Component 2 : Comparative & Contextual Study (Dystopia) > AO5 > Flashcards
AO5 Flashcards
Edmond Van Den Bossche on 1984
“1984 is a political statement. It contains no prophetic declaration, only a simple warning to mankind. “
Bernard Crick on 1984
“1984 is not a prophecy, it is plainly a satire and a satire of a particular, even a peculiar kind- a Swiftian satire”
Jean-Claude Michea on 1984
“The story told in 1984 is, above all, the story of the rebellion of the individual; thus 1984 is apparently the story of failure. “
Ben Pimlott on Orwell
“The author offers a political choice- between the protection of truth, and a slide into the expedient falsehood for the benefit of rulers and the exploitation of the ruled, in whom genuine feeling and ultimate hope reside. “
Edmond Van Den Bossche on society in 1984
“ His fellow intellectuals have sold their inalienable right to think freely for security and a semblance of physical well-being.”
Grossman on society
“Technology exists as a tool for stagnation rather than progression”
Roger Luckhurst on Orwell’s exploration techniques in Part 1
“In the first part, Orwell invokes the power of private memory to resist the state’s rewriting of history and explores the reserve of the unconscious (Winston is always dreaming, dreams woven out of personal memory). He explores the resistant potential of desire and sexuality, described as ‘the force that would tear the Party to shreds’, and of purposeless art, represented by the useless beauty of the paperweight he cherishes that embodies ‘a little chunk of history they had forgotten to alter’. These are all systematically dismantled by the Party’s reprogramming in the closing chapters of the book, of course.”
Michael Thorp on the Party
“The Party’s success is down to its ability “to destroy the individual and turn him into an automation”
EM Forster on Big Brother
“Big Brother also lurks behind Churchill and any leader whom propaganda utilises or invents.”
Margaret Atwood on Dystopia
“The majority of dystopias - Orwell’s included - have been written by men, and the point of view has been male. When women have appeared in them, they have been either sexless automatons or rebels who have defied the sex rules of the regime. They have acted as the temptresses of the male protagonists, however welcome this temptation may be to the men themselves.
Thus Julia; thus the cami-knicker-wearing, orgy-porgy seducer of the Savage in Brave New World; thus the subversive femme fatale of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1924 seminal classic, We. I wanted to try a dystopia from the female point of view - the world according to Julia, as it were. However, this does not make The Handmaid’s Tale a “feminist dystopia”, except insofar as giving a woman a voice and an inner life will always be considered “feminist” by those who think women ought not to have these things.”
Amin Malak On 1984 THT comparison
‘like Orwell who in 1984 extrapolated specific ominous events and tendencies in twentieth-century politics, she tries to caution against right-wing fundamentalism, rigid dogmas, and misogynous theosophies that may be currently gaining a deceptive popularity. The novel’s mimetic impulse then aims at wresting an imperfect present from a horror-ridden future’
Dominick M. Grace on Offred’s narrative style
“Offred’s narrative strategies consistently stress the failure of any single reading of an event to be valid.”
Jem Berkes on language
“Language becomes a method of mind control with the ultimate goal being the destruction of will and imagination”
Terry Eagleton on language in 1984
“In ‘1984,’ Orwell demonstrates how the corruption of language leads to the erosion of individual autonomy, highlighting the fragility of independent thought in totalitarian societies.”
Stuart Hall on writing restrictions in THT
“Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ illuminates the ways in which the restriction of writing functions as a form of ideological control, threatening independent thought and reinforcing hierarchical power structures.”
Margaret Atwood on 1984 & narrative voice
“Orwell’s ‘1984’ demonstrates how a restricted narrative voice can serve as a tool of totalitarian control, stifling independent thought and perpetuating oppressive regimes.”
Martha Nussbaum on narration in THT
“In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ Offred’s unreliable narration serves as a powerful reminder of the constant threat to independent thought in a society where truth is obscured and dissent is dangerous.”
Lionel Shriver on 1984
• “Orwell describes a world of total state surveillance, where love and independent thought are treasonous”
Jeffrey Meyers on Winston
• “Winston, locked in loneliness, becomes a lunatic, a minority of one, the only man still capable of individual thought”
• ‘Winston feels that he may indeed be the last man’
Christopher Hitchens
significance of women in Orwell’s work
“men in Orwell’s fiction are utterly incapable of happiness without women”
Patrica Hill on God in 1984
“There is room or only one God in Oceania, and his name is Big Brother”
THT Anna K.Kaler Puritan names
“New England Puritan women were assigned names like “Silence, Fear, Patience, Prudence, Mind-well, Comfort, Hope-still and Be Fruitful” so as to be “reminded…of their feminine destiny
THT Angela Gulick on technology
“Gilead is working in the opposite direction, moving towards a time when technology was of limited development”
1984 Anthony Burgess
‘Orwell’s modern hell was basically a reproduction o British misery in the postwar rationing years, with the Alice of Stalin’s police-state style added on”
Susanna Becker on Atwood
“Atwood belongs to those writers of contemporary world literature who…. address pressing global issues”
Margaret Atwood on human and freedom
dystopias “challenge us to re-examine what we understand by the word human, and above all what we intend by the word freedom”
Atwood on speculative fiction
“…nothing happens that the human race has not already done at some time in the past, or that it is not doing now… We’ve done it, or we’re doing it, or we could start doing it tomorrow. Nothing inconceivable takes place”
“the projected trends on which my future society is based are already in motion”
Carol L. Beran: “Images of Women’s Power in Contemporary Canadian Fiction by Women” (1990)
Carol L. Beran is a Canadian writer and literary critic, who has written specifically about Atwood’s works.
• She explored the idea of Offred as a victim, yet still having “some kind of special power”
• In Gilead, Offred is victimised by a system that reduces women to instruments of procreation
• However, Offred’s mind and its ability to remember and use language becomes a “symbol of her power over the powerful male; she extracts gifts and favours in return for playing the crossword game”
• One of Beran’s most famous quotes about The Handmaid’s Tale is: “Offred’s power is in language”:
○ By this she means that although almost all of Offred’s freedoms, choices and power were stripped away from her, she was still able to record her story via the cassettes referred to in the Historical Notes
○ Her voice and her story continue long after Gilead has fallen
○ This is contrasted with Professor Piexioto, who lacks the ability to verbalise with any sense of emotion, because to him Offred is an object of scientific study
• Beran believes that “in finding power in words, in speaking, Offred has moved from being a victim”
• In Offred, Atwood gives the reader a model of a woman who exemplifies a “creative non-victim”, which is needed in order for Offred to become a heroine:
○ “The power to feel and to create feeling is for Atwood’s heroines woman’s true power; artistic creation becomes the symbol of woman’s greatest power”
Coral Ann Howells: “Science Fiction in the Feminine: The Handmaid’s Tale” (1996)
Coral Ann Howells has lectured and published widely on Canadian literature, including about Atwood’s works. She has written about the presentation of female self-identity and Offred’s resistance to patriarchal authority in The Handmaid’s Tale. She argues that Atwood’s choice of a female narrator subverts the traditionally masculine dystopian genre.
• Howells acknowledges that The Handmaid’s Tale is emblematic of a woman’s survival narrative told within the confines of a patriarchal system, as represented by Gilead:
○ In a world in which women are restricted to private domestic spaces and have their individual identities stripped, Offred still asserts the right to tell her story
○ “Her treasonable act of speaking out in a society where women are forbidden to read or write or to speak freely effects a significant shift from ‘history’ to ‘herstory’”
• However, Howells agrees with Atwood’s assertion that the novel does not fit into the science fiction genre:
○ In fact, she believes that The Handmaid’s Tale resists classification, “just as Offred’s storytelling allows her to escape the prescriptive definitions of Gilead”
• She suggests that the novel is not just concerned with female oppression, but gender politics in a broader sense, as Gilead not only represses its female citizens, but also its male citizens, controlling even the most basic human desires for intimacy and love
• Howells asserts that there is no simple gender division between masculine and feminine qualities in The Handmaid’s Tale:
○ If men are capable of violence then so are women
• Offred herself represents the complicated nature of feminism and political activism, which can be flawed and inconsistent:
○ This is demonstrated via Offred being a witty woman who cares about men, as well as about her female friends
○ In refusing to be silenced, she speaks as a late 20th-century feminist resisting the cultural identity imposed on her - she aims to reclaim her own identity via her memories and refusal to give up hope
○ But Offred is not revolutionary, as she refuses to join the Mayday resistance, and offers up to Nick the one thing she still owns for herself: her name
• Howells believes that Offred’s position is much closer to the “traditionally feminine role of woman as social mediator”:
○ “Though she resists the brutal imposition of male power in Gilead, she also remembers the delights of heterosexual love and yearns to fall in love again”
• The novel can also be viewed as having elements of a traditional love story with feminine ideals of romance and romantic fantasies with Nick:
○ However, Offred’s clear assertion that the fact she continued her affair with Nick of her own free will and for her needs alone offers a female perspective often missing from love stories told from a male perspective
• Finally, Howells explores the idea of the Historical Notes representing a shift back from ‘herstory’ to ‘history’, as Offred’s narrations are viewed through a male academic lens:
○ The reader does not find out what happened to Offred, and Professor Pieixoto does not know and is not interested - he is only interested in the authenticity of the reports
Reactions to THT on Publication
• The critical reception to the book on publication was varied, especially depending on the location of the critic
• The general reaction of Canadian media was a nervous one, treating the book as a work of social realism:
○ “In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood’s pessimism comes to the fore as she attempts to frighten us into an awareness of our destiny before it’s too late” (Globe and Mail, 1985)
• In America, reviewers appeared to find the novel particularly unsettling:
○ “The Handmaid’s Tale provides a compelling lesson in power politics and in reasonable intentions gone hysteric” (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1986)
• Some critics looked beyond the obvious gender politics in the novel:
○ “Atwood’s book is suffused by life - the heroine’s irrepressible vitality and the author’s lovely subversive hymn to our ordinary life, as lived, amid perils and pollution, now” (The New Yorker, 1986)
Reaction to THT by Atwood
• Atwood has called her novel “one of the most allusion-studded things I’ve done”, explaining the link between the novel’s title to Chaucer and the Bible
• Atwood has asserted that she was not writing a “feminist” novel, but a dystopian novel from the female point of view:
○ She argues that the majority of dystopias have been written from the male point of view
○ She has said she believes the novel is seen as feminist by those who think women shouldn’t have a voice
• Atwood believes that the novel resists classification, but does not view her work as a piece of science fiction, which she believes is defined by “monsters and spaceships”:
○ Instead, she considers her work to be a piece of “speculative fiction”, in that it could really happen with not much of a leap of imagination
○ She therefore believes that the novel exemplifies one of the things science fiction does, which is to “extrapolate imaginatively from current trends and events to a new future that’s half-prediction, half satire” (The Guardian, 2011)
• This interest in our planet and its future continues for Atwood today:
In an interview with The Guardian in 2010, she stated that “the threat to the planet is us. It’s actually not a threat to the planet - it’s a threat to us.
More Recent Reactions to THT
• With the 2017 television adaptation, The Handmaid’s Tale has reached new audiences
• Of the series, Atwood said that she has “influence but no power” and that the fact that the series has continued beyond the original novel is complicated for her, as she questions how some of the characters survive for as long as they do (Vanity Fair, 2019)
• However, also in 2019, she said that she believes the topics in the book are still with us today
• In 2018, a BBC article suggested that “Atwood’s novel has an eerie way of always feeling of the moment”, implying that it is as relevant today as it has ever been
• The same critic (Jennifer Keishin Armstrong) believes that the two main film adaptations of the book were not successful:
○ She cites especially the 1990 film version as an “obvious misinterpretation of the original material”
○ However, the updated television adaptation “feels more vital than ever” as the cultural landscape has shifted further, for example with the #MeToo movement taking hold
Notes on HULU TV Adaptation of THT (2017)
The recent popular television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale has extended the social and political discussions beyond what was started in the novel. While the novel itself was published in 1985, it drew on real-life politics that still resonate today. Atwood herself conceived the novel as “speculative fiction”: a work that imagines a future that could conceivably happen without any advances in technology from the present. In other words, it could really happen. The white, wide-brimmed bonnet and red cloak have become synonymous with women’s oppression, and the TV adaptation did not deviate from the symbolism of the specific costumes of the novel.
• The 2017 Hulu television series has been the most popular adaptation of the novel on stage or screen to date, winning numerous awards and critical acclaim • The show’s producers changed details to update it to the present day, such as including references to Uber and Tinder in Offred’s memories of pre-Gilead life • The release of the series coincided with the election of Donald Trump, and the rise of movements and laws to limit women’s reproductive freedom: ○ Women began to wear outfits inspired by the television series at protests against these measures • Offred’s story remains the most prominent, and she is the only character given a voice through interior monologue via voiceover narration: ○ This technique serves to personalise her voice and her story • However, there is more representation in the television series, including more people of colour and characters who identify as LGBTQ+: ○ This is designed to make the show more relatable to modern audiences, so as to better reflect modern society ○ For example, in the original book, Moira is white, but in the television adaptation she is played by an African American actress ○ Given Moira’s open resistance to oppression, her different portrayal here signifies how society has changed to incorporate race as an important piece of one’s identity • The show also sometimes follows other characters and their perspectives: ○ This gives the audience a broader understanding of the world of Gilead, and how the repressive regime affects a wider range of people • The series also uses colour as symbolic beyond the confines of the written novel: ○ For example, the handmaid’s uniforms are a typical deep blood red, but they are also often foregrounded in otherwise colourless scenes ○ Gilead scenes are filtered through a sepia/yellow tone, while pre-Gilead is represented as brighter and has a colder/bluer tone • The series chooses to reveal Offred’s real name to the audience in episode 1: ○ This is a significant departure from the book, perhaps representing June/Offred’s dual narrative which is interwoven throughout not only the book but also the series ○ This helps to personalise her more for the audience, in a world where she is so obviously de-personalised ○ It also establishes the character as less passive than Offred in the book; externally, she is obedient, but internally, she rages, indignant at what is happening to her and to others • The viewer therefore should be aware that the narrative here is not only being told by the character of Offred, but is also being re-told via the deliberate construction of the television series • In the book, the narrative is re-framed at the end with the Historical Notes, in which it is revealed that the book is a transcription of a series of cassettes recording Offred’s account: ○ This framing is referenced in the series, as after the opening sequence of episode 1, there is a quiet but audible click of an audio cassette recorder just before Offred begins her first voiceover ○ However, as the television adaptation continues beyond the book, the use of the epilogue is deliberately omitted • In the series, Offred’s face is often shown very close to camera, allowing the audience a greater emotional connection to the character: ○ This close focus on the character’s face also narrows the visual field, mirroring Offred’s limited perspective in Gilead ○ This is in contrast to the book, in which we as the reader have very little physical description of Offred to go on, as though to represent her individuality fading • Serena Joy is also represented as much younger in the television adaptation, and more of a contemporary of Offred: ○ This makes a more complex dynamic between the two characters, as Serena Joy’s bitterness and resentment towards Offred is complicated further by the fact that Offred is there to do something that should rightfully be done by Serena
The fact that the television series has continued beyond the story told in the novel means that it intends to explore the world beyond the confines of Offred’s room
Jem Berkes: “Language as the ‘Ultimate Weapon’ in Nineteen Eighty-Four” (2000)
Jem Berkes’s essay on language as a weapon in Orwell’s 1984 is an often-cited critical source.
• Berkes writes about how language can be a powerful tool to manipulate and control large numbers of people
• He states that “language has the power in politics to mask the truth and mislead the public”:
○ This is evident in 1984 via the use of Newspeak and propaganda
○ He argues that Orwell wanted to increase public awareness of the power of language to manipulate and control
• In 1984, Berkes believes that “language becomes a mind-control tool, with the ultimate goal being the destruction of will and imagination”:
○ Despite Winston’s attempts to find out information about the past, and to write down his thoughts, his will is ultimately destroyed as he accepts the inevitable and declares his love for Big Brother
• Berkes suggests that the role of Newspeak in 1984 is to “restrict understanding of the real world”:
○ Where the means to self-expression and information are limited, then a person’s world compresses and gets smaller
• The Party wishes to impose their version of reality on its people, narrowing the range of thought and therefore shortening people’s memories:
○ When words that describe a particular thought are completely absent from a language, that thought becomes more difficult to think of and communicate
○ After O’Brien forces Winston to fully embrace the Party’s ideologies, Winston’s imagination deteriorates and he can no longer fix his mind clearly on anything for longer than a few moments
• Berkes believes that Orwell has created a perfect totalitarian system, in which the government relies on a “passive public which lacks independent thought and which has a great tolerance for mistakes, both past and present”:
○ This means that the population is much less likely to threaten the government’s control as they do not question or criticise the status quo
• Berkes queries why the population of Oceania accept the restriction of thought and language without resistance:
○ Given their aim is to completely replace the English language with Newspeak, one would expect some form of collective opposition to such a plan
○ However, the Party does not overtly “force” people to use Newspeak by law (as there are no laws)
○ Instead, the people are just fully immersed in the new language, so by default people have to use it in order to communicate
• Berkes argues that control of the people of Oceania goes beyond merely using language as a weapon, but is more fundamentally about “psychological control of the public”:
○ While the Party does use physical punishment as a tool, it primarily applies psychological tactics, such as the manipulation of people through language, on a continuous basis
• 1984 also employs the media as a powerful tool for manipulation because “the public is widely exposed to it, and also because the public trusts it”:
○ The characters are “slaves of the media” as they follow it and its instructions and misinformation without question
○ Via the media in 1984, the Party is further able to present their distorted version of reality
○ “Orwell is making a point about how the media can use language to mask the truth”
• Berkes believes that the media in Oceania is “relying on the principle that a piece of information that is repeated often enough becomes accepted as truth”:
○ Winston constantly wonders at how his colleagues can accept the misinformation that the media dispenses
○ This also applies to history, which again is manipulated by the Party so that centres of opposition cannot develop
○ Even Winston, who knows what is going on with the altering of documents, has trouble recalling who Oceania is meant to be at war with
○ It is this constant element of doubt that contributes to Winston eventually accepting the Party’s reality
• The introduction of Newspeak is also designed to further break the link with the real past by introducing a language barrier:
○ Therefore, “the manipulation of language and text not only affects the present, but also the past and the future in more than one way”
Berkes believes that the warnings carried in the novel are equally relevant today, as is the “fear that politicians and the media abuse language to hide truth”
Feminism and 1984
Feminist critics have often denounced Orwell as a misogynist due to his portrayal of women in the novel.
• In 1984, Beatrix Campbell, in her work “Orwell – Paterfamilias or Big Brother?”, believed that Orwell “only holds women to the filter of his own desire, or distaste”:
○ She believes that women in the novel are presented primarily as sexual objects
• Jennifer O’Dee (2013) stated that “Orwell characterises his women under a misogynistic lens”:
○ They are classed as mother, wife and sexual being, and women are depicted as belonging in the home, producing and nurturing children
○ The only woman represented as a “true” woman is Winston’s mother, who dies prior to the novel beginning
• Her overall critique is that “Orwell allows his misogynistic beliefs that women belong in the home to dictate his female characters”:
○ She believes that he pities these women as losing their femininity
• According to Deirdre Beddoe (1984), Orwell was not only anti-feminist, but “he was totally blind to the role women were and are forced to play in the order of things”
• Daphne Patai, in “The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology” (1984), believed that Orwell positioned human beings “according to sex roles and gender identity and legitimises male displays of dominance and aggression”
• John Newsinger, in 2018, thought that Orwell was “unfortunately one of those male socialists who were opposed to every oppression, except that of women”
Reactions to 1984 on publication
• The critical reception to the book on publication was largely positive, and it sold hundreds of thousands of copies in Great Britain and the USA
• A review for The New Statesman stated that the reviewer did not think he had “ever read a novel more frightening and depressing”
• The novel was also praised by Orwell’s contemporaries Bertrand Russell, E.M. Forster and Harold Nicolson
• Time magazine said that “How Winston and Julia rebelled, fell in love and paid the penalty in the terroristic world of tomorrow is the thread on which Britain’s George Orwell has spun his latest and finest work of fiction”
• However, C.S. Lewis was critical, claiming that Winston and Julia’s relationship and the Party’s views on sex lacked credibility
• One of Orwell’s major influences, Aldous Huxley, wrote a letter to Orwell after the book’s publication, in which he started off praising the novel as “profoundly important”:
○ However, he also argued that his version of the future, in his novel Brave New World, was more likely to come to pass
○ “My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World”
• He believed that “the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons”
Reactions to 1984 by Orwell
• In the run up to publication, Orwell expressed some disappointment with the book, thinking it would have been improved had he not been so ill whilst writing on the Scottish island of Jura
• He clarified that the novel was not an attack on any particular government, but a satire of the totalitarian tendencies in Western society and intellectuals
• He also stated that the novel was not intended as an attack on socialism or the British Labour Party, of which he was a supporter:
○ He set the book in a fictionalised future version of Britain in order to emphasise the fact that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere
• Orwell died in 1950
More recent reactions to 1984
• In 2019, Oliver Munday in The Atlantic declared that “no novel of the past century has had more influence than George Orwell’s 1984”:
○ Much of the novel has entered the English language as instantly recognisable signs of a nightmarish future, such as the idea of Big Brother watching you
• Also in 2019, the BBC named 1984 on its list of the 100 most influential novels
• News articles often cite the links between 1984 and recent political turmoil and its relevance in the age of fake news
• Dorian Lynskey, writing in The Guardian in 2019, said that 1984 “remains the book we turn to when truth is mutilated, when language is distorted, when power is abused, when we want to know how bad things can get”:
○ He says that it was the first dystopian novel to be written in the knowledge that dystopia was real, referring to Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union
○ He cites President Trump’s adviser, Kellyanne Conway, who first used the phrase “alternative facts” in 2017, although he does acknowledge that Trump was not a dictator
Notes on Michael Radford’s 1984 film (released in 1984)
The 1984 film version of the novel featured John Hurt as Winston Smith and Richard Burton as O’Brien, and it received positive reviews from critics. It is the best-known film adaptation of the book.
• The film was shot in and around London during the period April-June 1984, during the exact time and setting imagined by the author
• The colour of the film was deliberately washed out, although it was restored to normal levels of saturation in the 2003 DVD release:
○ The original process drained much of the colour from the film to give it a stark and depressing appearance
• The choice of Hurt as the character of Winston embodied his physical frailty and guarded optimism
• The film retains the book’s narrative, and Radford envisions a convincing dystopian world:
○ Oceania in the film feels like a very lived-in and run-down place with details of everyday life that make it seem more plausible
• However, there are some differences between the novel and the film:
○ In the film version, only Winston goes to visit O’Brien at his home
○ The film ends with Winston saying “I love you” rather than “Big Brother”, leaving the ending ambiguous - does he love Big Brother or Julia?
○ There is also an implicit suggestion that Julia might actually be a spy in the film
• One of the biggest themes in the novel is the inner workings of Winston’s mind, until this finally also succumbs to the Party’s doctrines:
○ As a movie without a dominant inner monologue via voice-over, it is difficult to portray this style of storytelling
○ In addition, the film does not emphasise the truly terrifying nature of Room 101 that features in the novel
• The musical score of the film features The Eurythmics, although this was involved in some controversy as the original score was an orchestral composition:
○ The director was not happy with this choice, so he only used the music in the film sporadically when he had no other choice
Atwood on feminism
“ Feminist activities, not casual, it’s symptomatic. Any power structure will co-opt the views of its opponents, to sugarcoat the pill. The regime gives women some things the woman’s movement say they want - control over birth, no pornography - but there’s a price.“
Orwell
“Nazi theory indeed specifically
denies that a thing such as ‘the truth’
exists”
“Two plus two could certainly equal five if the fuhrer wanted it”
MARXISM
In literary theory, a Marxist interpretation reads the text as an expression of contemporary class struggle. Literature is not simply a matter of personal expression or taste. It somehow relates to the social and political conditions of the time.
•How it relates is of course up for debate. Is the text a mirror of social values? Is it a form of propaganda for the ruling classes? Can literature challenge social norms? These are the questions that preoccupy Marxist literary critics.
Karl Marx theorized that human beings are the product of their social and economic environment. Marx himself often treated literature as simple propaganda for the ruling classes.
Douglas Kellner pondered the political qualities of 1984 and argued that Orwell’s writing “project[s] an image of totalitarian societies which conceptualizes his experiences of fascism and Stalinism and his fears that the trends toward this type of totalitarianism would harden, intensify, and spread throughout the world.”
Kellner is clearly taking a Marxist perspective, as this statement describes how the literature is a direct political and economic reflection of the experiences of the author and, thus, the world in which the author lived when he wrote, or at the very least the world that the author feared was on the horizon.
As a whole, 1984 seems to be stating that politics is solely a constant struggle for power and the only change brought about is the replacement of one ruling class with another. This ideal is solidified by the class structure of the Party members within 1984 and ultimately by the power-plays of the Party, which is to be impressed upon all citizens of Oceania.
MARXISM
In literary theory, a Marxist interpretation reads the text as an expression of contemporary class struggle. Literature is not simply a matter of personal expression or taste. It somehow relates to the social and political conditions of the time.
•How it relates is of course up for debate. Is the text a mirror of social values? Is it a form of propaganda for the ruling classes? Can literature challenge social norms? These are the questions that preoccupy Marxist literary critics.
Karl Marx theorized that human beings are the product of their social and economic environment. Marx himself often treated literature as simple propaganda for the ruling classes.
Douglas Kellner pondered the political qualities of 1984 and argued that Orwell’s writing “project[s] an image of totalitarian societies which conceptualizes his experiences of fascism and Stalinism and his fears that the trends toward this type of totalitarianism would harden, intensify, and spread throughout the world.”
Kellner is clearly taking a Marxist perspective, as this statement describes how the literature is a direct political and economic reflection of the experiences of the author and, thus, the world in which the author lived when he wrote, or at the very least the world that the author feared was on the horizon.
As a whole, 1984 seems to be stating that politics is solely a constant struggle for power and the only change brought about is the replacement of one ruling class with another. This ideal is solidified by the class structure of the Party members within 1984 and ultimately by the power-plays of the Party, which is to be impressed upon all citizens of Oceania.
Rebecca Stokwisz on Surveillance
Fear of betrayal and inculcated self surveillance keep the handmaids from speaking out
See 1984 from a humanist perspective
Ellergy for human rights 6 months after decoration of human rights
See 1984 from a humanist perspective - Orwell explemfiying the consequences of what happens when u take away those human right see freedom of speech / fair trail / etc …
Original title the “last man in Europe “
FINISH LISTENING TO AND MAKING NOTES FROM IN OUR TIME PODCAST
