THINKING ACTIVITY - 1984

                                   1984

Q1 - WHAT IS DYSTOPIAN FICTION?  IS 1984 A DYSTOPIAN FICTION? 

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                                  Utopian and dystopian fiction are genres of speculative fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal to readers. Dystopian fiction offers the opposite: the portrayal of a setting that completely disagrees with the author's ethos.Some novels combine both genres, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take depending on its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction and other types of speculative fiction.

                                     More than 400 utopian works in the English language were published prior to the year 1900, with more than a thousand others appearing during the 20th century.This increase is partially associated with the rise in popularity of genre fiction, science fiction and young adult fiction more generally, but also larger scale social change that brought awareness of larger societal or global issues, such as technology, climate change, and growing human population. Some of these trends have created distinct subgenres such as ecotopian fiction, climate fiction, young adult dystopian novels, and feminist dystopian novels.

                             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.

        1984 AS A DYSTOPIAN FICTION

                         Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often referred to as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by the English novelist George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair). It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime.    

                                  Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society.Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated.

                               The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not even exist. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Outer Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters into a forbidden relationship with a colleague, Julia, and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power.

                          Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a classic literary example of political and dystopian fiction. It also popularised the term "Orwellian" as an adjective, with many terms used in the novel entering common usage, including "Big Brother", "doublethink", "Thought Police", "thoughtcrime", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "2 + 2 = 5", and "proles". Time included it on its 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.It was placed on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, reaching No. 13 on the editors' list and No. 6 on the readers' list.In 2003, the novel was listed at No. 8 on The Big Read survey by the BBC.Parallels have been drawn between the novel's subject matter and real life instances of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and violations of freedom of expression among other themes.

                                   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.

                                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 2- LEARNING ABOUT THE NOVEL 

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                             George Orwell’s last novel was published on 8 June 1949 by the socialist publisher Victor Gollancz and was an instant international best-seller, selling 50,000 copies in its first year in Britain despite post-war rationing, and hundreds of thousands in the United States, where it was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and a Reader’s Digest special. The book arrived at the birth of the cold war between the Soviet and American blocs, soon after Winston Churchill fixed the phrase ‘the Iron Curtain’ in the language and as a ‘Red Scare’ gripped American society. Orwell’s novel remained one of the most significant and contested cultural products of that era of ideological struggle between capitalism and communism, its influence surviving long beyond the actual year 1984. Translations and many different radio, film and television adaptations across the post-war decades testify to its continuing significance. The novel managed to embed key abstract notions about ‘totalitarianism’ – a political term that emerged in the late 1930s – in striking concrete images, visceral and easy to grasp: the Thought Police; thought crimes and ‘doublethink’; permanent ‘telescreen’ surveillance and the notion that ‘Big Brother is Watching You’; and ending with the terrors of Room 101 as a vision of the dissolution of the self.

                            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.

Q3 CENTRAL THEME OF THE NOVEL 

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                       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.”

                                

Theme #2

Propaganda

                            Propaganda is another major theme of 1984. The novel clearly shows the way propaganda is used to control people, along with its impacts and pitfalls. Orwell has presented this theme through an organized propaganda machine of the Ministry of Truth in Oceania. Winston Smith is also involved in this propaganda. His work requires distortion of facts and truths and altering historical facts and then propagate them throughout the country. It means that the Party wants to have complete control over the thoughts and actions of the public. This propaganda has also invented new information and new words such as ‘Two Minutes Hate’, ‘Big Brother is watching’ and new mottos. The objective of propaganda is to make people loyal to the Party and the country.

                                

Theme #3

Subversion of Reality

                                Subversion of reality is another major theme of this novel. The novel has presented most people living in abject poverty, while others are engaged in working against each other. The children are spying on the adults with what they have learned in “Spies” groups. Winston Smith has been taught not to enjoy a life of love and sex in romance. The language is turned topsy-turvy to make people believe in what they do not know. The facts are turned into lies, and then these lies are disseminated as truths. The public memory is being manipulated with new information that further alienate the people from reality.

Theme #4

Subversion of Love and Feelings

                                     Another theme of 1984 is the subversion of love and feelings. It means that the people are taught not to love, and to curb their feelings or any passions of love. According to the regime, sex just as a duty of the government or “duty to the Party.” It means Winston Smith needs to engage in sex only to produce children for the Party. This has led to his failed marriage with Katherine and his rebellion by loving Julia and thus engaging with her intimately. The memory of his mother realizes Winston about the love of parents from which the Party has deprived him. In fact, his loveless life shows how the totalitarian regimes destroy family, love and individual’s lives to make the ruling class strong.

Q4 - ORWELLIAN TERM 

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                               "Orwellian" is an adjective describing a situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda, surveillance, disinformation, denial of truth (doublethink), and manipulation of the past, including the "unperson"—a person whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, practiced by modern repressive governments. Often, this includes the circumstances depicted in his novels, particularly Nineteen Eighty-Four^[2] but political doublespeak is criticized throughout his work, such as in Politics and the English Language. 

                                   The New York Times has said the term is "the most widely used adjective derived from the name of a modern writer".

Definition of Orwellian

                       : of, relating to, or suggestive of George Orwell or his writings. 

    

                                   especially : relating to or suggestive of the dystopian reality depicted in the novel 1984.

                                 

Other Words from Orwellian

                           Orwellianism \ ȯr-​ˈwe-​lē-​ə-​ˌni-​zəm  , -​ˈwel-​yə-​ˌni-​zəm \ noun

 Orwellianism isn't just about big government; it's about authoritarianism coupled with lies.— Gordon Bowker. 

                     This time a month ago on the Reading group, we were hunting for the meaning of “Kafkaesque”. We were marvelling at its many applications and at just how often - and with how many subtle and not so subtle variations – the term is used and abused. But now that George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is our subject, I realise that musing over the meaning of “Kafkaesque” is little more than wandering in the foothills. It is a diversion for amateurs. It is a dipping of toes into shallow waters compared to the deep black plunge that is attempting to define “Orwellian”.

                                This is a word that no less an organ than the New York Times has declared “the most widely used adjective derived from the name of a modern writer … It’s more common than ‘Kafkaesque,’ ‘Hemingwayesque’ and ‘Dickensian’ put together. It even noses out the rival political reproach ‘Machiavellian’, which had a 500-year head start.”

 

                                 What’s more, as well as being a word that is overused, over-stretched and hotly disputed, Orwellian is further complicated because it has two contradictory strands of meaning. It is both a compliment and an insult. If you call a person an Orwellian, they generally like it. If, however, you refer to something they’re doing as Orwellian – and by extension a bit like all that horrible stuff in Nineteen Eighty-Four – odds are you aren’t aiming for their Christmas card list.

                                First, the positive. The renown of Orwell’s name is well demonstrated in the Orwell prize, a prestigious UK award for journalists who turn “political writing into an art”. But good luck trying to find any definite meaning for Orwellian from a prize that has been awarded to the former Conservative MP Matthew Parris, the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee and the infamous Johann Hari to name just three.

                                 Elsewhere, Orwellian is applied as a personal compliment in all manner of circumstances.

                                 A telling example comes up during a fascinating talk about Orwell from Christopher Hitchens. In this podcast from the rightwing American organisation the Library of Economics and Liberty, the interviewer tries to suggest that Hitchens is a good Orwellian for supporting the war in Iraq. This makes an odd kind of sense. Hitchens, in his mind at least, was both standing up to fascism and refusing to be cowed by leftwing popular opinion, just as Orwell fought Franco in the Spanish Civil War, but also risked ostracism - not to mention quite a few publishing deals - by proclaiming the truth about Stalin.

                                   But plenty would argue that the anti-imperialist socialist Orwell would never have supported George W Bush’s vision of American empire. Clearly, the term is used selectively and subjectively. If you say that someone is Orwellian in character, the chances are that this person is on your side and jolly good too. Just as – to move on to the second strand of meaning – saying anything else is “Orwellian” means it is something that you dislike.