O, brave new world / That has such people in’t.
Huxley and Orwell: How extreme ends of the political spectrum create equally dystopian outcomes.
In 1917, Aldous Huxley was appointed as a teacher at Eton College in London, 16 years before he wrote and published Brave New World. In his time at the school, he taught French to Eric Arthur Blair, who would go on to write under the pen-name George Orwell, whose 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four would join Huxley’s own in becoming one of the most influential novels of the 20th Century. Huxley takes his title from Miranda’s line in The Tempest, “O brave new world, / That has such people in’t,” which is telling both of the content and themes of the novel and perhaps is a foreshadow of its end: Shakespeare’s final play, Prospero (likely played by him) ending the play with “As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free.” Written almost 20 years apart, the two dystopian novels share the same ideas of authoritarianism and population control, taking influences from previous totalitarian societies (especially Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union), although still developing completely different storylines and presenting entirely unique societies. The outcome of societies governed by such levels of population control, no matter the intention, will always be dystopian. It also is interesting that these two novels are considered among the most influential of the 20th Century, when many other dystopian novels had more popular-cultural success: Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four seem to resonate with readers more than most, perhaps being almost too familiar, the level of insidiousness along with stitched-in real-life references making the stories seem less like a fairytale than would be comfortable. The reason these two novels are so famous and widely considered ‘relevant’ is the same reason psychological horror films are often considered more terrifying than the gratuitous-guts-and-gore type: it’s unsettling to think these things could ever actually happen, while knowing very well that they absolutely could. ‘Utopia’ has always been somewhat of a subjective term, and despite ostensibly seeming like one, Brave New World most certainly is not. The distinction between utopia and dystopia is a fine line — while the World State is clearly dystopic, the way it’s presented could easily be utopic, and that is the way its citizens see it. Margret Atwood described this phenomenon, defining a new type of society – Ustopia: “the imagined perfect society and its opposite – because, in [Atwood’s] view, each contains a latent version of the other.” This is an interesting development on the more binary utopia/dystopia structures, and holds true to Huxley’s work more than any others (more, even, than The Handmaid’s Tale). The way the society is more designed than evolved, with the Pavlovian subliminal teaching of people even in utero (although in vitro would be more accurate), and up until late infancy, alongside the control of the population by setting out five concrete states of prescribed idiocy. Both novels contain the classic tropes of dystopian fiction: they begin in medias res with the societies already set well in place (the infamous “capitalists” still in living memory in Nineteen Eighty-Four); they have a protagonist antihero with an everyman name (Smith being the most common English surname and John the most common English first); they have clear set hierarchies within their societies; and they seem different enough from our own to recognise the horror of it. These remain similar enough to our own societies to be easily recognisable, showing exactly how it would be possible to get to that point. Orwell’s Oceania is a nightmarish society — everyone seems completely miserable almost all of the time; the World State is an idealised, perfect place, yet it still becomes a dystopia. The population in both novels are entirely controllable and entirely controlled: but they no more know it than a rat in a maze knows it’s a part of a larger experiment.
Orwell constructed Nineteen Eighty-Four‘s dystopia using inspiration from recent history. Writing post-World War Two, the bulk of his societal invention centres around a very Soviet-esque structure, and the Party is explicitly socialist — Ingsoc being the abbreviated form of English Socialism. As Thomas Pynchon says, Big Brother clearly has the face of USSR General Secretary Joseph Stalin; Emmanuel Goldstein – the fictitious scapegoat used as a figurehead of hatred – is clearly representative of Leon Trotsky. A less direct allegory than Orwell’s previous 1945 Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four still takes many of its ideas from Soviet history. Likewise, Huxley, in Brave New World, takes inspiration from history, but it is more speculatively futuristic, asking ‘what could happen if we continue down this route?’ as opposed to Orwell’s very direct warning for the near future. Huxley names almost all of his characters after historical figures relating to the Soviet Union – Bernard Marx takes the surname of the father of Communism along with the first name of George Bernard Shaw; Trotsky and Engles are both used as surnames, and even Lenina Crowne takes a feminised version of Lenin’s name, with her friend Fanny named after his would-be assassin, Fanny Kaplan.
However, the structures of each of the societies – Orwell’s dystopic Oceania and Huxley’s World State – are fundamentally different. Huxley sets out a perfect, idealised society, where everyone has access to anything they could ever want (or are trained to want), while Oceania is ruled under the iron fist of a disembodied and abstract ruler, with O’Brien saying to Winston that if he “want[s] a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.” Both novels use Marx’s theory of class divide (Proles, Peripheral Outer Party, Elite Inner Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four; Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, Epsilons in Brave New World: where the Proles, and Betas to Deltas are representative of the proletariat and the Alphas and Elite Party Members are the Bourgeoisie), although both have an ‘extra’ class that isn’t fully accounted for in the Marxist class theory: the slavish Epsilons and the mentally-malleable Outer Party Members. Aside from this basic class structure, the overarching freedom of their people is, in theory, very different. The Party controls every aspect of every thing – from what citizens eat, what they wear, the activities and exercise they complete, the jobs they work (at his cognitively dissonant four Ministries: Love, Truth, Peace, and Plenty; controlling matters of torture, state disinformation, war, and perpetual poverty, respectively – the first written example of ‘doublethink’). Additionally, in Huxley’s World State, citizens have all they could seemingly desire: unlimited technology and recreational sex, advanced birth control methods, personal helicopters, limitless trips to any country or area of their choosing, a vast array of medications used as contraception or as sexual performance-enhancers along with the mood-altering drug Soma which supposedly has zero side affects and is described to work similarly to alcohol or ecstasy — “but they used to take morphia and cocaine,” as Lenina says in Chapter Three — even addiction is fully state-controlled. However, despite the abundance of material goods that the World State throws at its citizens, it cannot ultimately control them.
The root difference between the two societies is that Huxley presents a utopia and Orwell presents a dystopia. Yet, as an outside spectator, both seem equally horrifying.
Orwell and Huxley’s societies have very similar social hierarchies; however, their functions and methods are diametrically opposed. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, no one is happy. Everyone lives under constant and perpetual fear of the Party’s punishments — but never anything as simple and merciful as death. Most insidiously horrifying of all, everyone they meet and interact with could be a threat: neighbours, shopkeepers, colleagues, even parents or children. Mr Parsons, Winston’s coworker at the Ministry of Truth, is turned in by his own son after he is overheard speaking in his sleep through the keyhole of his bedroom door. The utilisation of children for The Party’s needs is a tactic straight from the dictatorial playbook. Reminiscent of the Hitler Youth and the Russian or Chinese Young Pioneers, the Spies (as they’re called: young children indoctrinated from birth into the Party) behave in sinister ways that are chilling to read:
‘You’re a traitor!’ yelled the boy. ‘You’re a thought criminal! You’re a Eurasian Spy! I’ll shoot you, I’ll vaporise you, I’ll send you to the salt mines!’
This kind of behaviour from children is satirical more often than not, similar to caricatures such as Roald Dahl’s Mike Teevee when he is described playing video games — except the Parsons’ son, here, is completely serious. Orwell’s creation of an organisation more terrifying even than Lenin or Mao’s Young Pioneers is legitimately bone-chilling to read and it’s clear that Parsons himself is afraid of his own son. Him turning in his father is one of the key elements of Party control shown to the reader: this moment is well-defined as a kick to the stomach of all that is moral and good. To say this moment is a ‘shock’ would be to water it down: witnessing a child turn in his own father is truly gut-wrenching, and perfectly encapsulates the sheer and total power held by the Party. Orwell describes in vivid detail the way one can be simply erased from history, never to have existed, likely based on the Stalinist removal of disapprovable figures (such as Trotsky from the infamous 1939 photograph on the banks of the Moscow-Volga Canal, that he was removed from after he became an enemy of the state due to his opposition to the increasing bureaucratisation of the Soviet Union). Not only that, Orwell shows the effects of social ostracisation: it isn’t the Thought Police that intimidate citizens into submission; its the thought of the Thought Police. The mere idea that Julia might be a part of them kept Winston in check, despite he being the polar opposite. Likewise, in Brave New World, Huxley’s characters peer-pressure each other just as much (like with Lenina’s friends reactions to her feelings towards Bernard). The person-to-person judgement is as much a method of control as the Ministry of Love is; it is a mechanism of the perpetual boot stamping on the human face.
On the other side, in Huxley’s London, citizens are perpetually happy. It’s only due to Bernard’s inferiority complex (perhaps due to Fanny’s belief that “somebody made a mistake when he was still in the bottle – thought he was a Gamma and put alcohol into his blood-surrogate,” explaining why “he’s so stunted,” as she exclaims after Lenina expresses romantic interest in him) where he doesn’t quite stand up to the usual Alpha standard, that he questions any of the society in which he lives. However, in Brave New World, the reader is the equivalent of John, as an outsider looking in on the horror of the society. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, we see everything through Winston’s eyes, with the assumption that many others do think like him. The only equivalent would be Julia, acting similarly to John in that she is a secondary character with the same ideation to the protagonists (although it could be argued that as the outsider reads the world the same way that John does, he is the true protagonist). The citizens of the World State don’t see the same way that Winston does, due to their Pavlovian engineering since pre-birth, and like dogs trained to salivate at the sounding of a bell, the citizens are trained to copulate on cue, bringing about an attempt at eternal happiness. Of course, this is by no means the utopia it’s made out to be, as Bernard realises slowly and John sees clearly. The biggest difference is that Winston sees this from the beginning. It’s only right at the end that his mind is truly broken, only when he finally announces love for Big Brother and betrays Julia, does the Party take full control. Thought is the single most difficult thing to control, and you can’t intimidate it into submission. It isn’t the torture, the teeth-pulling, electroconvulsive shock ‘therapy,’ cuts or bruises, kicks to the groin, punches to the face that breaks him; even when he is rolling around in his own blood and vomit, he does not admit defeat, he refuses to say that two and two could ever make five. It’s the mental torture, the distortion through subconscious phobias that eventually, finally breaks him into a genuine betrayal. In Brave New World, they didn’t have minds to break in the first place. The Party discovered the need to break a mind in adulthood if they managed to slip through the admittedly-large gaps in the net, but in the World State, with their huge technological advances, they eliminated the need to break a mind by not giving citizens minds to break in the first place. Only John can see how awful it truly is, and when he does, he kills himself. He would rather commit suicide than concede to the society he was offered, even one his own father helped to create and maintain.
‘Does [Big Brother] exist in the same way I exist?’
‘You do not exist,’ said O’Brien.
This is one of the final exchanges Winston has with O’Brien before he is sent to Room 101. It embodies everything about the society Orwell builds; it’s true: people do not exist, the individual is no more. Both societies share the omnipotent philosophy that their citizens cannot decide for themselves what is best for them. In Brave New World, this equates to the fact that everything is entirely controlled and the people have absolutely everything done for them. They are given what should make them eternally and perpetually happy, and even after that if someone has an off day, they can just take a half-gramme Soma tablet and all their woes dissipate. Not only do those four words resonate with Orwell’s world so entirely, they also sum up exactly why the world in which Winston lives is so sinister. “You do not exist,” says O’Brien, not as a metaphor, nor even as a threat: as a fact. You do not exist. Winston Smith does not exist. It doesn’t matter what he does: defy the Party, attempt to join the Brotherhood or conspire with a Shopkeeper who turns out to be a part of the Thought Police, fraternise with fellow Party workers or even fantasise about raping and killing them. No, Winston does not exist because it is entirely possible to make it as though he never did. It’s Winston’s own job at the Ministry of Truth to edit facts, change history, adapt old news to make it accurate, to keep up the façade of an all-knowing, all-seeing and omnipotent Party: Big Brother is watching, always, and is always correct. He not only knows how possible it is, but exactly how it would be done. The Party does not care about the individual; it doesn’t matter to them whether its people live or die; they can simply have never existed. This is Orwell’s final warning: we’ve seen before societies that have committed atrocities to obscene levels, but most sinister of all is the one that can turn brother against sister and erase or edit fundamental and indisputable fact.
From the French la carotte et le bâton, the carrot versus stick metaphor, is a famous one. It alludes to a horse being bribed forwards with a carrot and being beaten with a stick if it refuses. Together, the two novels perfectly exemplify this phrase. The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four uses almost entirely ‘stick’ methodologies (torture, excommunication and murder), while in Brave New World it’s all ‘carrot’ (drugs, sex and technology). This poses an interesting question: which is most effective? It seems clear that in the World State of Brave New World, citizens are far less questioning, far less likely to need excommunication for defying orthodox control. Bribery, it would seem, garners greater control of a population, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, there are many that think the way Winston does, despite the barbaric methods of the Party in their version of the ‘stick’. But is it the methods of control that elicit these reactions, or is it before that? The genetic engineering in Huxley’s novel surely plays a part in this, but the two opposite approaches to citizen control are two considerable differences in their respective societal structures.
The differences between the world Huxley builds and the world Orwell builds are stark. The practices and methods of their governments are almost entirely different, and the technological capabilities — while both ‘futuristic’ for when they were written — are very different. The World State is supposed to be a utopia; Oceania is a deliberate and systematically oppressive state. Both use a kind of religious underlay, with Big Brother seen akin to a deity and the slightly satirical worship of Ford acting as abstract figureheads of love and appreciation (although to deify the man who created the production line, in a world that has production lines for fertilisation, does make sense). Both States show its people only what they want them to see — a mere illusion of true reality. This Platonist distortion of reality, by only showing citizens the equivalent of an up-lit shadow on a cave wall is a similarity between the two, as is the overall outcome: John and Winston both die, effectively. The violent imagery of the bullet entering Winston’s head, as he had imagined before, as the torture sets in and kills the real Winston:
He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.
John, overcome with guilt and shame, hangs himself; Nineteen Eighty-Four ends with one of the most devastating lines in all of English literature. It could easily have ended with Winston’s heartbreaking betrayal, but Orwell goes a step further: “[Winston] had won the victory over himself.” Proving once and for all that, no matter the intention, no matter the societal structures or whether its called a utopia or dystopia, they have the same, inevitable conclusion. Societies governed by control, regardless of methodologies, will always create the same dystopian outcome. Right from the start, neither could have won: the societies are both designed that way. The individual will inevitably, and always, fail. Almost polemic in style, both novels end with the crushed protagonist realising they don’t matter; nothing they can do will change anything: “Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.” Bernard is banished to the Falkland Islands. Julia has betrayed Winston, and he, her. Worst of all, and why Nineteen Eighty-Four is slightly more insidious and threatening than Brave New World, Orwell goes further still: having destroyed Winston and Julia both, alongside any hope of overcoming the Party, he breaks their very souls. The final line delivers so much in just four words; everything had been leading up to this foregone conclusion, the perpetual boot stepping on a human face for ever, the manipulation of truth and the absolute desolation of everything that Winston is: “He loved Big Brother.” Throwing back to Huxley’s title from The Tempest, Brave New World is the epitome of the famous line “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on.” As Atwood says, “he may as well have added: and nightmares.”
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
— Prospero. Act IV, Scene I
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.
— Miranda. Act V, Scene I.
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