The Genesis and Presentation of the Political Message in Orwell’s Novel Nineteen Eighty-four
THE GENESIS AND PRESENTATION OF THE POLITICAL MESSAGE IN ORWELL'S NOVEL NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four stands as the most influential political novel written during the course of the twentieth centaury. It is a work of prose that has had a massive impact on the society on which it commented AND on the literature that has followed its example. It is my aim in this essay to examine first briefly where his political and literary ideas came from, and then in some depth, how he has presented them in his novel.
To see where his ideas came from we must first understand what they are and what Orwell hoped to achieve by writing his novel, Orwell had hoped that his book would serve as a warning against the evils of a totalitarian state. He wished to warn English society against the growing complacency that proliferated at the time, he saw that this could lead to the rise of such a government as the Bolshevik party, or as the Nazi government of World War 2 Germany. However it would be a very superficial view were his book considered merely as a prophesy of things that were to come, rather he wrote it as a satirical comment on the political and social environment of the day, he was intending to satirize and demonise the rising popularity of the centralised government1.
One must be careful when reading the book, as it would be an easy misinterpretation of the novel to assume that his work is targeted at Communist government exclusively, as the novel is swarming with allusions to the rise and struggle of the Bolsheviks in the USSR, as we will explore later. However to see it this was would be to miss a large portion of the novel: Orwell's work is aimed at oligarchy in all its forms, yes that would include the Russian Bolshevism but the United Soviet Socialist Republic was merely a convenient example of such a totalitarian state. It is oft misinterpreted now, and so at the time of publishing it is no surprise to find that the book was seen as a blow struck at socialism and the British Labour Party, and so brought much rebuke from these and others. However, Orwell himself was quick to deny this, and in a letter to Francis A. Henson he said:
"My recent novel [1984] is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism... but as a show-up of the perversions to which a centralized economy is liable and which have already been partly realised in Communism and Fascism... I believe that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere, and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences."2
It is an important fact that none of the ideas that Orwell explores in his work are new to him, nor to anyone else. They are all thoughts and concepts that he has examined in detail and possibly in a context that is more "realistic" through letters, journalism, and essays of the past. We can see in his past work as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, This crushing of the human sprit and of the individual, the destruction of hero's, the corruption that power brings, the physical horror of existence and the inevitable tyranny of those who rule without control or accountability.3
For example, almost all of the ideas that he explores regarding the role of language in politics can be found expressed in his essay "Politics and the English Language" which was written in 1946, well before the novel.4
Of course it would be foolish to think that the book is made up exclusively of Orwell's ideas, and if we are to examine the genesis of the ideas that Orwell writes of it is vital to consider this. Orwell does in fact owe many of his political ideas to the writings of John Burnham, in his work: "The Managerial Revolution" 5
For example, the idea of the world being divided up into three super states of Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania, is one that was explored first by Burnham, Although of course when his text was written it seemed likely that the victorious party in the European war would be the Germans, and so they would dominate the European continent. Orwell does however claim that his inspiration for this political system came in 1941 through the Tehran Conference between the Allied forces of World War 26 though this seems somewhat implausible. It is also from this same work that the pyramidal structure that Orwell uses in his novel was devised. With a divine leader at the top (Big Brother) who is actually representative of a group of elite leaders, and a collection of near slaves at the bottom of the state's hierarchy.7
In the same way that Orwell owes much of his political ideas to the work of Burnham he owes equally to the Russian author Zamyatin for his literary ideas. Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four falls into a category of political fiction known as the Dystopian Fable. This genre has been used for centauries by such authors as Swift in "Gulliver's travels", but the style was altered dramatically by Zamyatin in his novel "We" 8, Orwell's work bares a great similarity to this. The plot of the book has a theme of invasion of privacy (The occupants of Zamyatin's world live in glass walled houses) that is markedly akin to Orwell and the similar overall theme of anti-totalitarianism can be found. The difference between Zamyatin's work and other works of the past was that he used it as a kind of "Speculative Fiction". The genre that he began is a type of novel where the Author, seeing the perils involved in a current political or social movement, takes the idea and then extrapolates it to its logical conclusion, showing the reader where such a notion could lead.
From these sources and more Orwell developed his idea of "a fantasy, but in the form of a naturalistic novel."9, that he writes in Nineteen Eighty-four.
Thus, it is from these texts and others that Orwell's ideas were spawned, but we must now ask ourselves: into what did they develop? How does Orwell attempt to sway the reader to the political ideal that is described above?
A novel of any type is composed of a range of features and stylistic techniques, which are unique to an Author, and it is through these that the writer of ...
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From these sources and more Orwell developed his idea of "a fantasy, but in the form of a naturalistic novel."9, that he writes in Nineteen Eighty-four.
Thus, it is from these texts and others that Orwell's ideas were spawned, but we must now ask ourselves: into what did they develop? How does Orwell attempt to sway the reader to the political ideal that is described above?
A novel of any type is composed of a range of features and stylistic techniques, which are unique to an Author, and it is through these that the writer of a work explores his or her ideas and beliefs. In Orwell's book, these ideas are political ones, and it is the central purpose of this essay to look at how they are explored. These are features such as: the setting of the novel, the characterization, the narrative viewpoint and the language and style used in the authors prose. We will now look at these in some detail.
Firstly we will examine the structure of the novel, at first glance there is little unusual about the structure, it is a series of relatively short chapters that make up 3 parts, each of which coincides with a new part of Winston's life, indeed that is WHY they are separated thus, it is to allow the author to clearly separate these three stages in the events of the book. This furthers the distinction between Winston's world before he finds Julia, and after he finds her, and then his life after capture by the thought police. Orwell does this for two reasons, to add to the importance of Julia in the readers mind, and also to add to the contrast between what is already a horrible world before capture, and the hellish environment in the cells of the Ministry of Love, more than that it means that the reader can distinguish a new segment of Winston's life beginning, contributing to the feeling that this is where his life will be lived out for the rest of his days. This serves Orwell's political purposes by further demonising the government, and adding to the feeling that they are omnipotent and malevolent.
Aside from this the structure is relatively simple and chronological, aside from a handful of flashbacks to his mother and sister, however these come in the form of dreams and so do not actually affect the chronology of the book. There is one final item of significance in the structure of Nineteen Eighty-four and that is Orwell's use of essays in his novel. It should be pointed out that Orwell was principally a journalist and an essayist and so he was used to writing his political commentary in the form of an essay, during the course of writing the novel he has evidently found that the fictional medium, with its restrictions of plot, was to simplistic to adequately express the complex political ideas that he wanted to portray in his text. Consequently he manipulates the plot in order to allow him the chance to write an essay on the politics he wishes to discuss without actually diverging from the plot at all, this comes in the form of the essay on "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism". Orwell uses this to say exactly what he wants to say without disrupting the progress of the plot. The other essay in the novel is of course the Appendix on the language structures of Oceania; one thing that is often overlooked about this final essay is that it is in the past tense, i.e.
"It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or standard English as we should call it) by about the year 2050"10
This is a subtle implication that perhaps this world has indeed come to an end, although this is so subtle as to be almost unintentional by the Author, and it makes me wonder what Orwell had in mind when he wrote it this way, as it certainly does not fit with the theme that O'Brien proclaims whilst interrogating Winston:
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."11
I think that this question about the novel is one that perhaps will remain unresolved.
Now we have considered the effect of Orwell's use of structure in the work, we must look at his use of setting to portray his political ideas.
It was worrying to Orwell the complacency that he saw surrounding him in all the western cultures, he found that the English and Americans thought that they were immune to the evils of a totalitarianism and so sought to show, by setting his novel in the lands of the United Kingdom, that the Western world was no better than anyone else and that the English empire was just as susceptible to a centralized government as the Russian Monarchy and the German Weimar Republic had been. He says this in the letter to Francis A. Henson shortly after the release of his book.
"The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasise that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere else."12
The era in which the book is not so much a choice or literary feature of Orwell's rather it was a necessity of the genre, his book is one of extrapolative fiction, and it is obviously vital that he have room with which to extrapolate. Orwell's fable is however rather more refined than Zamyatin's by which he was inspired, so changes to the genre are inevitable. Where Zamyatin sets his work 600 years from the date it was written, Orwell was quick to realise that doing this isolated his reader from the story, it was hard for someone to become involved in a world that bared so little resemblance to our own. Consequently when deciding a time setting for his novel Orwell chose a time around 40 years after the time he finished writing it, this enabled him to make any changes to the world he liked, and still allow his audience to identify with the life of his protagonist.13
Another vital part of the setting of the novel is the society in which the plot takes place. In most novels this is important, however in Nineteen Eighty-four it is VITAL to the successful operation of the book as a political fiction. The society that Orwell constructs is a clear hierarchical pyramid, beginning with the omnipotent semi-divine leader Big Brother, and ending with the driven slaves of this world: The proles.
Orwell's ideas on totalitarianism are better portrayed the more segregated he can make the society appear, so he writes of a world that has class separation in the most extreme sense conceivable. He enhances the distinction through contrasts between the living conditions of the Inner Party and the rest of the world, we can see this in everything that Orwell describes about O'Brien's existence, he has servants, plush carpet and the right to switch of his telescreen. The difference can perhaps be most clearly seen in the cigarettes, Winston smokes from a "crumpled packet" dry, badly packed cigarettes that dispel their contents onto the floor should one be so incautious as to hold them upright, in contrast to O'Brien who smokes tightly packed cigarettes with a silky air about them, taken from a shining silver case.
It should be noted that Orwell when making this rift between classes to further illustrate the unfairness of such a political model, makes almost no distinction between the proles and the outer party, except on matters of education and intelligence. His reason for this is obvious; Orwell could not possibly put the protagonist in a starkly superior class, as it would undermine his efforts to gain sympathy from the reader, and placing the main character in the proletariat sector would not fit with the plot element of having the proles as a great immovable force, that is frustrating in its inability to act.
The proles of Nineteen Eighty-four are in fact as much a character as Winston or Julia. They embody the majority of the people of Oceania, and for Orwell they symbolise the majority of people everywhere. It is consistently mentioned throughout the text that the proles are Winston's frustration, he hopes always that if they could be incited to rebel it would be the end of the reign of terror, but yet they lie dormant, and it is this idea that Orwell is trying to explore. Throughout various essays on the novel many interpretations of the proles can be found, they are seen as a metaphor for "hope" for "hopelessness" and for "the inevitability of human suffering"14 but the fact remains that Orwell's ideas in this are not nearly so complex. They are Orwell's way of showing the reader the consequences of inaction. The proles sit inactive, concerned only with their daily lives, and the trivialities of living: The lottery, the football. He states explicitly "The proles didn't care about the party".15 Orwell is trying to show the reader the consequences of inaction. The proles, thereby the majority of people in Britain are inactive in politics, they are content to sit back and let the world happen around them, and so they are doomed to live forever under the yoke of a tyrannical despotism. It is exactly this that Orwell's novel intended to serve as a warning against, when he wrote the book he intended to show people that if they were content to let politics happen around them then the world would change for the worse. In Nineteen Eighty-four the only hope for the world is if the proles choose to stand up for themselves, so in real life the only hope to prevent a centralised government that will punish and rule with terror is for the political vegetables to stand up for themselves.
Orwell does not use the proletariat to illustrate a point, the proletariat ARE Orwell's point.16
The characters of Nineteen Eighty-four are many things, but at least partially Orwell uses them as representative of groups within the populous.
In the same way as the proles represent the politically apathic, Winston represents those that care.
Winston is described in a way that would make him akin to a typical British man of any time; indeed most interpretations of Orwell's novel assume him to be the much-lauded "Everyman"17, however this idea is an oversimplification of the truth. Winston Smith is not representative of all mankind, only of the politicly active, those who care about the world and work for something better. Orwell's point through Winston is that those who care are insufficient on their own, a singly party state of the tyrannical nature of Ingsoc can only be overcome by a combined effort of the people: an uprising of the proles, Winston stands alone and is so crushed beneath the boot of Big Brother. Winston's shares Orwell's frustration over the matter of the proletariat, Orwell felt that he could see the world letting its freedom slide into the hands of a select few, he knew that it could be stopped if only people could be convinced that they were losing their liberty. However he also felt that this decent into totalitarian control was inevitable and that the people of the world could never be persuaded to take a stand, we can see this through the words of O'Brien when he is torturing Winston:
"The programme it sets forth is nonsense. The secret accumulation of knowledge - a gradual spread of enlightenment- ultimately a proletarian rebellion- the overthrow of the Party... It is all nonsense, the proletarians will never revolt, not in thousand years of a million. They cannot...The rule of the party is forever, make that the starting-point for your thoughts."18
Julia is of a similar caste to Winston, in that she represents the politicly active, however she is representative not of those who are benevolently crusading for justice and freedom, instead she represents those who rebel selfishly. She fights for her own good, for physical pleasure, not intellectual freedom as Winston does. Orwell uses her to illustrate another point: she does not require nearly so much reindoctrination at the conclusion of the novel, this is because she is not as "true" a political activist in Orwell's mind. The point he is trying to show the reader through her existence is that those whose dissent is selfish are merely superficially seditious, and their political convictions are irrelevant. Again he shows us that those who stand alone cannot succeed against a totalitarian state.
Through Julia and Winston as a pair Orwell demonises the state by showing that it destroys love. The last thing within Winston that is torn from him is his love of Julia, and it is at this point that he makes the change from Man to Shell.
The last character O'Brien in description seems calm, reasonable, manipulative and easy to talk to, he is glib and quick witted. He is Orwell's representative of the Party, he is almost Satanic in the way that he converts and perverts those that try to battle wits with him, he is insidious in spreading the propaganda of the party and converting, then destroying those who rebel. Harbinger of pain and suffering, he is the penultimate evil and representative of all that Orwell hates. Orwell makes him out to be despicable, obviously he is psychopathic, without feeling or remorse, and his sense of morality is so twisted that it is barely recognisable as human sentiment, but Orwell's technique goes further than this, he even describes him as physically ugly:
"There were pouches under the eyes, the skin sagged away from the
cheekbones"
However the Author's purpose in creating O'Brien is to primarily to allow him to explore the political message that he wants to write of in more detail. Whilst a generic and simplistic political message such as "Totalitarian systems are bad" is a relatively simple to encode into the plot of a text such as this, it is far more complex if the author wishes to discuss the specifics of politics. As Orwell was primarily an essayist he was not used to showing his beliefs in such a generalised way as a conventional political fiction would allow, so it was necessary to find a way to examine the political doctrine of a centralised economy in detail, but more than that it needed to be accessible to the average reader. It was with these needs in mind that Orwell devised O'Brien's role in the plot, it is his discussions with Winston over the party politics that Orwell uses to explore these concepts with the reader. When O'Brien explains, it is Orwell who wants to show the reader something. For example Orwell uses O'Brien to present his thesis that power is not a means, it is an end.
Orwell took great pride in writing "prose like a window-pane", he believed in a similar doctrine of writing to Gustave Flaubert, in that a writer should appear no more in his work than God does in nature. However where Flaubert was trying to write a realist novel, Orwell's work is more naturalistic in its style. The descriptions are clipped and precise, and flowery language is not to be found within the pages of the novel. His dry, clipped style adds perfectly to the anguish he describes in his foretelling of the future. The book is primarily dominated by narrative, Orwell is only interested in Winston's conversations so far as they serve his political purpose, and outside the Ministry of Love, almost all of Winston's conversations are too censored to show any political belief whatsoever. Therefore Orwell is forced to focus his work on the thoughts of Winston to explore his political ideas.
There are certain themes that Orwell uses to better portray the ideas that he wishes to explore. Primarily there is the theme of the destruction of love, Family love: between Winston's family, and between the Parsons family who live next door. Sexual love: between Julia and Winston. Platonic love: between friends. All these ideals the Party has destroyed. This is just a fairly simple way for Orwell to engender a hate for the Party in his reader, a hate which would enhance Orwell's political message on the evils of totalitarianism.
Other more subtle metaphors and literary methods that Orwell uses are: the glass paperweight is used to represent freedom from the Party. It is bought when Winston first begins to deviate from the Party doctrine, and it is finally smashed by the guard when Winston is captured. Here we see that the coral, like his freedom, was actually far smaller than it appeared within the glass. Through the same area of the book the Rhyme of St Clements is used by Orwell to establish a growing tension, and is symbolic of the inevitable end to Julia and Winston's affair. This happens because as one reads the text the reader doubtless remembers the full poem, knowing the final line "Here comes a chopper to chop off your head", it is hard to relax as one sees its approach. This increase in tension serves Orwell's political purpose he wishes to focus the reader on the helplessness before the Party that Winston and Julia are victim to, the feeling that their defeat is inevitable adds to this, and is furthered by Orwell's use of the Rhyme.
Above all Orwell's literary methods serve to create a book that has stood as one of the greatest political writings of all time, these techniques have allowed Orwell to write a novel that is impossible to read without being changed forever. Merely skimming through the text for the sake of escapism, which surely was never Orwell's purpose, it is inevitable that Orwell's political beliefs will leave their mark on the reader. This novel has spawned a thousand fictions of its type, and many great works such as the novel A Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood or the film Brazil owe their lineage to the work of Orwell. More than this the ideas that his idea of language as explored in the book have influenced the English tongue forever, words such as "Doublethink" and "Newspeak" will go down in the dictionary for all time, as will an adjective that I think he would be proud of "Orwellian". However the scope of influence of Nineteen Eighty-four goes beyond literature even beyond language, to the very subject on which he was commenting. Nineteen Eighty-four changed politics forever, Orwell's warning, along with others of the time was indeed heeded, and humanity was diverted from a path that could easily have been as self-destructive as that described in the novel. I believe that congratulations are in order to the great man George Orwell for producing a political fiction that has eternally changed mankind, Thankyou.19
Matt Jackson
Bibliography
Greenblatt, S. Three modern Satirists: Waugh, Orwell, and Huxley. C1965 Yale University Press.
Orwell, G. Letter to Francis A. Henson (extract) [New York Times book review, 31st July 1949.] [Life, 25th July 1949]
Orwell, G. Politics and the English Language Horizon, April 1946
Burnham, J. The Managerial Revolution 1941; John Day & Co.
Orwell, G. Letter to Roger Senhouse 26th December 1948
Ranald, R. A. George Orwell's 1984,1965; Monarch Press.
Zamyatin, Yevgeny. We 1972 Penguin (First published in English in the USA 1924)
Orwell, G. Letter to F.J. Warburg 31st May 1947
Orwell, G. Nineteen Eighty-four; 1949, Secker and Warburg
Distopia [online] [cited 27/03/2002]. Available on the World Wide Web URL: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1634/Distopia.html
Rucco, A. A Text Response Guide to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four. 1993 Wizard books.
Greenblatt, S. Three modern Satirists: Waugh, Orwell, and Huxley. (p. 66)
2 Orwell, G. Letter to Francis A. Henson (extract) [New York Times book review, 31st July 1949.] [Life, 25th July 1949]
3 Greenblatt, S. Loc.cit. (p. 66)
4 Orwell, G. "Politics and the English Language" Horizon, April 1946
5 Burnham, J. The Managerial Revolution
6 Orwell, G. Letter to Roger Senhouse 26th December 1948
7 Ranald, R. George Orwell's 1984 (p. 119)
8 Zamyatin, Y. We 1972 Penguin
9 Orwell, G. Letter to F. J. Warburg 31st May 1947
0 Orwell G. Nineteen Eighty-four; 1949
1 ibid.
2 Orwell, G. Letter to Francis A. Henson; loc. cit
3 Distopia [online] [cited 27/03/2002]
4 Yea I need to dig up a couple of references here I know... I am working on it; the only catch is I cannot actually remember where I read half this stuff.... :(
5 Orwell, G. Nineteen Eighty-four Loc.cit.
6 Ok, this idea is essentially one of my own, but it was extrapolated from a point that you made in conversation the other day, I would like to reference this if I can, any suggestions on how to do it?
7 Rucco, A. A Text Response Guide to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four
8 Orwell G. Nineteen Eighty-four Loc.cit.
9 Sorry I will do something about the conclusion, I know its wanky but it is 2.30 in the morning and I think I am losing the ability to construct coherent sentences.
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