'A Man's Just Chaos Walking...'

'Perfectibility breaks on the rocks of dissent1'- so writes Margeret Attwood in her introduction to Brave New World (Vintage Edition). The dystopian visions of both Orwell and Huxley stem to some extent from this premise, and viewed through the eyes of Nineteen Eighty-Four's Winston Smith and Brave New World's Bernard Marx, it might be said that great deal of the narrative motion in the texts is derived from the tension between expected perfectness and the imperfection of the human mind. Both characters are regarded by their societies as defective, the former denounced as 'insane' and the latter believed to have had 'alcohol put in his blood-surrogate.' Delusion, however, is defined by both dystopias as non-conformity, and it is arguable that the crushing of deviation by the two dystopias serves only to further the individuality of the protagonists.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, it seems reasonable to describe all people under the hand of The Party, with the exception of Inner Party members, as 'oppressed;' the statement by O'Brien that 'The Party seeks power for its own sake' runs closely parallel to the definition of oppression as 'the exercise of power in a cruel or unjust manner.' The vast majority of the population- all but 'two of every hundred people'- work more or less completely for the good of the most senior two percent that make up the Inner Party, reaping only token rewards for their exertion; where the life of 'even a party member' is characterised by bareness, dinginess, listlessness,' and Inner Party members appear to possess a gilded, excessive lifestyle (Julia complains that 'there's nothing those bastards don't have'). This is the basis, then, of what might reasonably be described as slavery: the threat of physical and mental violence is the only real motivation Winston has for his superficial obedience. Bernard Marx, however, prior to his introduction of John, is oppressed not by authoritarianism- he is an Alpha, and is therefore afforded comfort beyond that of every other caste- but by societal contempt for his failure to conform to the template of his type. In this way, oppression in Brave New World is quite specifically oppression of individuality, which, beside monogamy and emotional attachment, is among the most despised traits: the Solidarity Hymns, concerned with eradicating individual humanity, implore Ford to 'make us one' and incant that 'I am you and you are I'- the latter phrase emblematic of the loss of personhood that is among the chief oppressive agents in Huxley's world.

Oppression, then, applies itself in quite different ways in the two novels. Where it is violent and uniform in Airstrip One, it is insidious and particular in The World State; 'in 1984 the lust for power is satisfied by inflicting pain; in Brave New World, by inflicting a hardly less humiliating pleasure.'2  Both, however, require the destruction of self- a destruction which Bernard Marx is keen to avoid: those who succumb to it are, to him, 'idiots, swine!' However, he is also aware of the danger seen by society in his dissatisfaction, and for this reason, he is afraid of 'somebody at the door' throughout his discussion with Helmholtz. There is a societal oppression here, and Helmholtz describes its effect on the intelligent mind with useful simplicity and clarity: 'can you say something about nothing?' We might well read this desperation as a statement of the condition of a mind allowed to think only in a prescribed way, and the implicit rebellion in characters such as Bernard that results as the individuality that inevitably comes from this rebellion. In this sense, the societal oppression in Brave New World does beget unorthodoxy, if only in a reactionary sense. Comparably, the far more violent oppression of Nineteen Eighty-Four leads to an 'instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in were intolerable and at some other time they must have been different.' Winston's profound resentment of the unpleasantness of his life, then, leads to a more active and focussed dissent than that kindled by the faint unease in Helmholtz and Bernard.

More significant to the individuality of Winston however, and in some sense more similarly to the dissatisfaction in Brave New World, is the perfect absence of identity and restriction of intellect that is required of him by The Party. It is the 'outrage to reason' imposed upon him that motivates his anger, and duly in his narration, as he describes the 'terrible, glittering' ideal propagated by The Party, his main fear appears to be of uniformity- 'three hundred million people all with the same face.' It is this fear- the crushing of self and the integration into a faceless mass- that Winston reacts most strongly against, by asserting an identity for himself through his diary and through his relationship with Julia. Brave New World's destruction of identity occurs in a less violent way, and the superficial benevolence of the system goes some way to begetting a less focussed individualism.

There are, however, problems with the view that the suppression of individuality is failed in either novel. Bernard Marx, for example, upon ascending from his societal oppression, is happy to reap the rewards of what he previously regarded with derision as a loss of identity: he boasts of having 'had six girls last week' to Helmholtz, who, 'gloomily disapproving,' is accused of envy. This betrays the motivation behind Bernard's previous rebellion as a resentment of social rejection, rather than an ideological objection to conformism. In other words, as soon as he is able to give up his individuality, he does. This places Huxley's world quite apart from Orwell's in the spectrum of Dystopian literature: for a flawed character with whom the reader can identify, there is much to be gained from conformity. Although some (notably the novelist Margaret Atwood) have argued that a life 'beautiful, secure, free from diseases and worries' is in some way 'unacceptable' to the reader3, Bernard Marx seems to have no problem with it when it works in his favour, and, following his acceptance into conformity, success 'went fizzily to his head'; in this sense, then, the suppression of the individual is largely complete.

Winston Smith is an altogether less fickle character than Marx, with extreme physical pain and psychological torment required for him to renounce his identity. Nevertheless, the regime does ultimately succeed in repressing his unorthodoxy. Even beyond this, there exist good reasons to believe that The Party is largely successful in its suppression of individual thought, and therefore that individuality is by and large extinct, rather than kindled, by it. An example of this lies in the character of Syme: he is described by Winston as 'too intelligent,' and therefore presumably capable of committing thoughtcrime in a way similarly or perhaps more extensive than that of Winston (it is notable that Winston equates orthodoxy with lack of intelligence: Parsons, the 'devoted drudge,' possesses 'imbecile enthusiasms'). Despite this, Syme is 'venomously orthodox'- perhaps suggesting that native intelligence does not necessarily impinge on the ability of the dystopian state to erase individual thought, and to inspire aggressive and, to Winston, unpleasant patriotic fervour. As is noted in the novel, it is difficult to speculate upon how widespread absolute orthodoxy and thoughtcrime are- and the ambiguity in Syme's ultimate disappearance inevitably raises questions as to his actual devotion; however, the absolute isolation experienced by Winston and later by him and Julia seems compelling as evidence for the success of the oppression of the individual.

The crucial difference between the two novels is, however, the angle from which depersonification occurs: as has been noted frequently, Orwell's vision is an overtly political one, where Huxley's is based on the perversionof scientific advancement and instant gratification. This is rooted to some extent in the novels' respective backgrounds: Brave New World is of the inter-war period, informed by the perceived debauchery and the emergence of mass production of the 1920s, and only a very short time after the the abrupt closure of this through the great depression. Fittingly, then, Huxley uses the reductio ad absurdum of these very values to drain human identity: he stated in Brave New World Revisited that by the definition of such values, humans are reduced to 'the embodiments of economic functions.' 1984, conversely, was written during the height of the Second World War, and although Orwell specifically mentioned his desire to explore the consequences of superstates- he stated in a letter to his publisher that 'what I meant to do is to discuss the implications of dividing the world up into “zones of influence” '- we can speculate justifiably regarding the spectacular power exerted by politics during its writing, through the mass mobilisation of young men for conflict and the finality of the detonation of the atom bomb (of whose impact it is difficult not to read echoes in Orwell's creation)4. Here, it is the power of government that, taken to its most extreme, forcibly crushes the individual; it might be argued that this more violent and political approach (incorporating actual political argument through Goldstein) begets a more intense individuality.

The ambiguity of the allegiance of every character in 1984 is, however, the most significant source of what one might consider hopefulness in an otherwise bleak work. The change in attitude towards Julia upon her revealing herself to him- he 'disliked her from the very moment of seeing her'- suggests that as a possibly unreliable narrator, Winston is not especially adept at recognizing possible unorthodoxy in people, and the fact that Julia at first seems to fit the same 'devoted drudge' category as Parsons, 'actuated by officiousness,' only to so utterly reject almost every aspect of Party doctrine in private, seems to further the idea that any character might harbour unorthodox sentiments. The lack of detail in most characters besides the principle ones allows one to question the efficacy of the party's stifling of identity.

It is most important to note that the establishment and destruction of identity is in these two works bound up in flawed and unreliable characters. Even the identity of John the Savage is ultimately crushed by the baying mob: unlike Bernard, Winston, Julia or Lenina, however, John finds refuge in death with the last vestiges of his humanity intact, displaying the ultimate personal expression in taking his own life (with genuine remorse for his being broken). It is the case, then, that individuality in the face of oppression ultimately fails: while oppression is blamed to a large extent for the rebellious reactions of the characters of these dystopias, the characters themselves, and their flaws in the face of oppression, are ultimately responsible for their downfalls.

Reading:

Christopher Small, The Road to Miniluv: George Orwell, The State and God

The Cambridge Companion to Dystopian Literature

The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Vintage edition with introduction by Margaret Atwood)

Aldous Huxley, Collected Essays

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

Christopher Hitchens, Goodbye to all that: Why Americans are not taught history (Harper's, v. 297 no1782 (Nov. '98) p. 37-43)

1Attwood, Margaret: Introduction to Brave New World (vintage edition)

2Huxley, A.: Brave New World Revisited

3Attwood, Margaret: Introduction to Brave New World (vintage edition)