5
comparative analysis of the novels, consider the spreading power of the mass
media, the role of the individual inside the global village, the progression of
science and technology, the death of culture and the transformation of language.
Chapter one examines the theme of the mass media. The
phenomenon of mass communication began with the newspapers and the radio
broadcasting and later continued in a extremely hi-tech way with the arrival of the
television. The chapter compares the expansion of the mass communication
during the Nineteen twenties to Huxley’s final part of the novel and to Orwell’s
Big Brother’s political campaigns. Huxley and Orwell understood the danger and
influence of the mass media over people and marked this event in different ways:
Huxley showed the threat of the mass media and their intrusive presence into
people’s privacy through the example of aggressive newspapers and radio
reporters into the life of John the Savage which led to his suicide. In Brave New
World, the influence of the media over people was so corroding that citizens
inadvertently used advertising sentences in their speech. Orwell adopted the
“telescreens”
1
and drew the attention on their obsessive presence in every citizens’
life in Oceania: there, people were obliged to listen carefully to the instructions
coming out from the video.
In the real world, the power of the mass media has been exploited
by the totalitarian regimes during the First and Second World Wars. Totalitarian
regimes such as fascism and communism exploited massive communication for
their political propaganda. The newspapers and the radio were the most direct
means which were adopted to spread their ideologies. Today, political parties still
exploit these types of media, but the new totalitarian power is represented by
commercial advertising and its most influential means of communication is the
television.
1
ORWELL, G. Nineteen Eighty-Four, Penguin Books, London, 1990, p. 4.
6
Chapter two considers the isolation of the individual into mass
society. Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four present characters who are
separated from mankind. They live in a world which has changed too fast for
them. They do not recognise the society they live and feel frustrated. Their
isolation is emphasised by specific devices: their names, differences, exemplary
and symbolic roles are in opposition to mass conformity. The shapeless mass is an
indistinguishable group of people who has lost its identity. In the brave new
worlds, individuality and personality are annulled because society is shaped by a
single all-embracing ideology. In the dystopian future, people think – if they are
allowed to do that – the same things, wear the same clothes and do the same
things.
This chapter also analyses how the contemporary individual has
changed. Similarly to Huxley’s Brave New World citizens, today, people put their
physical appearance in front of everything else. People want to appear the same as
the images of the “supermen” portrayed in advertising posters and television
commercials. They try to emulate these non-existing beings to the detriment of the
loss of their individuality. The final part of the chapter is focused on the writers’
prediction of the disappearance of family and romantic love.
The third chapter deals completely with the technological progress.
Many inventions have transformed the world and also people. It is for this reason
that both Huxley and Orwell felt scared about the continuous innovation of
technology and its effects on human beings. They discussed this argument also in
some specific essays. The chapter contains a detailed parallelism between what
Huxley and Orwell foresaw as future technological inventions and what has really
happened in recent years. New conception satellites are compared to Orwell’s
totalitarian control of the world; Big Brother’s image is similar to virtual heroines’
appearances on the television and on the Internet, while brave New World’s
7
obsession for soma is confronted to today’s “fashion” for pills. The chapter
contains hints at the most recent technological advances: the threat of nuclear
wars, the menace of bacteriological weapons such as anthrax, the cloning,
biotechnology and genetic engineering.
The fourth chapter analyses the theme of culture in a wide sense. It
begins with the comparative analysis of various dystopian novels which included
the theme of the burning of books. Books have been always considered symbols
of culture and, as a consequence, a threat to the totalitarian regimes. They have
been regarded as a menace because they helped the individual to have an
independent thought.
The chapter also looks at how the acts of writing and reading have
altered in the recent years. In Huxley and Orwell’s time, writers were committed
intellectuals who considered their art an instrument by which they could
communicate and diffuse ideas and ideologies. Today, however, the role of
intellectuals in society is almost anonymous and exempt from any involvement in
the problems of society.
The dystopian novels showed that writing and reading had
disappeared. Now, something similar is happening especially among children. In
fact, it has been studied that children consider reading a useless labour and prefer
spending their time playing electronic games or watching the television than
reading a book. Writing and reading have also changed from a technological point
of view. Pen and papers are leaving space to electronic means such as the Internet,
the electronic mail, short message systems, electronic books and libraries.
Everything happens in front of a computer screen and pen has been replaced by a
keyboard.
The final part of this thesis is concentrated on the transformation of
language and on the death of culture. Language is a theme which has been
8
thoroughly and deeply analysed in dystopian literature. Huxley and Orwell
examined language in a number of essays and novels. The two novelists also
studied the transformation of words in everyday language.
Also today, language changes according to different influences.
Recent technological advances have developed new and faster methods of
communication thus transforming the way people communicate.
Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four are worlds in which
art and culture have disappeared. Shakespeare becomes the general symbol of
culture. His name appears in both novels and marks the different level of culture
between the main protagonists and the rest of the mass. In fiction, as well as in
reality, un-intellectual activities have replaced more intellectual pastimes. There is
little presence of art because it has been sacrificed for the sake of personal
happiness and more material interests.
9
INTRODUCTION
The History of Utopia.
The term Utopia derives from the Greek u tòpos and means “no
place,” “nowhere.” The concept of utopia refers to projects of transformation
which are considered impossible to actually realise.
It is reductive to consider Utopia as a mere work of imagination in
comparison to reality or as a word which expresses the antinomy between fantasy
and the hard contradictions of everyday life. In it we can find the creation of the
antithesis between man and nature, man and man, man and society and the time
link between the past, the present and the future. Utopia develops beyond time and
space because it concerns humanity. This theme has been considered in different
ways and perspectives: either from mere fantastic tales to eschatological meanings
or as a criticism to the actual society.
The utopian concept was born with the myth of Cronus, the golden
age and with its religious variations (for instance, paradise and the garden of
Eden). It progressively lost its mythological implications and was later treated by
Plato’s Republic and Crizia. Plato’s Republic (360 BC) stands forever regarded as
the first utopia in history. Although the dialogue is really concerned with the
education or culture required to produce the perfect society, there is enough of
utopianism within it to allow it to qualify as representative of the utopian frame of
mind. In Crizia, Plato considered the legend of Atlantis, the imaginary rich and
fruitful island situated beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
10
The Romans, especially Tacitus’ Germania (98 AD), treated the
utopian theme from an ethical and political point of view by comparing the brutal
but genuine nature of the Germans to the corruption of imperial Rome.
2
The first time, however, the word “utopia” appeared in literature
was in Thomas More’s Libellus vere aureus nec minus salutaris quam festivus de
optimo reipublicae statu deque nova Insula Utopia. The book was first published
in Latin in 1516 and was later translated into English by Ralph Robinson in 1551.
The work is divided into two parts: the first representing England at the beginning
of the XVI century, before the Reformation. In contrast to the first part, the second
describes an imaginary island, called Utopia, which is totally diverse from
England. In his “libellus,” More harshly criticised the political, social and
religious systems of contemporary England. He denounced the corruption of the
country, the greediness of the nobles and the consequent misuse of private
property. In the ideal and communistic society of Utopia, private property no
longer exists, there are also religious toleration, social equality and theoretical and
technological progress.
3
From this very first outlook, Utopia indicated a perfect
society where man and nature lived together in harmony and therefore a radical
alternative to the actual establishment.
It was Sir Thomas More (1478 – 1535) who thrust the words
“utopia” and “utopian” into the canon of modern language. The word “utopia,” in
More’s hands, is actually a play on words. The prefix ou or eu, rendered in
modern English as “u” has a double meaning: ou means “no,” while eu means
“good.” In other words, utopia means a “good place:” it embodies a vision of the
world with all its social evils removed. But as fiction – although More’s book was
2
TACITUS, Germania, RCS Libri S. p. A, Milano, 1998.
3
MORE, T. Utopia, Norton, London, 1992.
11
based partly on information obtained by Amerigo Vespucci (1451 – 1512) –
utopia has also come to mean “no place” or simply “nowhere.”
In the time between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, there
was a large amount of literature written about utopia. The progressive changes of
the modern world gave new dimensions to the word “utopia.” During the
Renaissance, utopia became, according to Georges Sorel’s words, «hypothesis of
work.»
4
James Harrington wrote Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) and Francis
Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627) was concerned with the technological vision of the
world. The book tells the story of an imaginary island whose inhabitants feel
happy and content with their lives thanks to human progress.
5
In Italy, utopia spread in two different ways: from a philosophical
as well as from a “physical” point of view. In 1623, the philosopher Campanella
(1568-1639), a heretic who was confined for 27 years in Naples, and who later fell
victim to the rack for seven years, published his utopian fantasy: Civitas Solis
(The City of the Sun). Leon Battista Alberti and Antonio Filarete considered
utopia from a physical and spatial point of view. They traced the lines of an ideal
town, Sforzinda, and paved the way for utopian urbanism.
During the 18
th
century, the philosophical beliefs of Enlightenment
developed trust in reason and the ability to explain the world in rationalistic ways.
The “Philosophes” prompted a severe analysis of every kind of authoritarianism,
in particular against the monarchy, the feudal aristocracy and the Church. These
concepts were reflected by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe’s (1719) enterprising
capitalism and by Jonathan Swift’s allegorical Gulliver’s Travels (1726). Utopia
acquired a strong positive incline. It tried to overcome the contradictions between
4
Quoted in: Grande Dizionario Enciclopedico UTET, UTET, Torino, vol. XX, p. 650, my
translation.
5
BACON, F. New Atlantis, Oxford University Press, London, 1929.
12
man and nature, city and country. In Morelly’s Code de la nature (1755) and in J.
J. Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social (1762) the myth of the “good savage” became a
message of social progress and expressed the faith in the natural goodness of
man.
6
Brotherhood, freedom and equality were to be the ideals of the European
revolutionary movements. Even the French Revolution and the romantic
contention against restoration were tied up to those concepts.
Utopia was also known from a socialistic point of view: J. F.
Babeuf’s equality (La Société des Egaux) proposed a communistic kind of society
based on peace, solidarity and social harmony. This theme was connected with
Saint Simon’s philosophy. The French politic and philosopher influenced the
utopian socialism by auguring the coming of society based on science and work.
The faith in progress, in fact, encouraged free trade and the realisation of
important works (for example, the Suez Canal). Charles Fourier exposed a series
of theories about his contemporary society, and in particular, he criticised
commerce and family as the institutions responsible for human unhappiness.
According to this philosopher and economist, man had to discover himself
through a good job, free from compulsory ties. This could be achieved in small
spontaneous communities based on agricultural structures.
7
Robert Owen tried to
concretize these ideas: in America, he founded the community of New Harmony
(1824 – 1828) which was based on the collective property of the means of
production and on the abolition of money. Moreover, Owen supported education
and rejected religion.
The Marxist criticism enforced utopian socialism by underlining its
moralistic and ideological limits and by opposing them to the “scientific
socialism” perspective of the Philosophes. The Marxist utopia considered the
6
ROUSSEAU, J. J. Du Contrat Social, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972.
7
See: Enciclopedia Zanichelli, a cura di Edigeo, Zanichelli Editore, Bologna, 1995.
13
proletarian movement as the only force able to destroy the capitalistic power. It
would have brought to the dissolution of the government, the realisation of a
communistic society without class barriers.
Ernst Cassirer (1874 – 1945) and the school of Marburg
considered the multiform actuality of utopia. Cassirer defined utopia as the
«access to what is possible,» as «symbolic thought that triumphs over man’s
natural inertia and give him a new faculty: the possibility to reform continuously
his universe.»
8
It was György Lukács (1885 – 1971) who talked about utopia as
«destruction of the reason»
9
which was perpetrated by imperialism and sublimated
by fascism. Lewis Mumford (1895 – 1990) argued that humanity’s only hope lied
in a return to human feelings and sensitivities and to moral values.
Recently, utopia established itself in the contemporary urbanisation
from both theoretical and concrete points of views with Morris, Le Corbusier,
Wright, Howard, etcetera. In 1891, the English socialist and designer William
Morris (1834 – 1896) produced his best known work of fiction, aptly titled News
From Nowhere. In Morris’ mind, the society of the future would have no need for
government. The Houses of Parliament were no longer the seat of government but
a repository for human excrement. The problems he identified in English society
centred on the failure of Victorian culture to combat the materialism which that
culture had produced and sustained. A liberal political economy of laissez faire
had not delivered on its promise completely. True, the wealth of the nation had
substantially increased but a great part of the population, the “great unwashed,” as
they were referred to, still lived in appalling social conditions.
10
8
Quoted in: Grande Dizionario Enciclopedico, Op. Cit., p. 651.
9
Ibid.
10
MORRIS, W. News from Nowhere, or, an Epoch of Rest: Being Some Chapters from a Utopian
Romance, Longmans, Green, London, 1928.
14
Edward Bellamy’s utopian romance, Looking backward, 2000 –
1887 (1888), took the now classic utopian format of a man who goes to sleep and
wakes up 100 years later in the future.
11
Howard was strongly influenced by this
book but he also conceived another particular project: the garden-city. According
to Howard, the ideal garden-city should be characterised by concentric rings
which corresponded to the different areas including residential, industrial,
agricultural and green areas. The project was set up for a population of 32.000
inhabitants and it aimed to use public land as an alternative to privately owned
land and was supposed to give the possibility to react against the forever
degrading quality of life available in the industrial cities.
12
The Frankfurt School concentrated on the power of imagination
and, in contrast to Freud, it delineated a free alternative to the single-minded
attitude represented by the industrial society. The Frankfurt School did not only
analyse, but it also wanted to totally rebuild reality. Its aim was to present a new
plan in the form of a philosophical criticism which would act as a contrast to the
former society. Herbert Marcuse (1898 – 1979) belonged to this school of thought
and he distinguished himself for his desire to take action. He also became the
spiritual guide during the student contests. In The End of Utopia (1967) he
exposed that utopia could be considered only as a social transformation and not
only as an ideal paradise or as return to the golden age. The only obstacle to the
realisation of a free society was the absence of subjective and objective factors
that might realise that project. Marcuse called these obstacles «resistance to
freedom.»
13
11
BELLAMY, E. Looking backward, 2000-1887, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, 1967.
12
See: Enciclopedia Zanichelli, a cura di Edigeo, Op. Cit.
13
MARCUSE, H. The End of Utopia, Sphere Books, London, 1987.
15
After Wells, Orwell and Huxley utopia lived again in the idea of
the possible and on the necessity of a process of involvement that should invest
both the metropolis as well as the Third World. In the 20
th
century, political
philosophers such as E. Bloch and T.W. Adorno criticised actual capitalistic
society and denounced the power of the mass media which they considered guilty
of manipulating consciences.
14
Even though utopia could not be realised in its
completeness, it held an important propulsive force in the historical
transformations. The aim of this philosophy was to realise an utopian future where
society and the individual, techniques and values, art and practise were
synthesized.
The experience of all these writers and philosophers shaped new
utopian fantasies and visions. Illusory or not, they held on to the promise of a
better world. These people postulated worlds with strong governments, or worlds
without governments at all. There were utopias in which wealth was equalised, as
there were utopias in which wealth was abolished outright. There were utopian
worlds with God as the mediator, as much as there were utopias within which
there was little room for God or gods of any kind. These philosophers’ experience
shaped their predisposition and their aspirations. It appears that these utopias were
produced at a time in which society seemed to be losing ground rather than
moving ahead towards some higher goal.
During the 20
th
century the situation was reversed. New literary
devices and techniques circulated. Under the impact of the conflicts which both
preceded and followed the Second World War, the old faith in “human
perfectibility” and the “inevitability of progress” was debunked. The 20
th
century
utopia turned into a “dystopia,” in which the optimism of the previous fables was
replaced by a gloomy vision of the future and a warning for the present day. The
14
Quoted in: Grande Dizionario Enciclopedico, Op. Cit., p. 651.
16
device was born not only of apparent advancement, but also the clear experience
of disillusionment, bitterness, fear, terror, depression and dejection. Dystopia (or
anti-utopia, or negative utopia) opposed the utopian “city of the sun” to the
negative image of a nightmarish civilisation which was the result of the deformity
of contemporary exasperated society.
Sometimes, a clear distinction between utopia and dystopia cannot
be made. In fact, in utopia there could be a shift of emphasis over two aspects: the
strongest stress could fall over the “old” world in order to underline the positive
present day; alternatively, it could emphasise a change that could be expressed by
criticising the present day world. On the contrary, dystopia essentially consists of
an analysis of the negative times: the satirical aspects develop violently and force
back the positive times. Dystopia corresponds to an enlargement of the analysis
and of the criticism of certain aspects of the contemporary world but, in
comparison to utopia, it produces it through different narrative processes. These
processes contain a paradoxical perspective: the world presented is not real. It is
not presented as a hypothesis, it is not probable: it is a kind of hyperbole, a push
towards the absurd in order to “enlighten” the present. Both the utopian and
dystopian writers start from a criticism and a discussion over the state of certain
things; they aim to demonstrate the foolishness and stupidity of humanity but their
mental and political attitudes are opposed. The utopian writer directly shows his
own purpose of a positive society by identifying an alternative world to the
present day; the dystopian author starts from a reductio ad absurdum in which the
negative elements described at the beginning of the novel continue to be shown
until, in the end, they are confuted by the absurdity of the world created. The
function of dystopia is to analyse the forces and dangers inborn in the blank
acceptance of established rules and of certain social and cultural patterns.
15
15
MANFERLOTTI, S. Anti-Utopia. Huxley, Orwell, Burgess, Sellerio Editore, Palermo, 1984.
17
The books which belong to this branch of literature are all
characterised by negative connotations. They are the mark of a profound fall of
values which shocked the bourgeois’ ideology in general and the intellectuals in
particular. The technological process did not grow according to the “heroic” lines
written during the Victorian age but, on the contrary, it changed according to the
“lines” of the production apparatus and of monopolies. The society’s modern
organisation seemed to preclude any autonomous aspect of the single man: man
passed from his naturalistic and private individuality to be part of a mechanised
community. The crisis was profound and it involved every social class.
Probably, the best visual representation of this reality was in
Charlie Chaplin’s movie Modern Times (1936). In the guise of parody, satire and
slap-stick, Chaplin portrayed a machine civilisation gone literally crazy with
speed and efficiency. Subtitled, A Story of Industry, the film opened with a clock
which filled the screen. This image was followed by a herd of rushing cattle. The
connection was complete: time and speed were the watchwords of modern times.
Although Modern Times was the last feature film of the silent era to be made in
the United States of America, the audience did read the spoken word. Human
voices appeared hostile to life itself, they were inhuman. Words were commands
for greater industrial efficiency at the expense of the worker’s mental and physical
health. The first words to be heard in the film come from the owner of the Electro
Steel Company which appears on a video screen and orders a “speed... up” of the
assembly line. His second utterance, not unlike the first, simply commands,
“Section Five, More Speed, Four, Seven.” Later in the film, he orders the man in
charge of the assembly line speeds to “Give her the limit!” The tramp, played by
Chaplin, now suffering from the advanced stages of Forditis, is overcome by the
speed of the line upon which he tightens the nuts of widgets and goes wild.
16
In
16
CHAPLIN, C. Modern Times, 1936.
18
conclusion, Chaplin too moved a criticism against mechanisation and
dehumanisation in the industrial society. It was in this way that Chaplin expressed
his acridity against capitalism.
The success of anti-utopian novels as “highbrow” reading as well
as of science-fiction novels as “lowbrow” reading came to demonstrate that those
works expressed the disease of a whole generation. H. G. Wells described a
sinister world in which society had hardened into a caste-system and the
proletarians were an amorphous and quiescent mass (The Sleepers Awakes, 1899).
The Russian writer E. I. Zamjàtin (We, 1920/21), the Czecho-Slovak Čapek
(R.U.R., 1920) and the Swedish Boye (Kallocain, 1940) exasperated the distortion
of the advanced capitalistic society and mocked the myth of the scientific
progress. Yevgeny Zamjàtin (1884 – 1937) set his novel in the 26
th
century in an
urban and totalitarian society. He showed the irrational side of totalitarianism.
Human sacrifice and cruelty were ends in themselves and the Leader was given
divine attributes. In Zamjàtin’s hands, the leader was called the Benefactor.
17
Karel Čapek (1890 – 1938) provided his own dystopia in the enormously popular
play which was first performed in a New York theatre in 1921. R. U. R. was the
20
th
century version of Mary Shelley’s early nineteenth century novel,
Frankenstein. In Čapek’s hands, however, the backdrop is not the factory of the
early nineteenth century, but the business offices of Rossum’s Universal Robots
and readers do not meet factory owners and workers but businessmen and robots.
Indeed, it was from Čapek’s play R. U. R. that the word “robot” entered the
English language for the first time.
17
ZAMJÀTIN, E. We, Harmondsworth: Penguin, London, 1972.
Ricevi informazioni sui nostri servizi, sulle offerte e non perdere news e consigli su università e lavoro.
