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One of the beautiful dreams of many of us - human beings is the world which

is perfectly organized, which lacks money because it is not important, where people
share labour and draw pleasure from it, where children grow in peace and stunning
surrounding as well as where community is prosperous enough to make everyone
equal.
However, the reality of the common days is often too bitter to cope with and
than ordinary people slip into depression, the politics quarrel and the writers depict
the world in the most grim way on the pages of their works. The phenomenon of the
dystopian novel is connected with the twentieth century but its antecedents might be
traced back in the fiction of H. G. Wells.
The aim of my work, titled Dystopia and Politics is to present what is hidden
behind the veiled critique of the present-day society. In order to tackle the aspect in a
complex way, I decided to present the utopian reality as presented by the two
foremost creators of utopia – Plato and Thomas More.
Moreover, I have chosen the three writers to compare and enlighten the
common similarities of the dystopian literature – George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and
Anthony Burgess. My whole thesis is also going to be supported by the historical
outline of the world after the World War II, left with two super-powers – the United
States and the Soviet Union. The two opposing worldviews, assigned names
according to their economic systems; therefore the United States represented
capitalism while the Soviet Union represented communism. Both embodied evil to
each other.

Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you


sold me1

Therefore, my thesis shall have the following order:

Chapter One is the attempt to present the roots of the dystopia which in fact stems
from Utopia. Therefore I have decided to present Plato and Sir Thomas More as the
synonyms of utopian vision of universe. My research includes also brief biographical
information which serve as the background to the actual problem – why people seek for the
perfect world?

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George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

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The second chapter will answer the general question – what the Dystopia is as well
as what are its main components such as the imaginary society, relativity, intuitiveness and
majority idea. I wish to introduce the essay of Margaret Atwood from The Guardian,
referring to the nature of the vision of a totalitarian future in order to present how deeply our
own society, nearly eighty years later, is “soaked” with the spirit of Dystopia. It also deals
with the works of one of the above mentioned writer – George Orwell’s. Here I examine the
ideas pertinent to the topic, having devoted an entry part of the chapter for writer’s
biographical part. The chapter will also deal with Orwell’s approach to the mutual influence
and its results of politics and English language. Orwell did not have the most positive view
of the future and politics. Therefore, I shall quote and present the Essay of Orwell from May
1946, first published in Horizon, in April 1946.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must


ultimately have political and economic causes: it is
not simply due to the bad influence of this or that
individual writer.2

Chapter Three is going to present a world as drawn by Aldous Huxley and Anthony
Burgess. I will ask the question – how did they use the tradition of the dystopia, how does
they fit into this tradition and did they contribute and in what way to it? Brave New World
by Huxley presents a New Reality where human beings are modelled like plasticine. This
world is full of designed and destined for particular target – human-units. This chapter’s
leading problem is going to be the value of human’s freedom.

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read.


War and Peace must wait for the leisure of
retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it
helps to furnish the living room.3

All in all, when reading this work, it is worth to remember that the Dystopian
literature is a genre that seeks to counter the potential negative consequences that may arise
from themes created by the utopian literature. However, both utopian and dystopian
literature try to avoid degeneration of the societies and preserve these systems and cultural
values.

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by George Orwell: "Politics and the English Language"
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Anthony Burgess quote, downloaded from: http://thinkexist.com/quotes/anthony_burgess/3.html
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