DOCSLIB.ORG

Orwellian Methods of Social Control in Contemporary Dystopian Literature

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Repositorio Documental de la Universidad de Valladolid FACULTAD de FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS DEPARTAMENTO de FILOLOGÍA INGLESA Grado en Estudios Ingleses TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO A Nightmarish Tomorrow: Orwellian Methods of Social Control in Contemporary Dystopian Literature Pablo Peláez Galán Tutora: Tamara Pérez Fernández 2014/2015 ABSTRACT Dystopian literature is considered a branch of science fiction which writers use to portray a futuristic dark vision of the world, generally dominated by technology and a totalitarian ruling government that makes use of whatever means it finds necessary to exert a complete control over its citizens. George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) is considered a landmark of the dystopian genre by portraying a futuristic London ruled by a totalitarian, fascist party whose main aim is the complete control over its citizens. This paper will analyze two examples of contemporary dystopian literature, Philip K. Dick’s “Faith of Our Fathers” (1967) and Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta (1982-1985), to see the influence that Orwell’s dystopia played in their construction. It will focus on how these two works took Orwell’s depiction of a totalitarian state and the different methods of control it employs to keep citizens under complete control and submission, and how they apply them into their stories. KEYWORDS: Orwell, V for Vendetta , Faith of Our Fathers, social control, manipulation, submission. La literatura distópica es considerada una rama de la ciencia ficción, usada por los escritores para retratar una visión oscura y futurista del mundo, normalmente dominado por la tecnología y por un gobierno totalitario que hace uso de todos los medios que sean necesarios para ejercer un control total sobre sus ciudadanos. La novela de George Orwell 1984 (1949) es considerada un hito del género distópico: en ella, Orwell retrata un Londres futurista gobernado por un partido fascista y totalitario, cuyo objetivo principal es el control total sobre sus ciudadanos. En este trabajo se analizarán dos ejemplos de la literatura distópica contemporánea, "La Fe de Nuestros Padres" (1967) de Philip K. Dick y V de Vendetta (1982-1985) de Alan Moore, con el objetivo de estudiar la influencia que la distopía de Orwell jugó en su construcción. El trabajo se centrará en cómo estas dos obras tomaron la representación de Orwell de un estado totalitario y los diferentes métodos de control que éste emplea para mantener a los ciudadanos bajo un estado de absoluta sumisión y control, y cómo los aplicaron en sus obras. PALABRAS CLAVE: Orwell, V de Vendetta , La Fe de Nuestros Padres, control social, manipulación, sometimiento. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 7 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: SCIENCE FICTION, UTOPIAS AND DYSTOPIAS ................................................................................................................... 9 2.1 HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF SCIENCE FICTION: AN OVERVIEW ....... 10 2.2 SCIENCE FICTION AND UTOPIAS .................................................................... 11 2.3 DYSTOPIAN LITERATURE................................................................................. 11 3. ANALYSIS: ORWELL, DICK AND MOORE ........................................................ 16 3.1 ORWELL’S 1984 .................................................................................................... 16 3.2 PHILIP K. DICK’S “FAITH OF OUR FATHERS” .............................................. 22 3.3 ALAN MOORE’S V FOR VENDETTA .................................................................. 30 4. CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................................... 39 5. WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................ 41 1. INTRODUCTION Dystopian literature is characterized by a blending of fantasy and reality that creates a futuristic world based on features of the author’s present world. The main aim of dystopian writers is to create a piece of literature that allows them to criticize certain political, social and economic aspects of their present, as a warning for its readers about the dangers of following these ideologies. It is due to this amalgam of reality and fiction that dystopian literature is regarded as a subgenre of science fiction, a broad genre characterized by a futuristic setting, typically in newly discovered planets and where the latest technological developments play an important role. Although Yevgeny Zamyatin and Aldous Huxley had already inaugurated the dystopian genre with their novels We (1924) and Brave New World (1932) respectively, it was George Orwell who gave the genre its definitive push with his novel 1984 (1949). Orwell depicted a futuristic world divided into three super-states, governed by totalitarian parties whose main aim is to exercise absolute control over their citizens whatever means they find mandatory, which has influenced the writing of subsequent dystopias. Acknowledging the power of Orwell’s novel influencing future dystopias, this paper will analyze the features of the Orwellian model of a totalitarian government, as well as identifying and describing the different methods it uses to keep citizens under strict control and manipulation. This analysis is intended to provide the basis for a further analysis of two contemporary dystopias, Philip K. Dick’s short story “Faith of Our Fathers” (1967) and Alan Moore’s graphic novel V for Vendetta (1982-1985). The aim of this paper is to compare the similarities and differences between these two dystopias, focusing on the ruling governments they portray and the methods for social control they make use of, as well as drawing their similarities and/or differences compared those depicted in the Orwellian model. For that purpose, the methodology I follow in this paper consists of a study of the Orwellian ideas of totalitarianism and social repression as the basis for an analysis of Dick’s and Moore’s works, exploring their plots, characters and methods for social repression these works represent in order to see how they have adapted Orwell’s ideas. I have selected two dystopias, Dick’s “Faith of Our Fathers” and Moore’s V for Vendetta , a short story and a graphic novel respectively, because these are literary forms that are neither as widely read as novels nor there are many critical analysis on these literary forms. Moreover, Dick is one of the most important science fiction readers of the twentieth century and his short story was published in the anthology Dangerous Visions , one of the most important anthologies of science fiction as it set the course of the twentieth-century science fiction offers readers a different perspective over dystopias, set in Vietnam and depicting a world ruled by a Communist Party. On the other hand, Moore’s graphic novel shares the setting with Orwell`s 1984 , although the main reason why I selected this work is because it has become the symbol of social protest. Thus, this paper expects to find a clear relation between the two dystopias that will be analyzed and Orwell’s 1984 , as well as some similitudes between Dick’s short story and Moore’s graphic novel in their depiction of a futuristic world, ruled by a totalitarian government that uses not only technology but whatever means and methods it finds necessary to control its citizens 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: SCIENCE FICTION, UTOPIAS AND DYSTOPIAS This paper will start its analysis of dystopian literature by discussing its origin. To begin with, this paper will try to provide a definition for the genre of science fiction, as well as giving an overview of its history. In this manner, this section will lay the groundwork for a discussion about utopias and dystopias, what they are and when they emerged, to conclude this first part with a survey of the history of dystopias, focusing of the two major periods and the discussion around different notions of dystopias. It is difficult to provide a definition for science fiction because, as Peter Fitting claims, “there is still no single accepted definition for the genre” (135). For Chris McKitterick, “Science fiction is the literature of the human species encountering change, whether it arrives via scientific discoveries, technological innovations, natural events, or societal shifts” (n. pag.) whereas Darko Suvin defines it as “a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to authors empirical environment” (qtd. in Fitting 136). These two definitions of the genre are based upon the elements around which science fiction works are built: science and fiction blended in a depiction of futuristic worlds which are characterized by scientific and technological developments, which help humanity to reach and construct these worlds, and ultimately dominate them. These futuristic worlds in which science fiction stories are placed are commonly set in the outer space, or even in different universes. The plot of these stories is built around a human element who suffers the effects of those scientific and technological developments, in an attempt to illustrate the effects that these developments may cause to humankind in the near future. This is one of the main reasons why this
Recommended publications
  • Alan Moore's Miracleman: Harbinger of the Modern Age of Comics

    Alan Moore's Miracleman: Harbinger of the Modern Age of Comics

    Alan Moore’s Miracleman: Harbinger of the Modern Age of Comics Jeremy Larance Introduction On May 26, 2014, Marvel Comics ran a full-page advertisement in the New York Times for Alan Moore’s Miracleman, Book One: A Dream of Flying, calling the work “the series that redefined comics… in print for the first time in over 20 years.” Such an ad, particularly one of this size, is a rare move for the comic book industry in general but one especially rare for a graphic novel consisting primarily of just four comic books originally published over thirty years before- hand. Of course, it helps that the series’ author is a profitable lumi- nary such as Moore, but the advertisement inexplicably makes no reference to Moore at all. Instead, Marvel uses a blurb from Time to establish the reputation of its “new” re-release: “A must-read for scholars of the genre, and of the comic book medium as a whole.” That line came from an article written by Graeme McMillan, but it is worth noting that McMillan’s full quote from the original article begins with a specific reference to Moore: “[Miracleman] represents, thanks to an erratic publishing schedule that both predated and fol- lowed Moore’s own Watchmen, Moore’s simultaneous first and last words on ‘realism’ in superhero comics—something that makes it a must-read for scholars of the genre, and of the comic book medium as a whole.” Marvel’s excerpt, in other words, leaves out the very thing that McMillan claims is the most important aspect of Miracle- man’s critical reputation as a “missing link” in the study of Moore’s influence on the superhero genre and on the “medium as a whole.” To be fair to Marvel, for reasons that will be explained below, Moore refused to have his name associated with the Miracleman reprints, so the company was legally obligated to leave his name off of all advertisements.
  • Exception, Objectivism and the Comics of Steve Ditko

    Exception, Objectivism and the Comics of Steve Ditko

    Law Text Culture Volume 16 Justice Framed: Law in Comics and Graphic Novels Article 10 2012 Spider-Man, the question and the meta-zone: exception, objectivism and the comics of Steve Ditko Jason Bainbridge Swinburne University of Technology Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc Recommended Citation Bainbridge, Jason, Spider-Man, the question and the meta-zone: exception, objectivism and the comics of Steve Ditko, Law Text Culture, 16, 2012, 217-242. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol16/iss1/10 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Spider-Man, the question and the meta-zone: exception, objectivism and the comics of Steve Ditko Abstract The idea of the superhero as justice figure has been well rehearsed in the literature around the intersections between superheroes and the law. This relationship has also informed superhero comics themselves – going all the way back to Superman’s debut in Action Comics 1 (June 1938). As DC President Paul Levitz says of the development of the superhero: ‘There was an enormous desire to see social justice, a rectifying of corruption. Superman was a fulfillment of a pent-up passion for the heroic solution’ (quoted in Poniewozik 2002: 57). This journal article is available in Law Text Culture: https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol16/iss1/10 Spider-Man, The Question and the Meta-Zone: Exception, Objectivism and the Comics of Steve Ditko Jason Bainbridge Bainbridge Introduction1 The idea of the superhero as justice figure has been well rehearsed in the literature around the intersections between superheroes and the law.
  • A Dark, Uncertain Fate: Homophobia, Graphic Novels, and Queer

    A Dark, Uncertain Fate: Homophobia, Graphic Novels, and Queer

    A DARK, UNCERTAIN FATE: HOMOPHOBIA, GRAPHIC NOVELS, AND QUEER IDENTITY By Michael Buso A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida May 2010 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the fundamental assistance of Barclay Barrios, the hours of office discourse with Eric Berlatsky, and the intellectual analysis of Don Adams. The candidate would also like to thank Robert Wertz III and Susan Carter for their patience and support throughout the writing of this thesis. iii ABSTRACT Author: Michael Buso Title: A Dark, Uncertain Fate: Homophobia, Graphic Novels, and Queer Identity Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Barclay Barrios Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2010 This thesis focuses primarily on homophobia and how it plays a role in the construction of queer identities, specifically in graphic novels and comic books. The primary texts being analyzed are Alan Moore’s Lost Girls, Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and Michael Chabon’s prose novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Throughout these and many other comics, queer identities reflect homophobic stereotypes rather than resisting them. However, this thesis argues that, despite the homophobic tendencies of these texts, the very nature of comics (their visual aspects, panel structures, and blank gutters) allows for an alternative space for positive queer identities. iv A DARK, UNCERTAIN FATE: HOMOPHOBIA, GRAPHIC NOVELS, AND QUEER IDENTITY TABLE OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................... vi I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 Theoretical Framework ..................................................................................................
  • Mechanisms of Control in Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta" and George Orwell's "1984"

    Mechanisms of Control in Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta" and George Orwell's "1984"

    Mechanisms of Control in Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta" and George Orwell's "1984" Prtenjača, Zvonimir Undergraduate thesis / Završni rad 2018 Degree Grantor / Ustanova koja je dodijelila akademski / stručni stupanj: Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences / Sveučilište Josipa Jurja Strossmayera u Osijeku, Filozofski fakultet Permanent link / Trajna poveznica: https://urn.nsk.hr/urn:nbn:hr:142:668248 Rights / Prava: In copyright Download date / Datum preuzimanja: 2021-10-01 Repository / Repozitorij: FFOS-repository - Repository of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Osijek Sveučilište J.J. Strossmayera u Osijeku Filozofski fakultet Osijek Studij: Dvopredmetni sveučilišni preddiplomski studij engleskoga jezika i književnosti i povijesti Zvonimir Prtenjača Mehanizmi kontrole u romanima "O za osvetu" Alana Moorea i "1984." Georgea Orwella Završni rad Mentor: doc. dr. sc. Ljubica Matek Osijek, 2018. Sveučilište J.J. Strossmayera u Osijeku Filozofski fakultet Osijek Odsjek za engleski jezik i književnost Studij: Dvopredmetni sveučilišni preddiplomski studij engleskoga jezika i književnosti i povijesti Zvonimir Prtenjača Mehanizmi kontrole u romanima "O za osvetu" Alana Moorea i "1984." Georgea Orwella Završni rad Znanstveno područje: humanističke znanosti Znanstveno polje: filologija Znanstvena grana: anglistika Mentor: doc. dr. sc. Ljubica Matek Osijek, 2018. J.J. Strossmayer University of Osijek Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Study Programme: Double Major BA Study Programme
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Nineteen Eighty-Four

    MGiordano Lingua Inglese II Nineteen Eighty-Four Adapted from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four Nineteen Eighty-Four, sometimes published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by George Orwell published in 1949. The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the government's invented language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrimes". The tyranny is epitomised by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. The Party "seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power." The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles so that the historical record always supports the current party line. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker, but he secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother. As literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot, and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, Telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, and memory hole, have entered everyday use since its publication in 1949.
  • Year 8 English Extract Pack

    Year 8 English Extract Pack

    Year 8 English Extract Pack Extract 1- for Task 1 George Orwell George Orwell was the pen name of a man called Eric Blair. A pen name is a name used by a writer instead of their own name. Even though his real name was Eric Blair, he is known as his pen name, George Orwell. Early Life George Orwell was born in India in 1903. At the time, India was still one of Britain’s colonies. You may remember from The Tempest that a colony is a country that is controlled by a different country. At the time, India was a British colony, so many British people lived and worked in India. Orwell’s father worked as a civil servant in India. Even though he was helping to run India, he was employed by the British government as India was a part of the British Empire. When he was one, Orwell moved back to live in England with his mother. He did not see his father again until 1912, as his father had to stay in India for work. The young Orwell was very intelligent. He went to exclusive boarding schools as he was growing up. He only had to pay half the fees for his education because he was so smart. At these exclusive schools, Orwell spent a lot of time around the richest people in the country. But when he read the newspapers he saw that the majority of people around the world were not rich. He wanted to find out more about these people and their lives.
  • Report to UCL Octagon Small Grants Fund Sarah Gibbs 1 Conference: Rebel? Prophet? Relic? Perspectives on George Orwell in 2019

    Report to UCL Octagon Small Grants Fund Sarah Gibbs 1 Conference: Rebel? Prophet? Relic? Perspectives on George Orwell in 2019

    Report to UCL Octagon Small Grants Fund Sarah Gibbs 1 Conference: Rebel? Prophet? Relic? Perspectives on George Orwell in 2019 24-25 May 2019 University College London (UCL) Conference Programme Summary UCL’s first George Orwell conference, Rebel? Prophet? Relic? Perspectives on George Orwell in 2019, took place on May 24th and 25th. The event explored all aspects of the author’s oeuvre and presence in popular culture, from the continuing significance of his masterpiece, the political dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), to his relationship to the British Empire and mid-century Fascism. Panelists discussed his reception history in different parts of the world, and adaptations of his work in a variety of media. The speaker list was international, and truly interdisciplinary. Presenters, who were academics, theatre directors, video game designers, authors, journalists, and members of the Armed Forces, traveled Report to UCL Octagon Small Grants Fund Sarah Gibbs 2 from Australia, Canada, Iraq, the United States, China, Germany, Scotland, and all parts of England to participate. The conference brought together a number of Orwell-focused organizations and institutions: the Orwell Foundation, the Orwell Society, and UCL Special Collections, holder of the Orwell Archive. Approximately forty members of the public also joined the event. The support of the Octagon Small Grants Fund not only allowed scholars to participate in a conference dedicated to Orwell, very few of which exist, but also enabled the University to positively engage with the community and publicize its projects and collections. Twitter: @UCL_Orwell_2019; #UCLOrwell2019 Report In 1945, George Orwell wrote of war-time rumours that American troops had come to England to thwart a communist revolution: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that.
  • Lights and Shadows in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia

    Lights and Shadows in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia

    Paul Preston Lights and shadows in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia Article (Accepted version) (Refereed) Original citation: Preston, Paul (2017) Lights and shadows in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. Bulletin of Spanish Studies. ISSN 1475-3820 DOI: 10.1080/14753820.2018.1388550 © 2017 The Author This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/85333/ Available in LSE Research Online: November 2017 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This document is the author’s final accepted version of the journal article. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. Lights and Shadows in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia PAUL PRESTON London School of Economics Despite its misleading title, Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is almost certainly the most sold and most read book about the Spanish Civil War. It is a vivid and well-written account of some fragments of the war by an acute witness.
  • George Orwell's Down and out in Paris and London

    George Orwell's Down and out in Paris and London

    /V /o THE POLITICS OF POVERTY: GEORGE ORWELL'S DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For-the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS By Marianne Perkins, B.A. Denton, Texas May, 1992 Perkins, Marianne, The Politics of Poverty: George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. Master of Arts (Literature), May, 1992, 65 pp., bibliography, 73 titles. Down and Out in Paris and London is typically perceived as non-political. Orwell's first book, it examines his life with the poor in two cities. Although on the surface Down and Out seems not to be about politics, Orwell covertly conveys a political message. This is contrary to popular critical opinion. What most critics fail to acknowledge is that Orwell wrote for a middle- and upper-class audience, showing a previously unseen view of the poor. In this he suggests change to the policy makers who are able to bring about improvements for the impoverished. Down and Out is often ignored by both critics and readers of Orwell. With an examination of Orwell's politicizing background, and of the way he chooses to present himself and his poor characters in Down and Out, I argue that the book is both political and characteristic of Orwell's later work. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. ORWELL'S PAST AND MOTIVATION. ......... Biographical Information Critical Reaction Comparisons to Other Authors II. GIVING THE WEALTHY AN ACCURATE PICTURE ... .. 16 Publication Audience Characters III. ORWELL'S FUTURE INFLUENCED BY HIS PAST...
  • Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen

    Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen

    NACAE National Association of Comics Art Educators Reading Questions: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen 1. What different themes does this book explore? Be as detailed and exhaustive as possible. 2. Pick a panel and analyze how Moore and Gibbons combine text and visuals to their utmost effect. 3. Pick a page and analyze its overall layout. How does the page as a whole make use of the comic book format to achieve meaning and impact. You might find it helpful to consider the larger themes of Watchmen. 4. Visual motifs are recurrent images that take on specific meanings relevant to a given work. What visual motifs appear throughout Watchmen and what meanings do they suggest? 5. How does the issue of crimefighting evolve over time in the world imagined in Watchmen? 6. Consider the names "Rorschach" and "Ozymandias." Why are these particularly appropriate names for these two characters? 7. Which character or characters do you sympathize with most? Why? 8. What does Chapter IV, "Watchmaker," reveal to us about Dr. Manhattan? How does he experience time? What are his interests? How would you summarize his view of existence? 9. How do Moore and Gibbons use the imagined history in Watchmen to comment on real events in 20th century America? 10. Look closely at Chapter V, "Fearful Symmetry." How does the idea of "symmetry" play out in this chapter in both form and content? 11. What are the worldviews of Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach, and Adrian Veidt? Where do these worldviews intersect? Where do they differ? 12. What does Watchmen suggest about masked crimefighters and their costumes? Which characters bring these ideas most clearly into focus? 13.
  • The Polyphonic Poetics of Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and Its Ontological Implications Roy Auh, Duke University, 2016

    The Polyphonic Poetics of Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and Its Ontological Implications Roy Auh, Duke University, 2016

    The Polyphonic Poetics of Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and Its Ontological Implications Roy Auh, Duke University, 2016 Introduction In Russia at the end of the 1920s, a failed philosopher with a limp1 tried to make sense of the world that was becoming more kaleidoscopic with each spin of its axis. He could not count on any ideologies to anchor him about the world, on the question of what it means to be human. He lived in a time when any reliable ideological answers were collapsing left and right and nothing was safe from deconstruction2: World War I shattered any structural cornerstones in all spheres of society and knowledge: Russian Revolution dismantled the Tsarist autocracy; Arnold Schoenberg abandoned tonality in music; Albert Einstein proved the fragility of physical reality; Sigmund Freud revealed the human mind to be a misunderstood cosmos; and Gertrude Stein challenged absoluteness of denotations while James Joyce reconfigured syntax. New forms of being in all disciplines were abounding, and the world needed a new system of thought to accommodate all the different voices that were populating the world. Nonetheless, as much as his anxiety stemmed from the storm of innovations, it also came from his physical danger; he was under Stalin’s watch during the purge of intellectuals, which eventually produced his sentence to an exile in Siberia (Gogotishvili). This philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin, however, found his answer to the uncertainty about human ontology in a literary giant that received the same criminal sentence in the previous century: Fyodor Dostoevsky. From reading his novels, Bakhtin conceptualized literary polyphony, a novelistic system that allowed subjective independence and freedom to each character’s consciousness by eliminating the author’s governing voice.
  • WHY ORWELL MATTERS Coordinator: John Becker George

    WHY ORWELL MATTERS Coordinator: John Becker George

    WHY ORWELL MATTERS Coordinator: John Becker George Orwell was one of the most consequential writers of the 20th Century. As a novelist, journalist, literary critic and essayist, he exhibited an extraordinary range of interests. More effectively than any of his contemporaries, he posed questions about English society and politics that are still relevant, while also addressing the controversial history of the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. In this one-semester study group, we read the most famous works (Animal Farm, 1984) a 1930's novel (Keep The Aspidistra Flying), essays (some dealing with his role in the British colonial system), and excerpts from lesser-known works. Readings and other Required Materials: Animal Farm (Signet Classics, ISBN 978-0-451-52634-2, $9.99) 1984 (Signet Classics, ISBN 978-451-52493-5, $9.99) Keep The Aspidistra Flying (A Harvest Book - Harcourt, Inc., ISBN 978-0-15-646899-2, $14.95) Coursepack (under $10.00) John Becker has coordinated study groups in history (American Civil War, World War I), cinema (French and Italian, Film Noir) and literature (Marcel Proust, William Faulkner). * * * * * * * * Syllabus * * * * * * * * Week 1 Biography; Shooting An Elephant, A Hanging Week 2 Down and Out in Paris and London, England Your England Week 3 Keep The Aspidistra Flying - the story of a failed poet who must resolve the conflict between the dangers of a commercial civilization and the pull of family responsibilities and middle class values Week 4 Keep the Aspidistra Flying Week 5 Keep the Aspidistra Flying Week 6 Homage to Catalonia (excerpts), Inside the Whale Week 7 Animal Farm Week 8 1984 Week 9 1984 Week 10 1984 Week 11 1984 Week 12 1984 Week 13 Politics and the English Language, Such, Such Were The Joys..