Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid's Tale
Both Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Atwood's The Handmaid's
Tale represent unusual future visions, framed in experimental science
fiction. Atwood's text is grounded in contemporary concerns, as it is partly
an attempt at imagining what kind of values might evolve if environmental
pollution had finally rendered most of the human race sterile. It has also
sprung from the debates raging within the feminist movement of the past thirty
years, a movement that Atwood has been very much a part of, although she has
never spoken for any specific group- insisting on her individual perspectives.
Dystopias such as Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid's Tale isolate certain
social trends and exaggerate them, magnifying their most negative qualities.
They are cautionary tales, meant less as predictions of a likely future and
more as a commentary on the present. Atwood's text explores some of the traditional
attitudes that are embedded in the thinking of the religious right, Orwell's
studies the imposing extremes of the political right- and both authors are
driven by the threats to their liberty that they perceive to be present in
their respective contemporary societies.
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is an exploration of the dystopian notion of
power as it is held and enforced by the state. The significance of Orwell's
discussions, both implicit and explicit, about the dystopian abuse of power
becomes clear only through analysis. Then it becomes clear that Orwell's critique
of society is inextricably linked to a critique of the power structures that
surround communication. Orwell's writing is cautionary: it illustrates the
point that communication is so integral to human instinct and desire that
it can easily be turned into an extremely powerful tool for oppression.
As well as presenting power as a means of controlling language, and thus thought,
the anti-utopian force of Nineteen Eighty-Four operates as a kind of twentieth-century
contrast to the Humanist work of Sir Thomas More. Orwell's text expresses,
"the mood of powerlessness and hopelessness of modern man just as the early
utopias expressed the mood of self-confidence and hope of post-medieval man"
Nineteen Eighty-Four's cautionary agenda perceives man's bleak future to be
one of dehumanization, induced by fascist dogmatism.
For Orwell, language is power. Since desire is the most powerful expression
of individuality and is sated fully in the utopia, any dystopia must function
through blocked desires. Orwell envision this suppression of desire taking
place fundamentally within the context of language, "at least so far as thought
is dependent on word" since it is only through words that man is capable of
expressing his potentially dangerous wishes.
Atwood's is also concerned about the potential for exploitation in ambiguous
vocabularies. Atwood has been equally interested and alarmed by the trend
for some feminist anti-pornography groups to establish alliances with religious
anti-porn zealots- right wing traditionalists who oppose the feminists on
virtually every other issue. In this way, the language of "protection of women"
could quickly slip from a demand for more freedom into a retreat from freedom,
a kind of appalling neo-Victorianism. The nineteenth century repression of
women was justified by a stretched claims that "good" women were being "protected"
from sex; protection that extended to women being confined to the home, barred
from participating in the arts, and of course voting. A rhetoric of protection
is generally preventative. It controls, limits, and represses the women. The
language may be is feminist, but it also entirely ostensible. The result,
as seen in this novel, is the perpetuation of the patriarchal status quo.
In Orwell, words are commodified, becoming just another appropriated human
liberty. Words acquire capitalist value- their weight depending upon their
perceived worth to the state. Hence words are crudely reduced and objectified,
existing in "an extreme form of pragmatism in which truth becomes subordinated
to the Party" . Orwell records the Oceanian state's efforts to impart its
dogma fundamentally, adjusting thoughts through altering language. Language
control in Nineteen Eighty-Four is contrived deliberately to repress citizens'
expression of reality, thus their psychological perception of it. As Orwell
himself states, the dehumanising regime was "designed not to extend but to
diminish the range of thought" and,
"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for
the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to
make all other modes of thought impossible."
As a result of controlling peoples' language, their ability to both express
and discern the truth with words, the state acquires a genuine level of power
over reality. When filtered by the omnipotent political dogmatists, "all reality
is ideological"
Through subjugating the language of the people of Oceania, the state effectively
converts ideology into truth, and the state's rhetoric functions as the vehicle
for that truth: "Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else...whatever
the Party holds to be truth is truth. If this is so, then by controlling men's
minds the Party controls truth" So the regime's rhetorical power over reality
includes the power to determine arbitrary values of right and wrong, truth
and lies, good and bad.
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