Identify and define three characteristics of dystopian literature from Gathering Blue.

Obviously there are lots of variations in dystopian
literature, and so there is no one size fits all approach. However, there are some
themes that can be gathered together that occur in many dystopian classics such as this
novel and others. I will comment on the three main ones.

1)
Dystopian literature, being set in the future, makes a comment on us today and often
paints a bleak picture of the kind of future we will face. Normally dystopian literature
is set in a distant future after some kind of nuclear holocaust or environmental
disaster that has ended civilisation as we know it and greatly reduced mankind in terms
of their level of technology. Thus is it that this story refers to the Ruin that has so
dramatically changed civilisation.

2) Normally the new kind
of government or power that has formed and has control over the people is one that is
shown to abuse that power and to greatly restrict the rights of that people, pretending
that such curtaling of rights is theoretically for the people's own good. Thus the
Guardians, Kira discovers, are actually trying to manipulate and control their talents
rather than giving them free expression.

3) The
protagonist(s) of dystopian novels normally find themselves in conflict with the
leadership or government and this external conflict normally shapes the plot of the
novel. We can see this in Gathering Blue by the increasing sense of
unease that Kira has with her discoveries about the Guardians, culminating in her
decision when her father re-appears.