Even as far back as when I was in high
school, in the Mesozoic Era, schools were fiddling with their reading lists,
adding “relevant” contemporary titles to the old standards in order to pique
student interest. These days schools are moving toward a Common Core emphasis
on reading “informational texts” like nonfiction and memoirs. It would be
tragic if some great works of fiction became casualties of that shift; in fact, I can think of two classic works that
should never be stricken from school reading lists: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World. Not only do the
novels still hold up as literary storytelling, but their complementary
cautionary messages are just as relevant – if not more so – than when both were
published.
Orwell’s dystopian tale, published in 1949, centers
on Winston Smith’s doomed rebellion against a Kafkaesque, all-knowing,
all-seeing totalitarian state that stamps out all individualism and independent
thought. In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four – sometimes published as 1984 – the brainwashed masses
live and work under omnipresent government surveillance, public mind control,
and the glowering image of the mysterious Party leader, Big Brother.
Smith works for the ironically-named Ministry
of Truth, which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His
job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, or eliminate some entirely, so that
the historical record always aligns with the current party line. He privately
dreams of rebelling against Big Brother, but by the novel’s bleak end he comes
to love his oppressor.
Orwell had an astute grasp of the ways in
which totalitarians twist language in the service of their power-hungry agenda.
His novel introduced into our lexicon some brilliant and chilling terminology
such as “thought police,” “newspeak,” “doublethink,” “memory hole,” and most
familiarly, “Orwellian,” the adjective for official deception, ubiquitous
surveillance, historical revisionism, and the manipulation of language by a ruthlessly
authoritarian state.
In fact, “Orwellian” was being used so often
by the media in June of 2013 that Amazon.com sales of 1984 spiked nearly 10,000%. Why? Because at that time the news was brimming with revelations
about secret, overreaching surveillance on the part of the National Security
Agency. The ominous label was an indication of the extent to which Americans feel
that the government has come to wield too much illicit, intrusive power. The
surveillance state is even more deeply entrenched in Orwell’s England today.
In 1932, Orwell’s former teacher at Eton, Aldous
Huxley, had released Brave New World,
a very different dystopian viewpoint. Huxley’s ominous vision of the future was less overtly totalitarian than Orwell’s: the citizens of his World State live in
perfect health and communal prosperity; they’re happily brainwashed by social
conditioning and hallucinogenic drug;, free of emotional attachments and
spiritual needs; kept distracted by intellectually unchallenging pastimes and
recreational sex. Where Orwell’s characters were kept in line by fear and
brutal coercion, Huxley’s willingly
embraced
their own subjugation through
the apathy induced by petty diversions.
In his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman nailed the differences
between the two:
What Orwell feared were
those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason
to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared
those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give
us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared
that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be
drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive
culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.
These two books are spring-loaded with
imaginative insights about language and power, humanity and nature, the
individual and society, freedom and enslavement, love and hate. No “informational
texts” could ever compare.
For high school readers who might think that
Orwell’s vision could never come to pass in America, it’s important to note
that Orwell set 1984 not in Stalinist Russia but in his native England to
warn readers that no country, however
civilized and democratic, however much it purports to celebrate freedom and
individual rights, is free from the threat of totalitarianism. For those
readers who dismiss Huxley’s vision as mere science fiction, it’s important to
point out that to a large extent we already inhabit it.
From Acculturated, 9/8/15
