Unwind and the Island: Man’s Desire to Be Fully Human

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sponsor-Jordan notices something’s off after he agrees to take them to the news station; “‘Something’s wrong, his eyes are lying’” (Jordan2Delta). When Lincoln returns after his sponsor is killed Jordan puts a gun to his head, forcing her to choose whether or not to trust that the person standing before her is the person she’s known all her life. Trust is the most important part in a relationship; without it there is no possibility for a healthy relationship to be formed.

The final dystopian characteristic present in both Shusterman’s novel and Bay’s picture is, the lack of privacy. In Shusterman’s novel parents decide whether they want their children to be ‘unwound’, “and he found it. The Unwind order” (Shusterman 6). Teenagers under the age of eighteen no longer have control over whether they live or die, once their ‘death sentence’ is signed they are no longer considered human. Privacy is also violated when their basic civil rights are taken away, “‘You both had more than fifteen years to prove yourselves. Don’t blame the world for your own lousy choices” (Shusterman 257). These teenagers are allowed to be killed based off of their parents judgment, they have no chance to defend or explain themselves-the total dismissal of a basic court system violates civil rights completely. The lack of privacy is also shown in Bay’s picture, in the very opening scene Lincoln is shown through the perspective of a camera-this theme of constant surveillance continues until the agnates escape from the underground bunker. The use of cameras leaves very little room for error or rebellion, with the constant threat of being caught people are less likely to try things that could essentially mess up the system. A violation of privacy is also shown when the creator of the program injects micro-scanners into Lincoln’s eye, the purpose of these were to identify why he was functioning at a higher level than his fellow agnates. The creator fooled Lincoln by using false pretenses, this violated Lincoln’s privacy in the fact that even after he escaped they figured out where he was based off of a gps located inside of the micro-scanners. When you are constantly being watched there is a decreased desire to test boundaries, when people are too afraid to test boundaries change is never achieved.

In both Neal Shusterman’s novel, Unwind, and Michael Bay’s motion picture, The Island, many dystopian characteristics are examined-the three most noticeable are privacy and the lack of private space, the inability to form human relationships, and the impact of technology on human progress. Through the examination of these characteristics we learn to realize what in our lives we take for granted, and how easily those things can be taken away from us.