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Hideous Strength" in Lewis and Orwell: a Comparison and Contrast

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Hideous Strength Volume 13 Number 4 Article 20 6-15-1987 That "Hideous Strength" in Lewis and Orwell: A Comparison and Contrast Peter J. Schakel Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Schakel, Peter J. (1987) "That "Hideous Strength" in Lewis and Orwell: A Comparison and Contrast," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 13 : No. 4 , Article 20. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol13/iss4/20 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Although both Orwell and Lewis warned against the evils of totalitarianism in their novels, they did it from different theological and political perspectives. Both mythopoeic works recognize the danger in attempts to destroy myth. Additional Keywords Lewis, C.S. That Hideous Strength; Myth in C.S. Lewis; Myth in George Orwell; Orwell, George—As mythopoeic author; Orwell, George. Animal Farm; Orwell, George. 1984 This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol13/iss4/20 Page 36 MYTHLORE 50: Summer 1987 That "Hideous Strength" in Lewis and Orwell A Comparison and Contrast Peter J. Schakel On the face of it, C.S. Lewis and George Orwell to the best of the past than of moving forward to an seem totally dissimilar men. The one is a political uncertain future. He valued imagination in others, and conservative, the other a socialist and revolutionary showed a keen, though lim ited, imagination himself. (for, though Orwell was and is admired by conservative Orwell on the other hand, identified with the working anti-communist Malcolm Muggeridge, one must remember class and the poor. He himself was near the poverty- that he advocated Democratic Socialism throughout his leval much of his life, a socialist and revolutionary, life , went to Spain to support the revolutionary cause rejecting the church and religion. He was egalitarian there, and, if .not a Trotskyite, held views in common in social outlook, forward-looking, progressive, with Trotskyites in the late 1930s). The one was an although he wanted that progress to be based on values evangelical Christian, the other rejected organized retained from the past. He valued imagination in religion throughout his life — though Orwell asked to others, but tended himself to emphasize practical, be buried in a churchyard with proper Anglican down-to-earth qualities more highly than imaginative services, which indicates a certain sympathy with (or o n e s . nostalgia about) Christianity late in his life. For most of his life, however, he scorned the Church, Such common and contrasting elements form the partly on religious, partly on political, grounds. background for sim ilarities and differeneces between Lewis' comments on Orwell are limited to Orwell's Lewis' That Hideous Strength and Orwell's Nineteen works: he thought Animal Farm excellent, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The two books were published at about the Eighty-Four flawed [1]. Orwell's only recorded same time, 1945 and 1948 respectively, in response to references to Lewis are hostile. In 1944 he devoted the same perceived danger of totalitarianism — the half of an "As I Please" column to Beyond Personality, Nazism of the past and the Stalinism of the present. dismissing it as "a kind of book that has been endemic Both authors depict the dehumanization and despoil- in England quite sixty years... the silly-clever book, ation of life which would occur under such a regime, which goes on the principle not of threatening the as a means of warning readers against the threat such unbeliever with Hell, but of showing him up as an organizations pose; but the characteristics each illogical ass" [2], And in a letter in 1949, Orwell, focuses on reveal significant differences in their commenting on T.S. Eliot's approval of Charles outlooks. And though neither author shows in these Williams' novels, added "It wouldn't surprise me to books the process by which the totalitarian group learn that Eliot approves of C.S. Lewis as' well" takes power, both suggest here or describe elsewhere (Ibid, IV, 504). Despite their differences, however, how it occured, and in so doing display very different there are points in common and sim ilarities between social and economic concerns. them which can illuminate the ideas and artistic achievements of both men. Nineteen Eighty-Four traces a few crucial months in the life of Winston Smith, a minor bureaucrat in Lewis and Orwell were of the same generation — Oceania, one of the three superpowers which dominate Lewis born in 1898 in Belfast, the son of a solicitor, the world in 1984. Life in Oceania is grim. There is grandson of a manufacturer-businessman on one side, no privacy: day and night, at home, at work, and in of a clergyman on the other; Orwell born in Bengal in the streets, all people except the laboring classes 1903, son of a lower echelon civil servant, grandson (the proles, or proletariat), who are not considered a of an indigent aristocrat bishop and a businessman of threat to the state — or even human, are observed by reduced fortunes. Both were members of what Orwell two-way telescreens; posters everywhere proclaim called the "lower-upper class," Lewis slightly higher BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. W in ston i s em ployed in in it than Orwell. Both had access to the best in the Ministry of Truth, rewriting old newspaper stories British educations, Lewis at Cherbourg House, Malvern to conform with current official Party versions of College, and Oxford, Orwell at St. Cyprian's and Eton. what occurred. Newspeak (a contracted language which Both valued solid, old-fashioned British rationalism makes it impossible for its users to express, or even (Lewis' a Christian rationalism , Orwell's a humanistic conceive of, unorthodox opinions or ideas) and rationalism) and traditional British decency, humane Doublethink (the ability to accept an idea and its values, and culture. [3] opposite simultaneously) prevent readers from noticing the changes. But Winston never learned Doublethink. Both thought of themselves as "outsiders," as not The Party does not control him mentally: he can still being part of the "establishment." That was, in fact, raise questions and think critically and commit such far more true of Orwell than of Lewis. Lewis Thought-crimes as "Down With Big Brother." The story considered himself an "outsider" in part because of follows Winston as he begins a love affair with Julia, his Irish background, in part because he was not a co-worker in his building, and as he attempts to wealthy, in part because his conservative Christianity find and join a subversive organization. It turns out, set him apart from his peers. Dispite all that he however, that the Thought Police have long had Winston clearly did identify with the upper class and the and Julia under surveillance as possible rebels. They establishment in many ways — he was in comfortable are arrested, taken to the Ministry of Love, tortured, economic circumstances after he received his fellow­ brainwashed, and broken. The story ends with Winston ship at Magdalen College and began publishing books, realizing that now "he loves Big Brother." conservative in his social and political views, a member of the Church of England, at ease with social Central to the story is the theme of dehuman­ and ecclesiastical hierarchies. He was opposed to ization. Orwell's original choice of a title for the "progress" and seemed more desirous of moving backward book was "The Last Man in Europe." Winston was MYTHLORE 50: Summer 1987 Page 37 apparently the last man in Oceania who had not been the 1930s and '40s, not a realistic prediction of what brainwashed by the Party's propaganda and who had would o c c u r . O rw ell h im s e lf summed up h i s m essage escaped the effects of Thought-control; thus he was well: "Something like Nineteen Eighty-Four could the last person in Europe to retain the qualities of happen.... Don't let it happen. It depends on you." the free use of intellect and moral choice, qualities [ 6] that for Orwell and Lewis alike give a person his or her humanity. "If you are a man, Winston," says That Hideous Strength, which Lewis called "A O'Brien, his torturer, "you are the last man. Your Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups," describes the kind is extinct." [4] According to the Party, the expansion and growing threat posed by, and ultim ately masses, the manual-laborers and the lower classes (the the defeat of, a totalitarian plot in contemporary Proletariat, or "Proles") are considered sub-human. England. The plot is quite simple. One half traces the "The proles are not human beings," Syme te lls Winston involvement of a young don of Bracton College, Mark early on; and later O'Brien says, "They are helpless, Studdock, in the N.I.C.E.
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