Analysis of Dystopian Genre - Brave New World & Nineteen-Eighty-Four
Dystopian novels are generally written by authors to convey their moral messages about society’s flaws and the various ways they think the conditions of life will become miserable and people will be in a constant state of despair; induced by poverty, oppression, violence or any other terrible state of living. It is intrinsically important to dystopian novels that the futuristic setting is convincing and harrowing as the civilization, alien to the reader, is usually the catalyst for the events within the novel. In both Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ and George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen-Eighty-Four’ the setting is portrayed via literal description and through the thoughts of the key characters.
The settings of both novels are very similar as they both intend to instil a feeling of dread and uneasiness created by the grim nature of the locations being described; It is important for the reader to feel these emotions so they can fully engage with the protagonists’ hatred of the world they live in. An unwelcoming semantic field is conjured by both authors with phrases such as ‘vile wind’, ‘harsh, thin light’, ‘bleakly shining’ and ‘gritty dust’ setting the tone immediately, while also appealing to the senses with words such as ‘smelt of boiled cabbage’ and ‘hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber’. Both paragraphs are also set in unappealing buildings which are unpleasant places to be; Victory Mansions is in disarray, broken lifts, electricity rationed and hallways smelling of badly cooked vegetables, The “CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE” a grey, unattractive skyscraper with ‘only thirty-four stories’ (a phrase which demonstrates the futuristic nature of the world, filled with huge skyscrapers). The opening paragraphs also introduce key themes of the novels to intrigue the reader and provide a literary vehicle for the story to progress; some aspects are obviously important, such as the description of the fertilisation process and the large poster of Big Brother being utilised for the first time, while others are more subtle, Winston’s itching varicose ulcer and the irony of the World State’s motto “COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY” (The ‘savages’ are excluded from the community and personal identity is lost as everyone is manufactured to a certain formula). It is important for the authors to press these story devices on the reader as early as possible so he can convey his moral message.
