The Totalitarian Achievement and Maintenance of Absolute Control Over Man in George Orwells 1984 and Ismail Kadares the Palace of Dreams (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Myth of the Totalitarian Leader in George Orwell’s 1984 and Ismail Kadare’s The Palace of Dreams
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2015
Kadare's allegorical anti-totalitarian novels are often compared by literary critics to George Orwell's classical dystopian satire, 1984. What this often-made but rarely-explored comparison suggests is that there is an essential affinity between the totalitarian world presented in Kadare's anti-totalitarian novels and the famous nightmarish dystopia of Orwell's 1984. The express aim of the present study is to isolate one of the key building blocks in Orwell's and Kadare's conceptions of the overall structure of totalitarianism-the great leader who stand atop the rigid hierarchy of the totalitarian state-and analyse the role it plays in the totalitarian scheme of things. With this aim in view, we have submitted the character of Big Brother from Orwell's 1984 to a comparative analysis with the character of the Sultan from Kadare's most representative anti-totalitarian novel, the allegorical Palace of Dreams. The close textual analysis of the way the two characters artistically function in the respective novels, and of their ideological significance for the totalitarian worlds described in them, shows that they bear a marked resemblance to each-other. Essentially, both Big Brother and the Sultan are conceived as archetypal characters who, beyond any more immediate connections to particular historical personages, stand for the totalitarian leader as such. Furthermore, as the results of our analysis show, their mythical conception in the two novels highlights the representation of the figure of the great leader in the minds of totalitarian men as an almost godly being with attributes more divine than human.
ASOS: Akademik Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi, 2021
The themes of oppression and control play a highly significant role in utopian and dystopian fiction which illustrates alternative world scenarios. These fictional social orders portray possible worse scenarios that might become the reality unless certain necessary measurements are taken. In these portrayals, individuality is suppressed for the alleged welfare of the society and the collective interests of a ruling body are accordingly highlighted. The aim of this study is therefore to discuss the representation of oppression and control in utopian and dystopian narratives through the analysis of the three selected speculative texts, namely A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell with specific references from relevant secondary sources.
A FROMMIAN READING OF GEORGE ORWELL'S 1984
Although George Orwell's 1984 has been interpreted from a variety of theoretical perspectives, the narrative still reveals an opportunity to inquire into novel trajectories of arguments. It provides enough room for a reading especially in light of Erich Fromm's theoretical views. Erich Fromm is well-known for his criticism of modern society in which sadism, masochism and the crisis of freedom are outstanding features. For Fromm, since the Renaissance, modern individuals have found themselves entangled in a psychological state of loneliness, powerlessness and meaninglessness owing to their attempt to obtain freedom. Leaving behind traditional values and religious faith has not afforded them any freedom that they can be satisfied with; rather, lack of pre-modern values has caused them to embark on a quest for suppression of a feeling of impotence. That's why, sadist dictators like Big Brother desire to make up for a sense of insignificance by oppressing the masses while the masses become masochists by submitting blindly to his dictatorial authority as an indication of impotence. The novel offers the possibility of finding examples regarding how sadism and masochism foster the maintenance of each other in modern society in which acts of dominating and being dominated are commonly observed due to feelings of loss and emptiness.
A Nightmarish Tomorrow: Orwellian Methods of Social Control in Contemporary Dystopian Literature
Dystopian literature is considered a branch of science fiction which writers use to portray a futuristic dark vision of the world, generally dominated by technology and a totalitarian ruling government that makes use of whatever means it finds necessary to exert a complete control over its citizens. George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) is considered a landmark of the dystopian genre: it portrays a futuristic where a totalitarian, fascist party rules London aiming to keep its citizens under their complete control. This paper will take two examples of contemporary dystopian literature, Philip K. Dick’s “Faith of Our Fathers” (1967) and Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta (1982-1985), in order to closely analyze the influence that Orwell’s dystopia played in their construction. It will focus on how these two works took Orwellian vision of a totalitarian state, the different methods of control it employs to keep citizens under complete control and submission, and how they introduce them into their stories. KEYWORDS: Orwell, V for Vendetta, Faith of Our Fathers, social control, manipulation, submission. La ciencia ficción es uno de los géneros cuye auge se encuentra al alza hoy en día. De entre sus diversas ramificaciones, la literatura distópica es una de las más usadas por los escritores para proyectar una visión del mundo oscura y futurista, dominado por la tecnología y caracterizada por un gobierno totalitario que hace uso de todos los medios que encuentra necesarios para ejercer un control total sobre sus ciudadanos. La novela de George Orwell 1984 (1949) es considerada un hito del género distópico: en ella, Orwell retrata un Londres futurista, gobernado por un partido fascista y totalitario, cuyo mero objetivo es el control total sobre sus ciudadanos. El objetivo de este ensayo es analizar dos ejemplos de la literatura distópica contemporánea, por un lado "La Fe de Nuestros Padres" (1967) de Philip K. Dick, así como la novela gráfica de Alan Moore V de Vendetta (1982-1985), con el objetivo de estudiar la influencia que el modelo distópico de Orwell desempeñó en la construcción de las distopías anteriormente mencionadas. De igual modo, este ensayo se centrará en cómo estas dos obras tomaron las representaciones de Orwell de un estado totalitario, los diferentes métodos de control que éste emplea para mantener a sus ciudadanos bajo un estado de absoluta sumisión y control, y cómo plasmaron éstas representaciones en sus respectivas obras. PALABRAS CLAVE: Orwell, V de Vendetta, La Fe de Nuestros Padres, control social, manipulación, sometimiento.
Anveshak (UGC CARE GROUP 1), 2022
George Orwell's 1984 is a scathing criticism of a totalitarian regime in the post-colonial world. This work has inspired a world of new terminologies, assessments, and criticisms in both academic and popular cultures. In his work, Orwell presents a very grim picture of the future of the nation-states, which acts as a disturbing fable, an analogy to the present realities, and a prophecy for the future. How can we situate a text written right after the Second World War in a post-modern, post-truth world? How relevant is this work in modern times? And how can we analyze the ideological, socio-cultural and political world of 1984? This particular essay will try to understand the discourse of power, control, and discipline through Foucauldian lenses. We will try to understand the semblance between Orwell's visualization of the 'Big Brother' with that of 'Discipline and Punishment' and the panoptic structure of surveillance through telescreen. So how technology can be used as a mode of surveillance and power is a common theme in both Orwell's and Foucault's works. We will also discuss the possible spaces for resistance in a totalitarian state as envisaged by the protagonist of our story Winston and the popular dictum of Foucault, "Where there is Power, there is Resistance."
2015
The following thesis deals with the issue of control as an aspect of totalitarian regimes. The analysis was carried out on the basis of theoretical background. For this reason, the first chapter of the thesis is devoted to the history of dystopian literature and the features of totalitarian regimes. It also discusses notion of control as a constituent part of any political system. In the introductory part of the first chapter I describe utopia as the initial genre, and dystopia as a natural reaction to the political events and social context in the unstable conditions of the twentieth century. This part focuses on its emergence and development in general and on the authors and their ideas in particular...
2015
1984 is a dystopian novel by George Orwell that clearly describes the life under totalitarian government. Totalitarianism is not merely a political system but also movement that goes beyond private, public, and political sphere. Totalitarian government dreams of uniformity in all aspects of life and they pursue for global domination. In order to reach for global domination and their ideal version of state, totalitarian government does not allow freedom in all aspects of life. The pursuit of global domination requires some strategies to make the society in uniformity. The strategies applied are propaganda, terror, and indoctrination. These strategies make the main characters lose the freedom and become alienated from the self and the society. Alienation and the lost of freedom also lead to inauthenticity, since they are related to each other. Inauthenticity can be caused by repression from external agents in which a person cannot do anything spontaneously since he is being dictated b...