A couple of pages are enough to identify the dystopian world that George Orwell had in mind when writing his outstanding novel 1984. Not only we can relate certain features or characteristics of the narration with some facts from our own reality, but also we can understand what he meant to depict with the whole story. From his perspective, a not so distant future would be marked by a totalitarian political system, in which human behavior would be absolutely controlled and manipulated by a ruler government. Hence, private life would no longer be freely admitted, which meant that not even individual thoughts or ideas different from the ones imposed by the system would be allowed, “Thoughtcrime, they called it” (Orwell, 1949:
21). Instead, a punishment would fall on those who dare to betray what has been
established, even if they do not take any action. A simple thought against the
rule would determine the end of one’s existence, “People simply disappeared […]
your name was removed from registers, every record of everything you had ever
done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten”
(Orwell, 1949: 21).
Orwell's main character - Winston - is representative of the oppressed society in the story. His job at the
Ministry of Truth is, in fact, a representation of the extreme situation in
which he develops his daily life. Ironically, what he has to do is to edit
information to make it convenient for the Big Brother, that is, if a piece of
news has been delivered containing an unpleasant fact, he must change it to
make it appropriate for the party. In a way, he manipulates the reality of past
events to the party’s convenience. And, since privacy is prohibited, any
situation could be easily identified and dealt with, because citizens are always
being monitored: “Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you
[…]. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull”
(Orwell, 1949: 29)
For some experts, Orwell’s 1984
is quite related to his well-known concern about emotions. Robert C. Tucker
(2011) addresses this fact by claiming that “He was interested in the thing’s
effect upon people’s emotional life”. Moreover, throughout the story readers
can identify how Winston reacts against his reality and the situations in which
he is involved, while also allowing himself to step out of the restrictions
imposed by having different thoughts or ideas, and experiencing sensations that
humanity has almost totally lost.
Furthermore, the world outside the inner self is restraining
any humanizing action, not even language is the same anymore. Actually, it has
been modified so as to prevent people from having a wide range of words
available for them to elaborate thoughts, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of
the Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? […]. We shall make thoughtcrime
literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it”
(Orwell, 1949: 55).
These restrictions placed upon cognitive and emotional aspects of
humanity are merely just strategies to reinforce people’s loyalty to the Big
Brother; not even love can be genuine under these circumstances, because the
ecstasy of love may drive people’s attention into a different direction. People
ought to allow themselves only to experience hate for those who attempt to
attack the system by rejecting it somehow, and love would only become a
distractor in that constant duty. There is a moment in which Julia opens up Winston’s eyes to this fact, by telling him
that “If you’re happy inside yourself, why would you get excited about Big
Brother?” (Orwell, 1949: 139).
Additionally, other sources tackle this issue by suggesting
that the human figure is used in the story to spread the party’s ideology
(Peláez, 2015), which somehow is quite evident and clever enough in order to
depict a totalitarian regime.
In Orwell's work, the human being is the victim of an external
pressure and a web of restrictions that trigger inner emotions, whether they
fulfil the purpose of the oppressor or not. If not, the characters will
experience a lack of sense of belonging and a constant inquire about their past
and their present, having no chance to predict their future somehow. Between
these two stages, a space for hope might arise, providing the reader with the
opportunity to feel that despite the fact that truth can be manipulated, humans
may still be able to refrain from being convinced by others about a certain
ideology.
A different perspective is presented by Edgar Allan Poe in
his tale The fall of the House of Usher. Although
no political issues are referred to in this story, it is possible to contrast
the origin of the pressure tormenting the characters with the one depicted by
Orwell.
In this case, despite acknowledging the relevance of the
narrator (and also one of the main characters of the tale), the focus is mostly
placed on Roderick Usher, the proprietor of the house in which the narration
takes place. Usher contacts a childhood friend (the narrator) to come and visit
him, for he has not been feeling well. In fact, he tells his old companion that
it has to do with a mental disorder that kept on deteriorating his health, “It
was, he said, a constitutional and family evil, and one for which he despaired
to find a remedy […]. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations”
(Poe, 2006: 131).
Usher, tortured by his mental disorder, had suffered so
much already that he had developed a certain terror towards the events of the
future. In a way, he was becoming a prisoner of his own mind; restrictions and
pressure would only emerge from within him. Hence, contrary to what Orwell
implies, no external entity is responsible for what this human has become into.
His mental chaos has driven him into a state of disintegration of the self, in
which horror is by all means the punishment placed upon him. This punishment is
also different from the one applied by Orwell in 1984, because the origin of the deceiving is internal and so it is
its web of restrictions, since the same character is the one who becomes a cage
for himself. What is more, the effect of horror on Usher becomes recognizable
and begins to affect his friend, who admits that “It was no wonder that his
condition terrified – that it infected me” (Poe, 2006: 138).
In addition to this, once Usher’s sister, Madeline, is introduced to
the reader, and the story begins to follow a dark path, it is possible to
identify a certain projection of the self of Usher on her. He eventually tries
to transfer his agony to her sister, to find a relief, by confining her into a
dungeon where she would be buried once she had died. But, apparently, and as
guilt takes over him, he confesses that he has buried her alive, “I dare not speak! We have put her living in the tomb!” (Poe, 2006: 143). As in many
other Poe’s masterpieces, the criminal does not need mediation to confess his
or her crime, different from what happens in 1984, where thoughtcrime would be recognized and, due to the
constant surveillance applied to citizens, it would instantly trigger a series
of attempts to make the traitor confess. However, we could say that in The fall of the House of Usher, the
narrator is always paying attention to those details, and somehow a certain
surveillance is also applied by him. He, indeed, recognizes at a moment that “There
were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring
with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary
courage” (Poe, 2006: 138).
Considering all facts, , it is quite possible to admit that in Poe’s
tales what identifies the characters is not what they are, but what they do. And,
contrary to what Orwell presents, what they do is in fact a representation of
the inner self and its tormenting intricacies. Therefore, it is important for
Poe to portrait private life, so as to engage the reader with his characters. Details
(not so simple though) such as reading novels, are part of the rituals of the
characters; rituals that are used as a resource to escape from the oppression
of the mind. In 1984, Orwell attempts
to let the audience feel the need of his characters to have a resource like
that to get rid of their strings and, finally, feel free in their privacy.
Finally, what cannot be set aside from this
reflection is the relevance of language for both authors. For Poe, characters
rely on language, especially narrators. They are eloquent enough to make the
narration more ethereal, to talk about terror in a way in which the reader may
find it difficult to imagine and explain what is being described. Poe’s readers
will struggle to understand whether they are being presented with a reality or
with a supernatural fantasy. Although, the conflict is somehow easily
identified at the beginning of The Fall
of the House of Usher, “[…] one notices the conflict already in the first
paragraph, a masterpiece of prose poetry” (Bloom, 2009: 167). Similarly, in 1984, Orwell manages to use language to
attract the reader’s attention to what Winston experiences, to somehow be able
to identify the origin of his intricate feelings towards the reality of human
kind. By modifying the language used by the prole (Newspeak), he achieves what
Poe also does, to present reality to his readers in a way in which further and
deep understanding would provide them with the answers to all the questions
that arise from a story that in so many ways seemed to have predicted our
future reality, or even, our present.
References:
Poe, E.
A. (2006). The Man of the Crowd, in Kennedy, J. G. (Ed). The Portable
Edgar Allan Poe. London: Penguin Books, 229-237. 1984
Hoeveler, Diane
Long. The Hidden God and the Abjected Woman in ‘The Fall of the House of
Usher.’ Studies in Short Fiction 29:3 (Summer 1992): 385-96.
Bloom, H.
(2009). Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The tell-tale heart’ and other stories. New York:
Infobase Publishing
Tucker, Robert
C. Does Big Brother Really Exist? The Wilson Quarterly (1976-) 8 (1984):
106-17. JSTOR.
Orwell, G. (2003). Nineteen Eighty Four. St. Ives: Penguin Booksr
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