Harry Harrison
Make Room! Make Room!
Literature Review
Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! is a classic dystopian novel about overpopulation. It takes place in New York City in 1999, where 35 million inhabitants compete over water rations, living space, and “soylent” burgers. The story mostly follows a detective who is trying to track down the murderer of a notorious city racketeer. Meanwhile, city water rations are shrinking, power generators are failing, and street protests and general unrest seems to be rising, especially when government bodies threaten to legislate population control.
The hero of the novel is a New York detective, Andy Rusch, who shares a tiny apartment with an old man of 70-plus years called Solomon Kahn. This pairing is an excellent storytelling device, as Kahn remembers the old days, before the world became so overcrowded and before resources like water and electricity became so scarce – the two characters’ dialogue sparks off one another, enabling the reader to gain sympathy for two people trapped in what is a truly unpleasant future.
The third major character in the novel is a Chinese teenager, Billy Chung, who lives in a Manhattan ghetto, and who must steal to survive.
The basic plot of the story concerns Billy breaking into an home in a luxury apartment building: he believed the owner – O’Brien – to be out, but O’Brien was in the bathroom, and emerges to catch Billy red-handed. Billy panics and clubs O’Brien with a jemmy, killing him, and makes his escape.
Andy Rusch is brought in to track down O’Brien’s killer. Murders are usually afforded little police time in New York City, but O’Brien was a racketeer with friends in high places. Rusch has to stay on the case, as his superiors suspect that another racketeer might be trying to muscle in on O’Brien’s territory.
Rusch becomes romantically involved with O’Brien’s mistress, Shirl, and she moves into Rusch’s apartment when a new owner takes over O’Brien’s apartment. Rusch, Shirl and Soloman Kahn live reasonably happily together in the small apartment, until Kahn contracts pneumonia as a result of an injury sustained during a protest rally. When Kahn dies, his half of the apartment is taken over by a large and obnoxious family, who had been hanging around the morgue, waiting for a dead person’s living space to be freed up. Shirl cannot stand living with the new tenants, and leaves.
Rusch successfully tracks down Billy Chung as the killer of O’Brien, but the police are no longer interested, as the rival racketeer theory proved incorrect. Rusch is eventually busted for disobeying orders, and as the book ends he is a uniform policeman out on the streets as the 20th century draws to a close.
( Paul Tomlinson, December 1999)
Significance of the Study
Dystopias: Definition and Characteristics
Utopia: A place, state, or condition that is ideally perfect in respect of politics, laws, customs, and conditions.
Dystopia: A futuristic, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral, or totalitarian control. Dystopias, through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, make a criticism about a current trend, societal norm, or political system. Characteristics of a Dystopian Society
• Propaganda is used to control the citizens of society. • Information, independent thought, and freedom are restricted.
• A figurehead or concept is worshipped by the citizens of the society.
• Citizens are perceived to be under constant surveillance.
• Citizens have a fear of the outside world.
• Citizens live in a dehumanized state. • The natural world is banished and distrusted.
• Citizens conform to uniform expectations. Individuality and dissent are bad.
• The society is an illusion of a perfect utopian world. Types of Dystopian Controls Most dystopian works present a world in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through one or more of the following types of controls:
• Corporate control: One or more large corporations control society through products, advertising, and/or the media
The Dystopian Hero
● often feels trapped and is struggling to escape.
● questions the existing social and political systems.
● believes or feels that something is terribly wrong with the society in which he or she lives.
● helps the audience recognizes the negative aspects of the dystopian world through his or her perspective.