In
the last three decades, technology advances have certainly reshaped our society.
One of the main authors who addressed the problems that people in the future
would may face was Orwell. His dystopian society from 1984 warned some when the book was published, and others rejected his
ideas since they thought he was too extremist. But, look at us now. Are we living
in Orwell’s fictional society?
When
talking about Orwell, another author that pops up is Hawthorne and his short
piece of art “Wakefield”. Why? Well, these two authors questioned the human
nature by pinpointing different aspects of humanity, and were able to warn us
about one of the most frightening perils of dystopian societies: the loss of
identity and manipulation of the system over citizens.
If we analyzed their works, the protagonists of
them may have more in common we us than what we think. Did you know that? The
concept of identity in today’s society has become a fuzzy concept, and appareantly, we are dummed to live just as Winston and Wakefield did.
1. 1984
 |
| George Orwell |
First,
let us provide some context for 1984.
Due to his work as a reporter, Orwell was one of those writers who had
witnessed the worst atrocities the humankind can commit. Having gone to live
among the extremely poor in England, moved to live with the destitute coal miners in northern England, and then
travelled to Spain to experience by firsthand the nightmarish actions performed
by fascist political regimes in the Spanish Civil War, he had plenty of information
to write about and share with the world. However, it was the rise of Hitler and
Stalin as power authorities in totalitarian political systems that ended up
striking him the most and, consequently, inspired his well-known novel 1984, which nowadays seems to be one of
the most explicit warnings someone could have ever given us about the perils of
our technological advanced society.
By and large, 1984 depicts a
Dystopian Totalitarian Society in which the world, in perpetual war, is divided
in 3 big “countries”: Eurasia, Oceania and Eastasia. The story centers on the life of
Winston, a citizen dwelling under a dictatorship in one of the provinces of
Oceania. In his daily life, he is being constantly monitored by the Big
Brother, the leader of the Inner Party, through a telescreen to identify traitors
who do not follow the rules imposed by them or commit thoughtcrimes such as independent
thinking, and, finally, make them disappear (in a few words they are killed).
Apart from complete surveillance, the Party makes use of several methods
to maintain social control over the population. Some of them are language and
education manipulation, terror, continuous sense of crisis regarding war, dehumanization
of the opponent, and control of identity. The last one is the most terrifying
since it is control of the citizen’s identities what
keeps the Totalitarian System alive, and the idea of a Big Brother and the
propaganda WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH,
accepted by many.
In Oceania every citizen has an assigned job, an assigned place to live,
should dress in a certain way, and refer to others using the generic addressing
word “comrade” because in this society they are all brothers. For instance,
when Mrs. Parsons goes to his house, Winston expresses that “’Mrs’ was
a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party—you
were supposed to call everyone ‘comrade’— but
with some women one used it instinctively” (Orwell,
2004, p. 26). By doing this, the rulers are making them fit into society with
an invisible label on their chests that describe who they are, what they are
allowed to do and, thus, how they must behave. For instance, Winston is a
worker at the Fiction Department in the Ministry of Truth, which “concerned
itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts” (Orwell, 2003,
p.7), and that is, supposedly, all.
Wittily,
Winston’s job is to alter/distort past
information provided to the citizens in newspapers, movies or propaganda so as to
assure they match the Party’s current necessities in order to keep people’s faith and respect for the doctrines. In
that way, memories are removed from their minds and reshaped by the existence
of another different story. Evidently, as Winston knows that the Party uses
this mechanism as a subordinating tool for them to preserve their power, this
would suggest that he, unlike others, is aware enough to distinguish between
his own identity and the one he was given.
According to Delia (2014), that Winston was familiar with the so-called brainwashing
systems Memory Hotel and Newspeak, is not sufficient for him to wake up in this
society. But, he needs to raise self-awareness too, which is the third aspect
that contributes to the development of the characters’ identity. In her words, this
“is not related to memory, but the will of the individual and the dare
to indulge himself to think beyond the given barriers. With awareness comes a
sense of identity.” (Delia, 2014, p.10).
However, how would he dare do that if he is being observed 24 hours a
day, and the minimal attempt for rebellion would cost him his life? Several times in the story he
highlights this point: “Always
the eyes watching you
and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in
the bath or in bed—no escape.
Nothing was your own (…)” (Orwell, 2003, p.37). Maybe, unconsciously, he
tried to raise self-awareness when he risked buying both the diary and the glass
globe, which are two elements that could revive memories, therefore, considered
as sins and plagues that needed to be eliminated. Consequently, its possession in
Oceania was forbidden and punished with death. We cannot say that he did not
try, but in fact, he was not able to get out of the box he was placed in by the
system; he did not even know why he had bought the diary and it was more difficult
to decide what to write in it as his personal thoughts were already vanished.
Then, in the end, constant change of collective memories led him to a
sever identity crisis, and was now longer aware since his memories had faded. As stated by Ficeac (as cited in Delia (2014,
p. 10), “the very idea of reality had been annihilated and replaced with the
appearance of reality.” This is the reason why throughout
the whole novel he has troubles remembering important facts about his childhood
or the War, as exemplified in the following passage:
“(…) he
was struggling, to think his way backward into the dim period of his early, childhood.
It was extraordinarily difficult. Beyond the late fifties everything faded.
When there were no external records that you could refer to, even the outline
of your own life lost its sharpness. You remembered huge events which had quite
probably not happened, you remembered the detail of incidents without being
able to recapture their atmosphere, and there were long blank periods to which
you could assign nothing.” (Orwell, 2003, p.40).
The Two Minutes Hate, is also an instance in which, through manipulation
of data, images and the use of pathos, the system is able to alienate citizens
and maintain their interests centralized. When this ceremony starts, Winston,
in spite of not wanting to, cannot help but join in the vibrant audience
shouting against Goldestein and worshiping the Big Brother through a self-hypnosis
hymn:
“In the Two Minutes
Hate he could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this sub-human
chanting of ‘B-B!...B-B!’ always filled him with horror. Of course he chanted
with the rest: it was impossible to do otherwise. To dissemble your feelings,
to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive
reaction. But there was a space of a couple of seconds during which the expression
of his eyes might conceivably have betrayed him.” (Orwell, 2003, p. 20)
To put if
briefly, Winston in certain point to the accompaniment of Julia, experiences
love interest, rebels against the system and is able to show in his notes in
the diary, self-reflexivity. Nevertheless, at last, we are demonstrated the
magnitude of the effects that manipulation from bigwigs can have on people’s
individualism, when Winston once discovered of betrayal towards the Party, he suffers
the consequences of his actions by being re-reshaped by the system so he can
accept his alienations and is capable of denying one of the universal truths
and his love for Julia.
I recommend you watch the video below about the reasons why 1984 is still important.
2. Wakefield
On the other hand, even though published many year before 1984, in “Wakefield”, Hawthorne develops
the same idea of alienation and diminish of the self.
As it is usual in his works, Hawthorne tells us explicitly in the
beginning of the story what this it is going to be about (even the title gives
us a hint). Well, the story orbits around a man called Wakefield, who one day
kissed his wife goodbye to go on ,at most, a week-long journey, but did not
come home until 20 years had passed. Hawthorne ventures to explore the motives
that may have driven Wakefield a man “with a cold but not depraved nor
wandering heart, and a mind never feverish with riotous thoughts, nor perplexed
with originality” (Hawthorne, 2012, p. 1) to
abandon his duties as husband to move to an apartment near his old house and
stay there undercover, however, still present observing his family’s life from
the outside. It is curious that he had the guts to walk out of his house because
Wakefield himself was not certain what he was going to the while standing there
at the doorbell ready to leave. Once he decided to took some time to be on his
own, his original plan was to spend a couple of days in the rented room, however
after the months began to pass by, every time he considered the idea of going
back home he postponed his return.
At the end, Wakefield goes back home as he realized his expectations
were not fulfilled; he had expected his beloved one to suffer from his lost and
their lives to change because of that. In fact, that was one of the reasons why
he went away but stood close enough to observe (a voyeuristic
action) his family, he wanted to see what life would look like without
him there. But, his expectations were not fulfilled as they eventually
continued living normally, and, what is more, as years passed, not even his
wife was able to recognize him on the street:
“The
sober widow, resuming her former pace, proceeds to church, but pauses in the
portal, and throws a perplexed glance along the street. She passes in, however,
opening her prayer-book as she goes. And the man! with so wild a face that busy
and selfish London stands to gaze after him, he hurries to his lodgings, bolts
the door, and throws himself upon the bed.” (Hawthorne, 2012, p. 5)
This scene was the event that motivated
Wakefield to abandon his loneliness and return to his house because he notices that
“individuals
are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole,
that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk
of losing his place forever.” (Hawthorne, 2012, p. 6). For him, more days
absent would have meant his vaporization as a person. Although he was already
vaporized/disappeared for his family, he still thought that he owned a room in
the world, but he discovered that if we are not immersed in the system, we do
not have an identity as this self we are is determined by the system, and
consequently, if there is no identity, there is no person.
Strikingly,
we may draw the conclusion that the main argument for leaving his house was
that he needed to find himself; he needed to get the custom of the caring
husband that society had make him try on; he needed to be away from the system
to find his identity, but it appeared that he stepped out, he lost it instead.
In the following passage, for example, having spent several years living alone,
he realizes the consequences of being self-deprived of the system’s rules.
“He
was in the bustle of the city, as of old; but the crowd swept by and saw him
not; he was, we may figuratively say, always beside his wife and at his hearth,
yet must never feel the warmth of the one nor the affection of the other. It
was Wakefield's unprecedented fate to retain his original share of human
sympathies, and to be still involved in human interests, while he had lost his
reciprocal influence on them.”
It is
undoubtedly true that Hawthorne expressed himself as an alienated artist
through his writing of Wakefield. Wineapple (2003) adds that “even as he
castigates Wakefield, Hawthorne colludes with him, relishing an ordinary man’s
extraordinary caprice” (p. 86). She states that by giving Wakefield the
possibility to escape from his ordinary life, Hawthorne extends his longing for
a life and world that would not oppress the selves of all of us, but liberates
us.
3. Loss of
Identity
Now, does
it sound familiar to you the fact that we are who we are based on the label
that the system has given us? Certainly, Orwell predicted our current problems
in society, but Hawthorne as well did. However, something that not all may
notice is that, yes, we cannot escape from the system because living in it
determines us as persons, so, if our identity is what the system wants it to
be, then, we have lost our self too, which implies we cannot discover our real
self. This is exactly what happens in the two stories, by being fitted in
society, they end up turning down the opportunity to achieve originality and
individuality by being rewarded with social comfort.
For this
reason, have you thought for a minute “Who am really I?” Have you had the
feeling you want to escape from your reality? Have you felt tired of letting
others judge who you are by the pictures you post on Facebook? By the number of
likes you get?
Personally,
I think that, nowadays, with all these social networks such as Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter and others, we worry more about what the rest can say about
us, how we are going to be labeled according to social standards of beauty,
wealth, health, intelligence, etc. As a result, we put on masks to show someone
who we are not. The system requires us to, or otherwise, we will be socially
excluded.
Delia
(2014), notes that in 1984, “the state
has successfully created a state where citizens are more object than human.” and
she extends this thought to the 21st century, by stating that we
have become object that “have no choice but to adhere to exterior will, similar
to how an object can only be moved by an exterior force”.
Many
scholars, agree that Orwell’s 1984 is
a cautionary warning that can save us from losing ourselves as a society. What
do you think? Do you feel yourself right now? Do you think there is still hope
for us?
References
Delia, M. (2014). The Political Role of
Memory and Identity in Dystopian Societies. European
Journal of Research and Reflection in Arts and Humanities, 2(2), pp. 7-17.
Orwell, G. (2003). Nineteen Eighty Four. St. Ives: Penguin Books
Wineapple, B.
(2003) Hawthorne: A Life. NY: Knopf.
Nowadays, techonology has allowed us to become connected to everyone wherever we are, almost without limitations. Security innovations now give us the possibility of controlling security cameras with our phones to prevent criminals from entering our houses. We can instantly contact people from all over the world not only via written means, but also with video. We can share pictures, videos, moments with anyone we want, almost without any restriction.
And the problem extends even further when we consider our "need for speed". We have forgotten patience and we always want things to arrive right now, the services have to be provided right now. And without exception, unless, of course, I pay more than the person next to me. We are selfish and, in our selfishness, we are no different from anyone else. The vast majority of people alter their internet profiles to look flawless, to appear perfect and be praised for it.
