Perfect Dystopian Worldbuilding - Delirium

Our lives revolve around love, connection to one another, emotion. But what if you lived in a world where love was considered a disease?

Delirium, by Lauren Oliver, is the first in a trilogy about a girl growing up controlled by the idea that love – Amor deliria nervosa – is a disease, and an infectious one at that. The story of Lena, Alex, and Hana is gripping, heartbreaking, and incredibly moving, but it’s impossible to ignore the incredible world it’s set in.

Portland, Maine, 2091. Americans live in areas untouched by the bombings decades earlier. Life is fraught with tension – electric fences separate the cities from the Wilds – unregulated land –  and inter-city travel is restricted. Feeling the wrong way can get you hurt. Contact between people is monitored. Music, books, movies – all entertainment is regulated. All exist in fear of deliria. Not to worry, though, the government has developed a surgical cure – similar to a lobotomy, everyone is required to undergo the infamous procedure at eighteen.

Why go through all this trouble?

People believe love is the cause of all problems in society – wars are fought out of love, order is disrupted because of love, otherwise mild-mannered citizens do the unthinkable when they catch love. The Cure doesn’t just prevent love – it dulls passionate emotions, which are all just different shades of love. And when people can’t be passionate, they can be controlled.

The phones are tapped, eyes are everywhere. People’s entire lives are planned out for them – their husband or wife (homosexuality isn’t permitted), their job, how many children they can have.

What about those who resist?

Alex is such a person. He is an Invalid, as in not-valid, someone who hasn’t gotten the Cure and lives in the Wilds. He is part of a group of resistors who aim to infiltrate and destroy this oppressive, totalitarian way of life. This path is a difficult one fraught with mortal peril, and made harder by the fact that the people being oppressed are so brainwashed by anti-love propaganda that even they try to stop them. Living in the Wilds means living in ashes. It means living with the constant threat of discovery, and death.

The beauty of this world carefully built by Lauren Oliver is the possibilities it creates. It allows us to explore the intricacies of human connection, the reason we risk everything over love. The best part is: it convinces us, just a little bit, that love is a disease, that things would be so much simpler without it. It lets us step back and wonder why we willingly endure so much pain for a scrap of love. It echoes of Romeo and Juliet and the myths of Helen of Troy – battles waged for love, death for love, any price for love.

We get to watch from Lena’s perspective as her character shifts from being a strict follower – and believer – of the laws, to getting a taste of love and wondering how she ever lived without it. We watch with heartbreak as she loses people, both to death and to the Cure – reduced to mindless zombies. Sometimes she catches a flicker of who they once were, and we are reminded once again the extent of which our lives are defined by who we love, our passions, our anger.

The world of Delirium, from the streets of futuristic Portland to the obliterated Wilds, is tactfully unfolded through the eyes of the characters living it. This sort of futuristic worldbuilding that grants such exploration of the human condition is rare, but wonderful.

I encourage you to check it out. Download the e-book here.

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Nicoline A.

I’m a 22 y.o. Mess in the Professional Writing program. I love video games, half-assed home exercise, and going for walks. Different universes have always been an escape for me, but what is it about a fictional world that submerges you so completely?