Transcript George Orwell

George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four
• PLOT
• UTOPIA / ANTI-UTOPIA
• SETTING
• THEMES
• CHARACTERS, NAMES
PLOT
•
3 parts → three stages of Winston’s
rebellion against the party:
1. Starts keeping a diary (remembers the
Two Minutes’ Hate of the morning, where
he had been impressed by two people: a
dark-haired woman, O’Brien → thinks he
shares his feelings)
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
• Starts leading a “double” life, writing his
diary and working at re-writing history at
the Ministry of Truth
• (Syme, the philologist → illustrates some of
the principles on which Newspeak is based; W.
thinks one day he will be vapourized since he’s
too intelligent)
• “If there is hope, it lies in the proles”
2. W. meets the dark-haired girl in a corridor;
she falls down, he helps her, she slips a
note into W’s hand (“I love you”)
After some days she gives him instructions
to meet in a crowd after work; they make
an arrangement to meet in a wood next
Sunday afternoon
Her name’s Julia, she’s against all that the
Party stands for. They make love
They meet again; W. rents a room above Mr
Charrington’s shop (rats)
• O’Brien gives W. his address and offers
him a copy of the new dictionary of
Newspeak; they go to his house, speak
about Goldstein, he illustrates the ideas of
the Brotherhood to them
• W. goes to the room with a copy of
Goldstein’s book, he and Julia read some
passages, they fall asleep
• A voice wakes them up: the room is
invaded by police, they are arrested
3. W. is in a cell in the Ministry of Love. After
some time in which W. thinks he will be
loyal to Julia, O’Brien enters the room
Starts undergoing interrogation (physical +
mental torture)
O’Brien explains to W. the Party cannot
allow opposition
re-integration through 3 stages: learning,
understanding, acceptance
pain at wrong answers, humiliation
• Time passes, W. tries to make himself
accept the views of the Party
• Finally , he is sent to Room 101
• Strapped in a chair with a cage with rats in
front of his face (Room 101 contains the
worst thing in the world)
• W. panics, shouts that Julia should be
tortured in his place
• W. has been released; a heavy drinker
• Remembers a meeting with Julia in which
they both revealed they had betrayed each
other; their love has been destroyed
• Remembers his childhood but pushes the
memory away
• The telescreen announces a great victory
over Eurasia, W. is caught up in the
excitement
• He realizes he loves Big Brother
utopia
• Plato’s Republic → ideal world governed by
philosophers
• Renaissance: 1516 T. More’s Utopia
1627 F. Bacon’s New Atlantis
Revival in the 19th century:
W. Butler’s Erewhon (1872)
W. Morris’s News from Nowhere
(1890)
antiutopia
• Often, no journey; distance in time, not in
space; the “traveller” is internal
• Promotes the creation of a better society
by showing a negative one as terrible
• Exaggeration of trends already present
• Nightmarish vision of the future
Examples
• J. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels 1726
• Jack London’s The Iron Heel 1907 (changes
in society and politics; not much attention to
technological developments)
• Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We 1920 (a war, perhaps
about oil, swept off most of the world’s
population; use of technology to control people)
Orwell wrote essays on all of them
Another famous example
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
Ironical title taken from Shakespeare’s The
Tempest V.i
O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there
here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new
world! That has such people in it!
A science fiction novel
A frightening vision of the future
Historical, social, political, scientific
issues of the time (mass production,
totalitarian regimes, modern views of
sex and social relationships,
reproduction in labs)
SETTING
• London; part of one of the three
superpowers leading the world (Oceania,
Eurasia, Eastasia)
• Dominated by the dictatorship of Big
Brother; his face is present everywhere
• Social organization
Stalinist Russia
some aspects
Nazi Germany
of Western capitalism
• Manipulation of
• Urban settings
minds
• Miserable life
• Abolition of any
conditions of the
form of freedom
proles
• System of
• Simplified
doublethink
language
• Subjection of
history and the arts
to the aims of the
party
THEMES
• TOTALITARIANISM
see essay The
Prevention of Literature (about the freedom of
thought and expression; analyses the
mechanisms at the basis of totalitarian thought)
 Rebellion of the individual; total control of the
Party
He can’t become a martyr
His destruction and reintegration goes through 3
stages: learning, understanding, acceptance
Inability and need to communicate (diary,
sex, intellectual relationship with O'Brien)
Squalid world in which love, pleasure and
the arts are canalized towards preestablished aims
Sex= one of the primary drives in man’s life;
manipulated and transformed into
• love for BB
• hatred for the enemy
• energy spent in the service of the party
• a grey world, with no pleasure or joy
• symbols of a dreary, squalid,
hopeless life:
 physical infirmities of the characters
 widespread mismanagement
 constant presence of dust
everywhere
NAMES, CHARACTERS
• Winston Smith: Winston Churchill + the
most common surname in England
Universal + highly individualized character
Everyman + exceptional man
↓
↓
ordinariness
integrity/intellectual
awareness
• his job (Orwell’s work for the
BBC)
• the way to experience love
• the effort to remember
• Part III: he thinks he can retain
inner integrity while conforming
outwardly (that’s why he needs to
be taken to Room 101)
• Julia relates to the romantic character of
Shakespeare’s Juliet, but very practicalminded and matter-of-fact
• no surname = woman
•
•
•
•
not explored in any depth
extension and contrast with Winston
great resourcefulness, animal vigour;
“practical” rebellion against the Party;
optimism; not interested in politics, but
great capacity for original ideas
• Big Brother
sounds like the name given to Stalin (Little
Father)
the embodiment of power, like God
• Emmanuel Goldstein
Jewish origin; maybe inspired to L. Trotsky
Emmanuel = the saviour, the Messiah
• O’Brien
relationship with Winston
(Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, The
Brothers Karamazov)
Torturer-tortured (Stockholm syndrome; love,
complicity)
Quotes
"Do you begin to see, then, what kind of
world we are creating? It is the exact
opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias
that the old reformers imagined. A world of
fear and treachery and torment, a world of
trampling and being trampled upon, a
world which will grow not less but more
merciless as it refines itself. Progress in
our world will be progress toward more
pain."
"Never again will you be capable of
ordinary human feeling. Everything
will be dead inside you. Never again
will you be capable of love, or
friendship, or joy of living, or laughter,
or curiosity, or courage, or integrity.
You will be hollow. We shall squeeze
you empty and then we shall fill you
with ourselves."
"We are not content with negative obedience, nor
even with the most abject submission. When
finally you surrender to us, it must be of your
own free will. We do not destroy the heretic
because he resists us; so long as he resists us
we never destroy him. We convert him, we
capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We
burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring
him over to our side, not in appearance, but
genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of
ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to
us that an erroneous thought should exist
anywhere in the world, however secret and
powerless it may be. Even in the instance of
death we cannot permit any deviation . . . we
make the brain perfect before we blow it out."
"We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at
work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except
loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love,
except the love of Big Brother. There will be no
laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a
defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature,
no science. When we are omnipotent there will be
no need of science. There will be no distinction
between beauty and ugliness. There will be no
curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All
competing pleasures will be destroyed. But
always—do not forget this Winston—always there
will be the intoxication of power, constantly
increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always,
at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the
sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot
stamping on a human face—forever."