16. Dystopian literature (George Orwell, Animal Farm and other works)

• Mr. Jones – A heavy drinker who is the original owner of Manor Farm, a farm in disrepair with farmhands who often loaf on the job. He is an allegory of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, who abdicated following the February Revolution of 1917 and was murdered, along with the rest of his family, by the Bolsheviks on 17 July 1918. The animals revolt after Jones drinks so much he does not care for them.

• Mr. Frederick – The tough owner of Pinchfield, a small but well-kept neighbouring farm, who briefly enters into an alliance with Napoleon. Animal Farm shares land boundaries with Pinchfield on one side and Foxwood on another, making Animal Farm a "buffer zone" between the two bickering farmers. The animals of Animal Farm are terrified of Frederick, as rumours abound of him abusing his animals and entertaining himself with cockfighting (a likely allegory for the human rights abuses of Adolf Hitler).

Napoleon enters into an alliance with Frederick in order to sell surplus timber that Pilkington also sought, but is enraged to learn Frederick paid him in counterfeit money. Shortly after the swindling, Frederick and his men invade Animal Farm, killing many animals and destroying the windmill. The brief alliance and subsequent invasion may allude to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Operation Barbarossa

1984

- how do we know what objective reality is? How do we create it?

- memory is unreliable – we can solve this problem through other people

- if we don’t have anybody to talk to, we have distorted reality

- warning about the importance of free thought and speech

- published in 1948 = twist of reality, inversion of what is happening now

- Winston Smith – individuality - Winston x lack of individualism – uniformity - Smith

- everyman figure – someone we can relate to

- he works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, he rewrites history – it appears that Oceania always have been at war with EastAsia or Eurasia

- people are being brainwashed by telling dogmas like 2+2=5

- distorted reality, unreliable memories, people start to lose their natural instincts

Plot:

- clocks were striking thirteen – citizens are under constant government surveillance

- people routinely disappear and evidence of their existence is erased from public records

- “Big brother is watching you” – the phrase refers to the government’s surveillance of the people with listening devices and cameras, in a totalitarian society, where Big Brother is the head of the totalitarian regime

- doublethink = when you can hold 2 ideas and both are true, contradictory concepts

– reversing ideas - WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

- citizens can’t fully express themselves

- Oceania, Eurasia, Eastasia – constant war and state of emergency, but we don’t know if the war is real

- Winston lives in London – Oceania

- is legally married to Katherine – brainwashed, desireless, they are unable to produce children – live separately and forbidden from remarrying