English Literature
30 July 2011
George Orwell wrote 1984, in part, as a response to the events of World War Two: he felt that it caused him to question the strength of democracy in the face of fascism and wondered whether it would fall to the stronger or whether a socialist revolution would occur as a result. Upon witnessing the success of democratic power in the War, Orwell commented, “What really matters is that I fell into the trap of assuming that ‘the war and the revolution are inseparable’” (“Collected…” 367). This idea is reflected in a number of famous dystopian novels which go some way to satirising various modern day ideas and presenting them as having dystopian qualities: Orwell was not the only author inspired by the events of the Second World War as it spawned a succession of similar novels such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. These novels all present how the world could be in the face of fascism and all pick on key elements of society: the family, relationships and work in order to demonstrate this in the most realistic terms possible; these ideas are, worryingly, close to the truth of modern America today.
Traditionally in dystopian literature, the family is dealt with in a contemptuous way. It is viewed as an archaic social institution put in place to control rather than nurture. In Huxley’s Brave New World, the concept of the family is totally dismissed and upon finding out that he had a mother as opposed to be created in a lab, the society’s Director is forced to resign because of the embarrassment; equally, in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the family is the entire driving force behind the barbaric use of fertile women in a society where the majority of women are now barren but still desperate for children. In either case, the dystopian family is one associated with negative overtones and is widely regarded as being an unnecessary distraction from the society as a whole. In 1984, the family is once again treated in the same way: Orwell depicts the family as solely being a socialisation tool for the Party and this is shown most acutely in the home of the Parsons family. The children are the most notable facet to this scene which highlights the impetus placed on loyalty to the party over loyalty to your family. The children are ‘playing’ a game and react to Winston by involving him in their ‘game’: “Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting ‘Traitor!’ and ‘Thought-criminal!’
the little girl imitating her brother in every movement” (“1984” 32). Orwell has cleverly presented these children in a situation which is juxtaposed between the fantasy dystopian nature of 1984 and the real world: their actions are those derived from the society which they are encouraged to be in allegiance with but the little girl’s actions of copying her older brother help to emphasise the fact that these are still normal children; every young sibling copies their older brother or sister. In this sense, Orwell has highlighted the similarities yet differences between our world and theirs. Relationships are presented in much the same way: unnecessary and should exist solely for pleasure – attachment is discouraged. It forces the reader to assess how the family and relationships are in modern America and frankly, the idea of the family institution as being archaic is one which stands up in real life too.
Another traditional aspect of the dystopian novel, and one which Orwell and his contemporaries extort to the absolute limit, is the idea of governmental control and their use of propaganda. Orwell’s take on totalitarian governance in this sense, is perhaps among the more severe examples of how propaganda is used to control the masses. In 1984, the party implements a wide range of mind control techniques, including ‘Doublethink:’ which enables the individual to firmly believe what the Party tells them, whilst still holding their own opinions alongside it. The novel’s protagonist, Winston considers doublethink: “His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them” (“1984” 47). This passage clearly designates how confusing it must be for the citizens who exist in this world: they are aware of their own thoughts but numbed to an extent where they are unable to assert their own thinking. Orwell’s suggestion of this clearly prophesises the effect of the mass media in the world today: the majority of people base their entire political understanding on what they are told through the media – all of which have their own political agenda and allegiances meaning that the pure, un-tampered truth is rarely shown. This is shown in Brave New World through the hypnopaedia which is used to socialise infants (both pre and postnatal) into their roles for life, depending on their caste and society’s expectations of them. In Huxley’s world, the citizens are never able to form their own opinions as they are immediately designated a path in life – in modern America, this is still very much the case: children who are born into a specific class bracket or geographical area, tend to live up to those limitations throughout their lives. For example, the majority of children born in ‘the hood’ will conform to the social expectations placed upon them there.
The dystopian novel is traditionally focused on their being a lack of individuality allowed in society, a hostile environment in which expectations are placed highly on the individual working for the ‘greater good’ of the society and generally on a lack of privacy. In modern America, these issues are becoming prevalent with more and more information about citizens being filed away on computer systems. Did you buy eggs with your groceries and use a reward card? That will be stored in a file about you somewhere, for instance. The record of individuals’ finances, education and family are all readily available online and even worse, website such as Facebook encourage you to actively give out personal details about yourself to be published on the internet. The mass media encourages individuals to become drones – never questioning the choices of the government or querying why their finances are being toyed with: we simply reel off the opinions that we’re fed through the various news outlets. Whilst it would be hysterical to claim that the government controls out minds, like the Party does in 1984, it is clear that we no longer exercise the right to free thought as much as generations before us did. Orwell’s dystopian novel may seem extreme upon first reading, but in practice it is oddly prophetic in detailing how the modern world is today and Orwell is accompanied in these thought by others such as Huxley and Atwood, among many others. It is a terrifying thought but given how modern society has evolved (or rather, de-evolved) already, it raises the question of how long it will be until Orwell’s dystopian vision is realised completely.
References
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Iowa: 1st World Library, 2004. Print.
--- Volume 3 of The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. Oxford: Penguin Books, 1970. Print.
