The Day of the Triffids and Nineteen Eighty Four. A Study Into How Two Different Writers Portray Visions of the Future in a Dystopian Society

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A Study Into How Two Different Writers Portray Visions of the Future in a Dystopian Society

‘The Day of the Triffids’ and ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’

The future: the indefinite but unavoidable time period after the present. For years, it has been embedded in human nature to predict the happenings of the future through mediums such as art and literature. The future can be divided into its two extremes – a utopia and a dystopia. A utopia is an ideal  or  possessing a perfect --. The word was imported from Greek by  for his 1516 book , describing a fictional  in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both  that attempt to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in . It has spawned many other concepts but most prominently, . The word "dystopia" traces its roots back to the Greek word "dys" (meaning "bad") and "topos" (meaning "place”). A dystopian society is one which has been degraded into oppression and complete control, frequently under the mask of being utopian. Dystopias are frequently written as warning, or as satires, showing current trends extrapolated to a nightmarish conclusion. Humans were not meant to live in a perfect world. The Bible shows that Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:23), ostracized from a seemingly perfect and blissful society. We can use this idea of a faulted or imperfect world to compare how two prolific English writers portray visions of the future in a dystopian society.

‘The Day of the Triffids’, published in 1951 by English science-fiction author John Wyndham, is centred around the protagonist, Bill Masen, who has made his living working with ""—tall plants capable of aggressive and seemingly intelligent behaviour. They are able to move about by "walking" on their roots, appear to communicate with each other, and possess a deadly -like poisonous  that enables them to kill and feed on the rotting carcasses of their victims. Due to his background working with Triffids, Masen has developed a theory that they were  in the USSR and then accidentally released into the wild when a plane smuggling their seeds was shot down. Triffids begin sprouting all over the world, and their extracts prove to be superior to existing fish or vegetable oils. The result is worldwide cultivation of the plants. The narrative begins with Bill Masen in hospital, his eyes bandaged after having been splashed with droplets of triffid venom in an accident. During his convalescence he is told of the unexpected and beautiful green  that the entire world is watching. He awakes the next morning to a silent hospital and learns that the light from the unusual display has rendered any who watched it completely blind. After unbandaging his eyes, he wanders through an anarchic  full of almost entirely blind inhabitants, and witnesses civilization collapsing around him. The novel is a singularly unique and terrifying take on the fall of human civilization and the struggle to survive in a world turned upside down. It admirably portrays the terrifying confusion and fear of a scenario in which most of the population has been rendered helpless against a slow but persistent predator. Wyndham is also able to incorporate a tender love story amidst the terror and struggle for survival, a commentary on the pitfalls of mankind’s obsession with toying with nature, and even a frank discussion of the types of societal structures that may arise after the breakdown of civilization. And while the problem of blindness does cause mass chaos, it doesn’t have the emotional impact of the mass-extinction events that other post-apocalyptic novels contain. Wyndham portrays the triffids as silent stalkers – not a menacing alien species with technology and firepower superior to our own. They are a product of our own manipulations with the natural order – something we think we have successfully tamed but eventually breaks free of our control as a result of the loss of only one of our five senses, demonstrating the frightening reality of how fragile and vulnerable humans can be. Some might say it is painful to see the desperation that it so apparent in what we all see as the ‘superior species’. It brings us to the idea that man’s own ignorance can ultimately be man’s downfall. It also demonstrates a great distrust within humans and how it is built into us that we create solutions to problems we don’t fully understand or have the wit to comprehend and those solutions always come back to bite us. But in a way, the threat that is faced in this novel is more sinister than first thought. Instead of instantaneous extinction, it seems to be happening slowly and painfully, almost with a sense of smugness as the triffids claim revenge on man for engineering the plants to fulfill their own greediness to seek profit at almost any cost. “Not with a bang but with a whimper” as T.S. Eliot put it. It demonstrates that humans often under-estimate and, as shown in the novel, find it difficult to deal with the consequences. We have evolved with an unfortunate trait in which we take many things for granted and when we are restricted of them, we are capable of rapidly transforming ourselves into an alarming state of deliria. Many foresee a future whereby man is terrorized but its own creations – i.e. androids and computers – but the fact that nature itself is wiping out humanity creates an interesting idea that man lives obliviously alongside its superiors and one day they will make their presence felt. This is somewhat touched upon in the 1963 French sci-fi novel ‘Planet of the Apes’ by Pierre Boulle. The novel tells the tale of three human explorers from Earth who visit a planet orbiting the star , in which  are the dominant intelligent and civilized species, whereas humans are reduced to a savage animal-like state. Like ‘The Day of the Triffids’, the theme of the novel is largely about an otherwise inferior species becoming unexpectedly more dominant and somewhat more intelligent over humans. Wyndham does an excellent job of slowly increasing the tension and desolation of the characters as they try to come to terms with this new reality – creating a scenario which seems worryingly believable.

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Arguably the greatest and most influential dystopian novel ever written – ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ by George Orwell – delivers the same horrifying dystopia but in a slightly different context. The story unfolds on a cold April day in 1984 in Oceania, the totalitarian superpower in post- Europe. Winston Smith is employed as a records editor at the Ministry of Truth and, depressed and oppressed, he starts a journal of his rebellious thoughts against the Party. If discovered, this journal will result in his execution. For the sake of added precautions, Winston only writes when safe from the view of the surveying telescreens. ...

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