This paper seeks to understand what common factors in fictional dystopian societies have lead to the loss of citizens’ freedom and subsequent formation of dystopian nations. In review of the tradition of dystopian literature, three novels were chosen: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four (1949) and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1986). In exploring these books, professor Joseph Jones’s essay “Utopia as Dirge” was also utilized. Through Jones’s work, four main losses are identified which lead to dystopias: loss of wonder, loss of humanitarian culture, loss of history, and loss of responsibility in the exercise of power. In further studying these losses, they are rearranged to better reflect the order in which they occur in the formation of a dystopian society. In addition, I added a fifth loss: the loss of sex as a means of human connection. These five factors all contribute to the creation of a dystopian society in fictional literature. In looking at these works through these factors, one is able to see the warning that each individual author is sending out to his or her reader about civilization’s future.