IL ROMANZO DISTOPICO

E LA CRITICA AI TOTALITARISMI DEL NOVECENTO

FEDERICO GALLI
CLASSE 5 B LINGUISTICO

ISTITUTO G. BERTACCHI, LECCO

ANNO SCOLASTICO 2005-2006

INDICE

PREMESSA........................................................................................................................................... pag. 2 WHAT IS A DYSTOPIA?....................................................................................................................... pag. 3 GEORGE ORWELL............................................................................................................................ pag. 4 ANIMAL FARM................................................................................................................................... pag. 5
THE CHARACTERS........................................................................................................................ THE EVENTS.................................................................................................................................

pag. 6 pag. 7

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.............................................................................................................. pag. 8 NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR AS A WARNING AGAINST TOTALITARIANISMS........................... pag. 10 CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................................... pag. 11 BIBLIOGRAFIA - SITOGRAFIA - IMMAGINI..................................................................................... pag. 12

PREMESSA
Ho scelto di trattare questo argomento, il romanzo distopico, perch trovo che sia un genere poco conosciuto fra i giovani doggi, abituati invece a libri meno pessimisti, con un lieto fine. Lapproccio con il genere distopico pu essere molto difficile: talvolta la durezza della prosa pu sconvolgere e dissuadere dalla lettura e, bench si sappia che i fatti descritti sono fittizi, essi possono apparire come verosimili e realizzabili. Tuttavia, il romanzo distopico uno specchio del mondo moderno e mostra come una societ infiacchita e inebetita dai mass media possa facilmente cedere al gioco dei potenti e trasformarsi in una distopia. Per questo motivo ho deciso di approfondire le mie conoscenze dellopera di Orwell, autore peraltro presente nel programma di letteratura inglese di questanno scolastico.

WHAT IS A DYSTOPIA?
A dystopia is a fictional society that is the antithesis of utopia. It is a combination of the Greek prefix dys and topia and literally means bad place The overwhelming majority of dystopias have some connections to our world, but often in an imagined future or an alternate history. Dystopias are usually hierarchic societies, where social classes are strictly defined and social mobility non-existent. They appear as happy, peaceful, wealthy and healthy ones, but they are actually poor nation-states permanently in war and ruled by a dictator, or a group of small dictators. The propaganda of the regime compels all citizens to worship the State and the Government, in order to persuade them that theirs is Worlds highest standard of living, and that the World outside the State is something to be afraid of or disgusted at. The State is often represented by a figurehead, whom people worship. Dissent and individuality are seen in a negative way, because they do not comply with the predominant conformism. The penal system implies physical and/or psychological torture. Everybodys life is patrolled by government agencies. These elements can be easily found in any dystopian novel, such as Orwells, Huxleys or Burgesss, but I am going to focus my attention on George Orwells Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

GEORGE ORWELL
George Orwell (1903-1950) was born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903 in Motihari, Bengal, India. In 1904 Orwell moved with his mother and sister to England where he remained until 1922. He began to write at an early age. In Burma he served in the administration of the Indian Imperial Police from 1922 to 1927, when he resigned partly due to his growing dislike of British imperialism. When Orwell returned to Europe he was in poor financial condition and worked low paying jobs in France and England. For his first novel he used his recent experience with poverty as inspiration and wrote Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). While teaching in a private school he published his second major work, Burmese Days (1934). Two years later Orwell married Eileen OShaugnessy. During the 1930s Orwell had adopted the views of a socialist and travelled to Spain to report on their civil war. He took the side of the United Workers Marxist Party militia and fought alongside them, which earned him a wound in the neck. It was this war that made him hate communism in favour of the English brand of socialism. Orwell wrote a book about Spain, Homage to Catalonia, which was published in 1938. During the second World War Orwell served as a sergeant in the Home Guard and also worked as a journalist for the BBC, Observer and Tribune, where he was literary editor from 1943 to 1945. It was toward the end of the war that he wrote Animal Farm, and when it was over he moved to Scotland. It was Animal Farm that made finally Orwell prosperous. His other world wide success was Nineteen Eighty-Four, which Orwell said was written to alter other peoples idea of the kind of society they should strive after. Sadly Orwell never lived to see how successful it would become, as he died from tuberculosis in London on January 21st, 1950.

ANIMAL FARM
Animal Farm is a novella written by George Orwell in 1943 and published in 1945. It is a fable which sends the reader a complex message in simple terms. Moreover it is an allegory of Soviet totalitarianism. The story is about the animals of Mr Joness Manor farm, who revolt against their cruel master. Inspired by Old Major, the farms prize winning boar, the animals oust Mr and Mrs Jones from the farm, which is turned into the ANIMAL FARM. The new democratic society is ruled by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball and every animal has to comply with the Seven Commandments.
I II

WHATEVER GOES UPON TWO LEGS IS AN ENEMY NO ANIMAL SHALL WEAR CLOTHES NO ANIMAL SHALL SLEEP IN A BED NO ANIMAL SHALL DRINK ALCOHOL ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL

WHATEVER GOES UPON FOUR LEGS, OR HAS WINGS, IS A FRIEND

III IV V VI

NO ANIMAL SHALL KILL ANY OTHER ANIMAL

VII

Napoleon brings up a few puppies and turns them into his secret police and bodyguards. Snowball would like the revolution to spread to the other farms, but Napoleon disagrees. Furthermore, Snowball believes that a windmill would provide the farm with electricity and the animals with more leisure time, since machinery would replace toil. But Napoleons dogs makes him run away. Napoleon takes control of Animal Farm and starts the construction of the windmill, by presenting the project as his. A storm tears it down and Squealer, the propagandist pig of the regime, puts the blame on Snowball, conspiring on them. The pigs promote a trade with humans, drink alcohol and sleep in beds, while the other animals starve and have to work harder and harder. Any attempt to overthrow the regime is punished with death penalty and public execution. Squealer constantly revises the Commandments to the pigs benefits:
NO ANIMAL SHALL SLEEP IN A BED WITH SHEETS NO ANIMAL SHALL DRINK ALCOHOL TO EXCESS
Snowball and Napoleon (above) in Joy Batchelor and John Halass animated film Animal Farm (1954)

V VI VII

NO ANIMAL SHALL KILL ANY OTHER ANIMAL WITHOUT CAUSE

Later on, when pigs begin standing on two legs, Squealer reduces the Seven Commandment into one statement: ALL
MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS. ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE

Pigs become more and more corrupted. One night the animals see by chance their rulers playing cards with other farmers in Mr Joness house, but cannot tell the difference between the pigs and the humans: they have finally realized that Old Majors dream has
Squealer modifying the Commandments

turned into a nightmare.

The protagonists of Animal Farm are clearly animals and there is a didactic aim, as in Aesops and Phaedruss fables. The book is an allegory about the events following the revolution in the Soviet Union, and in particular the rise of Stalinism and the betrayal of the revolution which basically replaced dictatorship they had under a Monarchy for a dictatorship under communism. The characters and the events are connected to the history of the Soviet Union.

THE CHARACTERS

Napoleon is a caricature of Joseph Stalin, but stands for any dictator as well. Snowball corresponds to Trotsky. Old Major gives voice to Marxs ideology. The dogs are a symbol of the Cheka (), Stalins secret police. Mr Jones appears as Tsar Nicholas II, who was dethroned at the outbreak of the Russian

Revolution in 1917.
Squealer is the propagandist of the regime, not only of

Napoleons and Stalins, but also of any totalitarianism. He may be a reference to the newspapers which aimed to persuade the people that the country was far better than it was.
Boxer, Clover, and Benjamin are the representatives of
Boxer: I will work harder

the proletariat.

THE EVENTS

The animal revolt and the ousting of Mr Jones represent the Russian Revolution of 1917

and the deposal of Tsar Nicholas II.

The struggle between Napoleon and Snowball, about the spread of the Revolution to the

other farms, represents the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky, who wanted the Revolution to spread outside the country.
The windmill represents the Five-Year Plans, whose aim was the industrialization,

encouraged by Trotsky and contested by Stalin, who wanted an agricultural development instead.
The Battle of the Cowshed represents the civil war in which the western capitalist

governments sent soldiers to try to remove the Bolsheviks from power.

The trade between Napoleon and Mr Frederick and the betrayal of the latter represent

Stalins Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany in 1939, which was later betrayed by Hitler in 1941, when he invaded the Soviet Union.
Napoleons removal of Snowball represents Stalins removal of Trotsky from power in

1927 and his subsequent expulsion.

Napoleons mass executions represent Stalins Purge Trials in the Thirties. Beasts Of England, represents LInternationale., a hymn that glorified the revolution and

the people, later replaced by the Hymn Of The Soviet Union, which glorified Stalin.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a political novel written by George Orwell in opposition to totalitarianism. It tells a story set in a dystopia in which an omnipresent state wields total control.

In 1984 World is divided into three superstates, permanently fighting one another: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia (as you can see in the map). In Oceania society is ruled by the principles of Ingsoc (Newspeak for English Socialism) and by a single party whose leader is Big Brother. Nobody has ever seen Big Brother, but Big Brother can watch everybody, for his eyes are telescreens that control the life of each and every citizen. The Thought Police intervene under any suspicious circumstances. Big Brother is displayed everywhere, together with the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU Big Brother appears on a telescreen in Michael Radfords film Nineteen Eighty Four (1984)

The novel is set in London, the chief city of Airstrip One, a frontline province of Oceania. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, in charge of the censorship of books and newspaper articles which do not comply with the official policy. He
John Hurt as Winston Smith

seems compliant, but the truth is that he

can hardly stand the strict obligations of the Party. He is secretly in love with Julia, although the Party impose chastity and the aim of sexual intercourses is mere procreation. Winston believes that OBrien, a member of the Inner Party, has made contact with the Resistance. Thus, he and Julia decide to
Richard Burton as OBrien

cooperate with the Resistance and OBrien gives Winston a copy of the book, a searing criticism of Ingsoc, which is supposed to be written by the dissident Emmanuel Goldstein. In fact, OBrien happens to be a Thought Policeman of Miniluv (Newspeak for Ministry Of Love), the agency responsible for the identification, monitoring, arrest, and torture of dissidents, real or imagined. One summer day Winston and Julia are caught and arrested while they are expressing their love for each other in a shabby little room above a junkshop in a slummy quarter of the town. OBrien wants to teach Winston the Doublethink, a psychological mechanism that consists in holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and fervently believing both. Winston learns all that through tortures, including electroshock; he even acknowledges that TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE, but he cannot hide his love for Julia. Therefore, he is taken to Room 101, a torture chamber when prisoners are subjected to their worst nightmares: in Winstons case, the worst thing in the World is rats. A cage containing a bunch of those filthy creatures is placed on his head. If OBrien presses the lever, the rats will devour him. Winston is panic-stricken and realizes he has to take the final step of degradation: he has to betray Julia, in the vilest and filthiest way. As soon as he cries to do that to Julia, OBrien takes the cage off his head. Thence Winston lives a plain life, in conformity with Ingsoc. One day he meets Julia, but she does not love him anymore. Neither Winston loves her anymore: now he loves Big Brother.
Suzanna Hamilton as Julia

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR AS A WARNING AGAINST TOTALITARIANISMS

In his essay Why I Write, Orwell explains that all the serious work he had written since the Spanish Civil War in 1936 was written against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism. So Nineteen Eighty-Four can be seen as a cautionary tale against totalitarianism, and in particular the betrayal of a revolution by those claiming to defend/support it (as Stalin did 1928 onwards). However, as many reviewers/critics have stated, it should not be read as an attack on socialism as a whole, but on totalitarianism (and potential totalitarianism). Orwell based many aspects of Oceanian society on the Stalin-era Soviet Union. The Two Minutes Hate, for instance, is based on Stalinisms habitual demonization of their enemies and rivals, and Big Brother himself bears a resemblance to Stalin. The motif of TWO AND TWO MAKE
FIVE

is taken directly from a Soviet propaganda poster during Stalins industrialization drive.

The world described in Nineteen Eighty-Four contains parallels with the Stalinist Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. There are thematic similarities: the betrayed-revolution, which Orwell dealt with in Animal Farm, and the subordination of individuals to the Party. There are also direct parallels of the activities within the society:

leader worship, such as that towards Big Brother, a reference to Stalin and Hitler; Joycamps, a reference to concentration camps or gulags; Thought Police, a reference to the Gestapo or NKVD the Youth League, reminiscent of Hitler Youth or Octobrists. The massive use of propaganda itself is a reference to Stalin and Hitlers dictatorships. Besides, many aspects of Nineteen Eighty-Four seem a premonition of the events that took place

in Argentina, during the military regime from 1976 to 1983. In March 1976 a junta, lead by Commander-in-Chief Jorge Rafael Videla, deposed President Isabel Martnez de Pern with a coup dtat and took control of the country. Videla was the de facto President of Argentina until 1981. Economic problems, charges of corruption, public revulsion in the face of human rights abuses and, finally, the countrys 1982 defeat in the Falklands War made the Argentine military regime come to an end and democracy was restored in 1983. During the period of the dictatorship the military rulers arrested, detained, tortured and killed many suspected terrorists and political opponents, just as in Nineteen Eighty-Four. And as in George Orwells novel up to about 30,000 Argentinians were subject to forced disappearance: many were killed; others were detained and tortured, or sent into exile. The tortures themselves 10

are upsettingly similar to the ones suffered by Winston: Winston learns how to be a decent citizen through an electroshock therapy. The so-called desaparecidos (Spanish for disappeared people) as well were subject to electroshock therapies: many witnesses have described the same treatment: they were seized, beaten, taken to a room and bound to a bed; the torturers attached electric wires to the victims chest and inserted them into their anus, vagina or any other orifice. The electricity began going through the wires, shaking their bodies. The electroshock would stop as long as they confessed their crimes or spilled out all that they knew. Other kinds of torture were:
burning the victims wounds with cigarettes or little flamethrowers; breaking their bones, particularly of their hands and their feet; stringing their feet with stickpins; hitting them to blood.

Then, plenty of them were drugged and thrown into the Atlantic Ocean from helicopters.

CONCLUSION
Summing up, the dystopian genre is not an easy one. It is very harsh and no author tries to make his/her book more pleasant with embellishments or a happy ending. Its aim is not to entertain but to warn the reader to beware of the powerful, because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, to quote historian Lord Acton, so that any democracy could turn into a totalitarianism and any society could turn into a dystopia.

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BIBLIOGRAFIA
George Orwell Animal Farm, 1996, Penguin Books Ltd George Orwell La Fattoria Degli Animali (traduzione di Bruno Tasso), 1985, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1990, Penguin Books Ltd George Orwell 1984 (traduzione di Gabriele Baldini), 1983, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore

SITOGRAFIA
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/ http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/animalfarm/ http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desaparecidos

IMMAGINI
Animal Farm di Joy Batchelor e John Halas, 1954 Halas and Batchelor Cartoon Films Nineteen Eighty-Four di Michael Radford, 1984 Umbrella-Rosenblum Films/Virgin Films

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