1984 - Novel

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This blog is my response to the task assigned to us by our Prof. Dr. DilipSir in thinking activity. Happy Learning!

R - Read 

U - Understand 

L - Learn

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Q. What's Dystopian Fiction? Is '1984' a dystopian fiction?

Dystopian fiction offers a vision of the future. Dystopias are societies in cataclysmic decline, with characters who battle environmental ruin, technological control, and government oppression. Dystopian novels can challenge readers to think differently about current social and political climates, and in some instances can even inspire action.

What Is Dystopian Fiction?

Dystopian literature is a form of speculative fiction that began as a response to utopian literature. A dystopia is an imagined community or society that is dehumanizing and frightening. A dystopia is an antonym of a utopia, which is a perfect society.

5 Characteristics of Dystopian Fiction

The central themes of dystopian novels generally fall under these topics:

1. Government control
2. Environmental destruction
3. Technological control
4. Survival
5. Loss of individualism

Characteristics of Dystopian Fiction: Government Control

Government plays a big role in dystopian literature. Generally, there is either no government or an oppressive ruling body.

• In George Orwell’s 1984, the world is under complete government control. The fictional dictator Big Brother enforces omnipresent surveillance over the people living in the three inter-continental superstates remaining after a world war.

• Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin is a 1985 science-fiction novel that follows the Kesh community of people in a post-apocalyptic world. The Kesh repudiate a government system and are self-organized.

• The Hunger Games, a young adult trilogy by Suzanne Collins beginning in 2008, takes place in the fictional world Panem, a future nation on the ruins of North America. Panem’s totalitarian government called The Capitol holds most of the country’s wealth and controls the citizens. Each year, children from Panem’s 12 districts are selected to participate in a televised death match called the Hunger Games.

1984 and the Dystopian Novel

The genre of dystopian fiction grew out of a response to the utopian fiction of the sixteenth century, which posited that human beings were perfectible and that alternate social and political structures could override human selfishness and antisocial behavior. Conversely, dystopian writers believed that inherent human nature meant utopias were an impossibility, and society was doomed to get worse, not better, if people didn’t actively resist the corrupting forces of power and greed.

In 1984, Orwell casts a dim view on utopian social programming by showing how it runs counter to human instincts toward food, sex, pleasure, and aesthetics. When reflecting on the bad food served in the Ministry of Truth cafeteria, Winston comments, “Always in your stomach and in your skin there was… a feeling that you had been cheated of something you had a right to,” and he remembers feeling he had a right to food during famines, even taking food from his sister and mother to get it. While Winston is the protagonist of the novel, he often acts selfishly, suggesting that fear and deprivation bring out the worst in people, and that governments can create these conditions to manipulate people’s inherent weakness.

Literary influences on Orwell and precursors to 1984 include Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1921 novel We, a dystopian criticism of Soviet social engineering. The plot of 1984 closely resembles the plot of We: a man known only by a number lives in a futuristic totalitarian society characterized by mass surveillance, sexual repression, and control of the population, and he meets an alluring woman whose influence eventually inspires him to try to resist the society. Orwell was also familiar with Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, especially drawing on its themes of social conditioning versus human nature and its vision of a rigidly controlled society preoccupied with shallow entertainment. Orwell was also inspired by Jack London’s The Iron Heel, which portrayed a future rise of fascism in the United States, played out in a similar way to the history of the Revolution and the Party in 1984. After 1984, a range of writers adapted its message to other countries and time periods, such as postwar youth culture, as in A Clockwork Orange, or government control of free thought and expression, as in Fahrenheit 451.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, as computing advanced, many writers turned to concerns about the encroaching role of technology in organizing human behavior. Whereas 1984 and earlier dystopian novels featured societies ruled by humans, dystopian literature began to depict societies ruled by and constricted by machines. Later writers created dystopian scenarios to explore themes related to the environment and social justice issues. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, published in 2005, depicts a father and son trying to survive in a future America where the natural world is dead or dying and most animals are extinct.

Feminist writers adapted dystopian fiction to comment on political realities as experienced by women, drawing attention to gender inequities in society. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a totalitarian fundamentalist Christian movement has overthrown the United States government and suspended nearly all women’s rights, and limited fertility means that women who are able to bear children are randomly assigned to high-ranking men as property. Contemporary dystopian novels such as The Hunger Games incorporate fears of environmental catastrophe, social injustice, and government surveillance to tell stories of characters fighting to maintain their individuality.

Q. What do you understand by the term Orwellian?

Below video explains the term Orwellian much more significantly by our Prof. Dr. DilipSir. 

ORWELLIAN 

☆Words have the power to shape thought. Language is the currency of politics, forming the basis of society from the most common, everyday interactions to the highest ideals. Orwell urged us to protect our language because ultimately our ability to think and to communicate clearly is what stands between us and a world where war is peace and freedom is slavery.

☆ So the next time if you hear someone use the word Orwellian, pay close attention. If they're talking about the deceptive and manipulative use of language, they're on the right track. If they're talking about mass surveillance and intrusive government, they're describing something authoritarian but not necessarily Orwellian. And if they use it as an all purpose word for any ideas they dislike, it's possible their statements are more Orwellian than whatever it is they're criticizing. 

☆☆ CENTRAL THEME OF THE NOVEL "1984" ☆☆

'Theme' is an overarching idea, philosophy, and belief used in the literary works by a writer to show these concepts directly or indirectly. In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four now mostly published as 1984, themes are diverse, yet they can be related to the current governments and social structures. 

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is one of the major themes of the novel, 1984. It presents the type of government where even the head of the government is unknown to the public. This theme serves as a warning to the people because such regime unleashes propaganda to make people believe in the lies presented by the government. Throughout the novel, there is no proof of Big Brother’s existence in Oceania. The Party exercises complete control not only on the sexual lives of their citizens such as Julia’s and Winston Smith but also on their thoughts, feelings and even writing a diary. The overall monitoring and surveillance of the people through telescreens and subversion of history through the Ministry of Truth are some of the common casualties of such regimes. The third casualty of the totalitarianism is the truth through language. This happens in the shape of mottos such as “War is Peace.”

SCREEN SHOTS FROM ONLINE SCREENING OF THE FILM 1984

In this frame we see how the political party is so huge, given lots of importance. 

In this frame, crowd, people, followers are shouting blindly the name of political leaders. Crowds have no brains, they are sheeple. 

This person is the narrator of the film around in 50s but a person of brains, very intelligent person.

Here the person is hiding truth in his diary, truths about political party. No freedom to write diary, no personal thoughts or thinking, so here the person is hiding the diary in the wall.

The whole film is in black, white, and gray but here we find some greenary from the window. Green symbolises life, hope, beauty and black, white and gray symbolises dullness, despair, and all the negativity. 

This is the DICTIONARY OF NEWSPEAK, In this the language of politics is made known to the people and forced them to follow it.

This lines tells the Truth that the war never ends. It destroys everything and everyone, infact no one is spared, no even the ones who proposes the war. War is futile. 

Freedom is 2+2=4, but in this novel & film people are forced to change their minds, change the way of thinking. People's minds are freezed so that they don’t think independently and the political parties remain in power for a very long. 

It means that life of people are governed by the people in power, people are made slaves and puppets controlled by the people in power.

In the end we see how Winston is made to forget his love and his mind is changed and forced him to think and tell that he loves big brother. All this is forcefully imposed in the minds of people. 

This helicopter is of political party, and it tells that they're enjoying a luxurious, royal life at the cost of the lives of people. In this dystopian novel freedom is slavery, no individual thinking is allowed, minds of people are controlled by the political leaders.

1,599 Words.