My heroes are dead (but not buried)

 

Taken from 1984 by George Orwell.

The word society has always meant something to us. For some it is a shame, for others just a sheep that, if misguided can be a product of fear and slavery. People like George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, or Alan Moore have given us frightening visions of what society can become in the wrong hands. Also, another concept which appears into those stories is the word dystopia, but what is the meaning of it? Dystopia can be defined as a place in which people are unhappy and with fear because they are not treated well; it is the antithesis of a utopia. In this so called dystopia we have problems such as injustice, hunger, pain and suffering. Examples of dystopias can be seen in fiction such as the ones named above, including Snowpiercer, Blade Runner, Akira, Battle Royale, Hunger Games, Fahrenheit 451, among others. All of them include similar characteristic, but in this entry the focus will be on 1984 by George Orwell and V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, trying to analyze the role of the protagonists in the stories, their motivation, the setting and the way of the hero.

As said before, 1984 is a book written by George Orwell published in 1949, and it tells the story of Winston Smith, a man living in a totalitarian system ruled by the tyrannic Big Brother. In this novel, the world is at war and nobody is safe from the all-seeing Big Brother; people are being watched all the time, they can do nothing without being watched and they are told what to think, what to feel, basically everything.
While V for Vendetta, a graphic novel written by Alan Moore published from 1988 to 1989, is a story about V, a misterious man who wants to take revenge on the people who made him suffer and take down the current facist government. In this world, war is also a big issue and fear fills the streets of London. Call (2008) says that:

"V for Vendetta offers a clever, insightful look at the rise of fascism. The fascist 'Norsefire' party takes advantage of the power vacuum which occurs as the liberal British state collapses in the aftermath of the nuclear war" (pag. 8).

And, as said before war in portraited by both authors as something they were really afraid of, a danger that was right at the corner.

In 1984 as mentioned before, there is Winston, an everyman who works as a clerk and has as a job to rewrite historical documents to appeal the ruling power. He meets a woman named Julia, fall in love and gets in touch with O'Brien, a man who is supposed to be part of The Brotherhood, which is the resistance that is against the regime of Big Brother. Winston is a man who wants to see a change in his world, but can he become a saviour?

                                 

"No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act."

 

Acts such like having sex is a little revolution in the 1984 world. Sometimes, it's the little things that define a brave man. And Winston did that: By falling in love he made a sort of revolution, not the one you would expect, but a revolution anyway.
Authors like Rooney states that by

"establishing such close identification with Winston’s point of view is an important way in which the narrative engages the reader’s sympathy, making Winston the main conduit for representation of what it means to be human, to be an individual" (pag. 6). 

 

Orwell portraits Winston not as a hero but as a human, someone who wants to challenge authority by doing the things mentioned before. The world he lives in is not made to create heroes. They died, they went away, something happened. Winston is just a man, and Orwell shows us the powerlessness of being human in a corrupted world. What's more, Winston may not be a hero, but he is human, and he tries to do something, stand up for what is right.
Did he fail? Yes. Did he do it fighting? Yes. Is he an admirable human for trying? Yes.
        

               

 

In this part V comes into play. V, in comparison to Winston, has a different motivation: Vengeance. He wants to make his enemies pay for what they have done to him, and wants to change the system using questionable methods. So, is he the hero the world needs? First of all, it is necessary to say that V does some good, but he is more complex than a hero. He kills and a hero does not do that. He can be seen as an anti-hero, because despite the fact that his methods are not seen as something inheretly good, what he does is for the greater good or... is it just a façade to bring his own type of justice into the ones who took everything away from him?
V is an anarchist who lost his faith in the system, because it serves to the current government, a government corrupted that is going to face a new threat: Anarchy.



On the one hand, Moore, compared to Orwell, gives us a more complex character. A character that even became a symbol of anarchy and for some, even a symbol of revolution (e. g. Anonymous), with a darkness inside, that even tortures to get what he wants. On the other hand, Winston is just a man who could become the change, but it just was not enough. If 1984 could have some sort of heroic character should be someone like V, but this makes us ask ourselves: Does the end justify the means?
Characters like Punisher, Moon Knight, Spawn, among others, are characters who kill in order to do the right thing, so, should we torture, kill and destroy in order to benefit our society?
Winston did not do such thing and ended up broken and scarred mentally, physically and spiritually... What if he had done something more extreme? Could have he been able to do that? Would that have changed the system? Would that have changed anything?
Some say, creation comes from destruction, and V killed and destroyed in order to bring a balance. Is it necessary to become a demon in order to fight another one? Can we truly change the world through anarchy and violence? All of these questions are hard to answer, since are really debatable, but it is necessary to make them.

To sum up, both works show what our world can become in the wrong hands, a world without heroes or saviours, surrounded by misinformation and war, and also, that even a little act of rebellion and stand for what is right is what makes us heroic and the only big question to bring this to a close is:

Would you kill to save the world?



 

Bibliography:

- Call, Lewis (1 January 2008). A is for anarchy, V is for Vendetta. Anarchist Studies.

- Moore, A. and Lloyd, D. (1990). V is for vendetta. London: Titan.

- Orwell, G. (2003). Nineteen Eighty Four. St Ives: Penguin Books.

- Rooney, B. (2002. Narrative viewpoint and the representation of power in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Retrieved from http://openjournals.library.usyd.edu.au/index.php/SSE/article/viewFile/565/534