CITIZENS’ RESISTANCE AND POWER STRUGGLE IN LAUREN OLIVER’S DELIRIUM TRILOGY

Abstract

The Delirium trilogy is a dystopian literary work in the young adult genre. It describes a society built on the premise that love is a dangerous disease, called amor deliria nervosa, threatening the safety and stability of the society. This study explores the power struggle between the totalitarian government in the trilogy and the citizens’ resistance, and their political subjectivity and emancipation, analyzed by Jacques Rancière ’s concept of “the distribution of the sensible”.

This research utilizes a descriptive qualitative research design where the main analytical tool is the use of qualitative content analysis. Such a technique allows for a more detailed analysis of how Rancière’s theories help interpret the social and political phenomena presented in the trilogy. The main source of the data includes the conversations and descriptions in the trilogy written by Lauren Oliver known as the Delirium trilogy. Literary documentation serves as the means of collecting the data that are later analyzed through qualitative content analysis.

This study's data analysis finds that the power struggle between the government and the citizens in the Delirium trilogy exists because the citizens resist living in a rigid social hierarchy that the government, as the police order, enforces. The society is built upon the premise that love is a pathological disease that endangers their safety and stability, resulting in the government’s total control over the society. The citizens’ resistance is their effort to claim their political subjectivity and emancipate themselves from the system by dismantling it, subverting the dominant narrative as the tool of oppression.