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. By the end of the novel, Winston becomes a different man – overfilled with joy for the Party and for Big Brother. The Party seeks to control everything – past, present, and future. Its first effort toward attaining that goal is to control and manipulate every source of information by rewriting and modifying the content of all historical records and other documentary evidence for its own gain. It is forbidden for the Party’s members to keep written records of their lives, and the Party mandates that any photographs or documents be destroyed through "memory holes" placed throughout Oceania. Since memory is unreliable unless corresponding reality may confirm it, over time, reality becomes blurred, and citizens are soon willing to believe whatever the Party informs them, demonstrating how their manipulation of the past helps them control the future. The novel is not simply about totalitarianism; it makes us live through it. The Party only wants power for its own sake and they carefully monitor the behaviour of all its constituents. The Party demands that the only form of loyalty is loyalty to them and they do this by brainwashing their constituents to think that they are all part of collective family under the rule of the Party and no other such personal and biological “family” is recognized. The Party controls everything. This may be historical records, language or even thoughts. They torture and "vaporize" those who harbor rebellious thoughts. As mentioned, language is central to the control of behavior in 1984, especially for tackling disobiedience. The major proposition is that if control of language were centralized in a state, then any possibility of rebellion or disobedience would be eliminated. 1984 devotes significant time to examining the centrality of language - contextually, when Syme and Winston speak of the newspeak dictionary and explicitly, through Goldstein's manifesto - to culture, life, history, behaviour, thoughts and power. 1984 also depicts warfare as a necessary tool and symptom of a totalitarian state. Oceania is in constant warfare with one of the other two superstates of the world. This is necessary, as warfare keeps citizens in constant flux and fear – they then willingly submit to the control of the Party. Only after this submission can the Party regulate supply and demand to ensure classism, and ultimately, power. 1984 details at length the effectiveness of torture as a tool to control subversion in a totalitarian state (or simply one where rights are not central to governing principles). Here, though, it also encompasses mind control, brainwashing, and indoctrination – torture is not just limited to physical pain. The branch of government that oversees torture at Oceania is ironically named the Ministry of Love. It is, however, effective; through torture, the Ministry is able to transform rebellious minds into loving, accepting ones.
Although it was his commercially most successful novel (or because of it), John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids has often been treated a horror story devoid of ideas rather than a science-fiction novel full of them. Because of this, some major themes have been ignored, despite the fact that they are shared with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. However, the main theme that is never discussed by critics of either book is, quite simply, permanent horror. It may be that people hate contemplating that possibility that they do not discuss it, but both Nineteen Eighty Four and Day of the Triffids are about an eternity of irrecoverable pain. The only way of escaping it is not to have it start. Furthermore, the two authors are not religious and their eternity of pain is purely on this physical earth. Both novels have the purpose of accounting for the perpetual hurt present and both of titles are ironic references to their double treatment of time. The Day of the Triffids will last till the end of the Earth and Winston Smith has no way of knowing that the year is 1984. Although the suffering is immediate, the authors premise this going on forever. Anyone in the year 1984 or after it, would know they were living in a world of unending and inescapable misery, whether it be Winston Smith, his lover Julia, friend Ampleforth, or any of the nameless victims. Similarly, anyone living, even on the triffid-free Isle of Wight to which the hero's party escapes at the end of Day of the Triffids, after the blindness, would be in the same state as their descendants. There can be no recovery and this dead stop, and the anguish with which it is presented, distinguishes the two novels from others with which they are sometimes compared. In Brave New World, for instance, the inhabitants do not question the social stratification that sends them to die of radiation sickness because they are all bred to accept the status quo. Even though it may not seem like it at first, there are significant similarities that we can draw from the two science-fiction classics in question – ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ and ‘The Day of the Triffids’. Both openings are strikingly similar and both equally powerful but at the same time, strikingly dissimilar to any other science-fiction novel of their period.
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.”
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ George Orwell (1949)
A year later, a minor British author of pre-war science-fiction began his own dystopia and he chose an opening sentence that undoubtedly carried massive echoes of Orwell:
"When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”
‘The Day of the Triffids’ John Wyndham (1951)
When the critics have written about either of these introductions they have tended to normalise them. Patrick Parrinder quotes Orwell and then says:
"The world introduced by this sentence is not, fundamentally, an unfamiliar one. At most we would tend to react by thinking 'Huh! So they adopted the twenty-four hour clock'."
But what would the reaction have been if the clock had in fact striked fourteen? The rather unhappy significance of the number thirteen would have lessened the weight of that otherwise famous first sentence, and yet having fourteen as the time Winston came home in his lunch-hour would’ve been possible if Orwell had extended one of the features of the war years we have lost – Double British Summer Time. Orwell took "thirteen hundred hours" and abbreviated it, and he realised that he would have neither Double British Summer Time, nor any other invention. It has been described as "intentional Swiftian distortion of various aspects of (Orwell's) contemporary society".
Just by reading the first page of 1984, the reader knows that something is not quite right. The sheer unusualness of the first sentence alone sets the scene for this powerful piece of dystopian literature. In 1984, Orwell envisions a world where people are controlled through something they don’t fully understand. Big Brother. The novel is set in a world which many can realistically fear, seeing as it is so close to many forms of government threatening us today. This is a society where helicopters fly past your window, where soldiers march in the streets and propaganda posters litter every inch of every wall. The most popular of these posters is one with a charismatic Hitler-like face with eyes that seem to always watch you. The caption reads "Big Brother Is Watching You"; to remind everyone the telescreens in every room are watching every move every citizen makes. In this society, The Party feeds lies to the people daily, and they are forced and brainwashed into believing them. What is especially disturbing about this novel in particular is that, even though the year 1984 has long gone, we can still find examples from the world today that mirror that of the totalitarian rule in which Oceania is found subject to in the novel. For example, the recent Eurovision Song Contest has drummed up controversy over its host country – Azerbaijan. The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition held among active member countries of the (EBU). Each year’s winner hosts the next year’s competition and as Azerbaijan won in 2011, their capital (Baku) became host for the Eurovision Song Contest 2012. A recent undercover investigation by Panorama delved deeper into this secretive country and its approach to the world's most watched non-sporting event. The show aimed to uncover alleged corruption which had dogged the former Soviet state in the run-up to the contest, with claims that blocks of flats which were still occupied were bulldozed to make way for the new Baku Crystal Hall where the contest was held. Reporter Paul Kenyon – tailed by government spies everywhere he went – revealed how the contest has been used as a tool of intimidation; one viewer told how he was interrogated after voting for long-term enemy, Armenia and a protest singer was ordered to flee to avoid being thrown in jail. This is only one of many examples of how we can take Orwell’s vision of the future and translate them into events of the modern world. But even so, it is hard to imagine exactly how influential this novel was and still is. Nowadays, we have surveillance cameras in most buildings and public streets to prevent crime. Although most of these cameras are operated by private businesses instead of our intrusive government, the end result is ultimately the same. This is reminiscent of the telescreens used in 1984 for the purpose of watching the populace to prevent thoughtcrime. Furthermore, we can also relate modern-day events to that of Wyndham's ‘The Day of the Triffids’. During and after last year’s summer riots, those who participated in the disorder and looting of shops were described as ‘committing blind, mindless violence’. They claimed that looting was the only way to feed their families – the only way to survive under the conditions they were in. In Wyndham’s narrative, he focuses on the pragmatic issues of facing survivors of such a catastrophe as the outbreak of the triffids. Those who were blinded by the meteor shower largely turn to an almost savage and feral state of mind, smashing shops to get to the food inside. Simply living off of scavenged canned food from London shops isn’t a viable survival strategy on a scale of years. The enclaves that survivors set up in the countryside to attempt to rebuild civilization cannot simply use scavenged ploughs forever, but eventually need to develop the capacity to build their own. This questions whether the human species really are as intellectual as they are made out to be. Could it be that our greed is what will eventually come back to bite us? Even today, we are at war for the sake of precious oil supplies. What justifies sacrificing lives for what is needed for survival? Ultimately, though these two dystopian novels seem very dissimilar at first glance, what ties them together is their effectiveness to scare us. To make us think about what we are doing today, and how it will affect the lives of tomorrow. In a way, it is appropriate to thank those that open our eyes to what we never want see. The fall of civilisation in all its forms. The future is unavoidable and though it is uplifting to address the advances of our species through time, it is unwise to think that there is no such thing as a “bad world”. Some think this time has already come and we are living through it obliviously, as a result of the way we are programmed in this day and age to maintain the same routine day by day with little change. Nevertheless, we will never stop predicting. It is authors like John Wyndham and George Orwell that aren’t afraid to speak out about our faults as the human race, and it is these people that don’t hide away from the truth that inspire us to challenge our beliefs and recognise what is right. What makes both ‘The Day of the Triffids’ and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ such successful novels, is that they make the reader imagine the worst possible situation because, while our future is still unclear, we know this exact terrifying prospect may be what one day becomes a reality.