"The National Past" in Joyce's 'The Dead' and Orwell's '1984' + his essay 'Poltics and the English Language' - Part III
- "The National Past" in Joyce's 'The Dead' and Orwell's '1984' + his essay 'Politics and the English Language'
- Part II
- Part III
- Part IV
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III) Orwell’s viewpoint per evidence from:
A) 1984
In Forster's The Machine Stops it is the machine man believes in, in Orwell's 1984 it is power, political power a party oligarchy believes in. 1984 is not an anti-utopia, in which man has lost control over technology to become its slave, it is a man-made disaster , a dystopia of perversion: logic (i.e. reasoning), language, and history have been twisted out of order, reversed to the single purpose and benefit of an elitist small group of people, the Inner Party members, those functionaries that form the establishment within a communist system. Seen from this angle, Orwell's book is the vision of a nightmare. What makes this 'trauma' even tragic is its 'inescapability' (inevitableness). There is no way round or out of this terror regime. Winston, the revolting, rebelling 'thought-criminal' tries in vain to find like-minded conspirators to stand up against this tyranny. At the end of his courageous attempt he finds himself completely abandoned, utterly left alone - apart from his rather mechanically functioning, unconvincing love-partner Julia.
Forms of such totalitarian states, in which even the private sphere of the individual is constantly supervised and checked by a Big Brother machinery of telescreens, hidden microphones (cf. bugs), plain-clothes police forces and spies, were copious and conspicuous to the alerted, attentive mind at the time Orwell wrote his novel. It is against this background that he pleadingly sends out a last warning (in form of a quasi-supranational universal appeal) to watch out so as not to fall victim to the 'glorifiers' ( = over-enthusiastic adherents) of such dictatorship, examples of which in Orwell's days were a) Germany under Hitler, b) Mussolini's fascist movement, c) general Franco's coming/rising to power in Spain, d) communist Russia led by Stalin.
It is within this fear of Orwell's lying menacingly ahead of him like this mene, mene, tekel, upharsin (= the writing on the wall, → Old Testament: Dan.) of a globe divided up into three totalitarian power blocs that we have to see his understanding of a "national past'', of whose heritage he is aware and which he wants to pass on to as many people(s) as possible. Like a beneficent prophet (seer) or missionary from the New Testament he feels bound to voice his vision of this impending catastrophe so as to prevent it in the very last minute.
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The overall party-line motto or rather institutionalized goal to keep everybody active and at the same time under control is "Ingsoc". "Ingsoc" in itself is side-lined by a number of subordinate 'doctrines' conducive to the spirit of "Ingsoc" and its realization, such as "doublethink" and "Newspeak", the latter of which has survived in the English language up to this day.
Orwell is largely a socialist thinker, yet on a national level, which he himself restricts to England - not to Britain, Great Britain, thus excluding the Scots and Welsh from being "English" in a 'national sense'. Within the web of his socialism Orwell is not strongly opposed or biased against communism as such. Any form of communism is a collectivism that tries to do away with society's partition into social classes. Significantly, Orwell uses an Irish name for one of the "Inner Party" leaders (→ O'Brien). This has two reasons. On the one hand Ireland is the country that has always with perseverance and persistency, perhaps not unflaggingly, striven for political freedom, an independent as well as united Ireland. On the other hand, it has allegedly never clung to a rigid system of social classes like its age-old enemy Britain. This is Orwell's vision in utmost desire: a society free(d) from any form of racial or whatsoever segregation and discrimination inflicted upon it by a redundant system of class layers. Any 'caste' system is detrimental/defective to a greater sense of community based upon common tradition and history.
Freedom of the mind in an atmosphere of privacy guarantied by “law and order” is basically what the English ‘soul’ yearns for. It is also what Orwell dreams of , this specific “national characteristic’ of “Englishness”. Where the rights of man, in particular the right to voice one’s opinion, are shamelessly violated or even completely eradicated, there is no common welfare to be expected. Any ‘democracy’ needs criticism. It virtually thrives and flourishes on it as long as this criticism is
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constructive within the frame of a (written or – in the case of Britain – unwritten) constitution marked by a) legality (a legal system, in which the rights and duties of the citizens are laid down), b) the partition of power, i.e. government (into the three branches of the legislative body, the executive organ and the jurisdictional part). Very often it is extra-parliamentary opposition in the form of a strong commitment of a large number of people from different backgrounds and walks of life that gives incentives, enlivening stimuli through counter-suggestions to a far more fluent and efficient running of what must be seen as their own ‘affairs’ (cf. Latin “res publica” = public issue concerning everybody in contrast to “res privata”). So freedom of the mind is always conducive to the functioning of a ‘democracy’.
Outstanding critics of democratic procedures are frequently artists, such as novelists, playwrights, even painters and sculptors. They, too, form a constitutive part in the running of a ‘nation’. It is therefore within this broader light that we must see Winston and his “diary (project)” in its wider emblematic sense of “art”, “autobiography”, “history”, “culture”, etc., whose implicit, undercurrent function it is to preserve one’s past, a people’s past as a ‘national treasure’ in the end. So the “diary” serves here as a “signifier’ indicating the ‘signified’ in it: “art”, culture as heritage from the past (partly within a national level) yielding/shedding signals of orientation for man’s (or a whole nation’s) future. If the implication of the “diary” is art and freedom of speech is the cornerstone of art, freedom of thought and the opportunity of creative writing become “inalienable” rights of man forming part of his God-given nature, his ‘constitution’. The famous extract from the American “Declaration of Independence” – as quoted and referred to by Orwell in the appendix to his book – would be disgraced into one misleading word (deprived of its richness in promises) if translated into “Newspeak”, the language of the totalitarian state of Oceania. Where freedom becomes (here: is declared) a crime, what bleak outlook remains there for man?