The Dream Hotel

While there are many societal issues presented in The Dream Hotel, the primary issue at the crux of Sara’s problems is whether surveillance is justified as a method of preventing harm. The novel draws a clear parallel between dystopian mechanisms and real-world national security overreach, questioning the moral cost of sacrificing privacy for safety. The novel rests the entire system of surveillance—and the very existence of the RAA as an organization—on a single tragedy, the horrific slaughter at a Super Bowl, and creates arguments from there. Notably, the novel presents very few people as outright dissenters to the need for surveillance, and even Sara must grow to understand the ethical complications and her personal need for privacy in a world bent on analyzing her regardless of her wishes. Her journey reveals how quickly consent becomes irrelevant when the infrastructure of surveillance is so deeply embedded in everyday life. Surveillance is also an economic concern for the government; by placing surveillance and a biased algorithm in power, the government/Safe-X/et cetera saves money, since people will always behave under the belief they are being watched and dissected. Ultimately the novel concludes that surveillance can never be truly ethical, since human biases will always present themselves, and people have a right to privacy to allow themselves to be human beings without judgment.