s wrong with the outside world because their history has been lost, but they do know the outside world is poison. Strict rules maintain harmony. One of the most prominent rules is to NEVER ask to go outside. If you do, you’re condemned to go outside, where everyone watches your almost instant death.

The parallels in this series left me a little surprised, to be honest, as I too have a city in which no one is allowed to leave because it provides safety in an otherwise uninhabitable world. The story could easily unfold into a similar turn of events.

But let’s look at the theme in other fiction. The Hunger Games: safety is granted in exchange for lifelong service to the Capitol in the name of peace. To Cage A Wild Bird: safety is given in exchange for an oppressed life, or face death.

In a lot of dystopian settings, oppression is the strongest theme—where choice is just an illusion, or where breaking rules, however small, results in death. And in almost all of them, characters are trapped in their situation, unable to break free. But when you look at the alternatives, these seem to be the better options. The Hunger Games: nuclear war. Silo: death. Salt & Ash: death. However, if this were truly the only option, these stories would become incredibly bland and short, as there would be nothing to fight for, no hope. Instead, the characters dream, fight, and earn a place for an alternative future where there is freedom and choice.

So when does safety become imprisonment? At what point do we cross that line? In some countries, there is still capital punishment. People break the rules (usually only for murder) and face a death sentence, like in our books. Does this mean they’re trapped in a world that imprisons them? No, I don’t think so. I don’t believe that anyone—other than a select few among billions—would consider murder to be a restriction on their rights. And I think that’s one of the key points: when rules and regulations begin to infringe on people’s rights.

Then there’s the purpose of a rule. When a rule exists but serves no purpose other than to oppress people or restrict their ability to pursue freedom, that is the threshold where safety becomes imprisonment.