Depiction of the conflict between personality and state in the novel "1984" by G. Orwell

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Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University

DEPICTION OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PERSONALITY AND STATE IN THE NOVEL «1984» BY G. ORWELL

Valentina Romanetz candidate of

science in pedagogics, associate professor

Annotation

genre novel orwell utopia

The article «Depiction of the Conflict between Personality and State in the Novel «1984» deals with investigation of the genre peculiarities of the novel - dystopia «1984» by G. Orwell and depiction of the conflict between Personality and State. The author of the article states that the genre of dystopia novel occupies a special place not only in the English literature of the XX century, but also in the world literature. The first part of the article speaks about the formation of the dystopia genre in the world literature, which developed as an opposite to the genre of utopia. The research shows that dystopia genre was creatively implemented in the works by A. Huxley, R. Bradbury, K. Ishiguro, etc. The article states that in the novel under analysis the author touches political, social, moral and philosophical problems. And the main means of treating this issue is the system of characters creatively presented in the novel. The author of the article focuses on the analysis of the main character of the novel - Winston Smith, who becomes a person involved into a dramatic, tense conflict between a Personality and the State. G. Orwell provides the idea that under the pressure of a society any person can be ruined. Outstanding characters of the book make it interesting and exciting for a wide circle of readers. This research states that the most tragic and awful character for G. Orwell is the leader of the totalitarian state - Goldstein. The whole novel is aimed against totalitarian ideas, tending to embrace all aspects of human life in order to develop the nation of warriors and fanatics. Key words: dystopia, totalitarism, dramatic conflict, utopia, problems, moral, personality.

Анотація

ЗОБРАЖЕННЯ КОНФЛІКТУ МІЖ ОСОБИСТІСТЮ ТА ДЕРЖАВОЮ В РОМАНІ ДЖ. ОРУЕЛЛА «1984»

Романець В.М. кандидат педагогічних наук, доцент, Одеський національний університет імені І. І. Мечникова

Стаття «Зображення конфлікту між Особистістю та Державою в романі Дж. Орвелла «1984» присвячена дослідженню жанрової своєрідності роману-антиутопії Дж. Орвелла «1984» та зображення конфлікту між Особистістю та Державою в досліджуваному творі. Автор статті зазначає, що жанр роману-антиутопії посідає особливе місце не тільки в англійській літературі ХХ ст., а й у світовій літературі взагалі. У першій частині статті йдеться про становлення жанру антиутопії у світовій літературі, який формувався поступово як протилежний жанру утопії. Жанр антиутопії, як зазначено в дослідженні, було талановито втілено в творах таких письменників як О. Хакслі, Р. Бредбері, К. Ісігуро та ін. У статті зазначено, що в досліджуваному творі письменник зачіпає проблеми політичні, соціальні, моральні, філософські. А основним засобом втілення даної проблематики в творі є система персонажів, що надзвичайно талановита та яскраво представлена в романі. Автор статті акцентує увагу на образі головного героя - Вінстона Сміта, який стає фігурантом драматичного, напруженого конфлікту між Особистістю та Державою. Письменник наполягає на думці, що під натиском суспільства ламається будь-яка Особистість. Підкреслюється, що яскраві характери героїв роблять книгу захоплюючою і цікавою для широкого кола читачів. У даному дослідженні наголошується на тому, що для Дж. Орвелла найбільш трагічним і страхітливим є образ лідера тоталітарної держави - Голдштейна. А весь твір спрямовано проти тоталітарних ідей, покликаних охопити всі аспекти людського буття, заради формування націй воїнів та фанатиків.

Ключові слова: антиутопія, тоталітаризм, драматичний конфлікт, утопія, проблематика, мораль, особистість.

Аннотация

ИЗОБРАЖЕНИЕ КОНФЛИКТА МЕЖДУ ЛИЧНОСТЬЮ И ГОСУДАРСТВОМ В РОМАНЕ ДЖ. ОРУЭЛЛА «1984»

Романец В.М. кандидат педагогических наук, доцент, Одесский национальный университет имени И. И. Мечникова

Статья "Изображение конфликта между Личностью и Государством в романе Дж.Оруэлла "1984" посвящена исследованию жанрового своебразия романа-антиутопии Дж.Оруэлла "1984" и изображению конфликта между Личностью и Государством в исследуемом произведении. Автор статьи отмечает, что жанр романа-антиутопии занимает особое место не только в английской литературе ХХст., а и в мировой литературе в целом. В первой части статьи речь идет о становлении жанра-утопии в мировой литературе, который формировался постепенно как противоположный жанру утопии. Жанр антиутопии, как отмечено в исследовании, был талантливо воплощен в произведениях: О.Хаксли, Р.Брэдбери, К.Исигуро и др. В статье отмечено, что в исследуемом произведении писатель затрагивает проблемы политические, социальные, моральные, философские. А основным средством воплощения данной проблематики в произведении является система персонажей, которые чрезвычайно талантливо и ярко представлены в романе. Автор статьи акцентирует внимание на образе главного героя - Уинстона Смита, который становится фигурантом драматического, напряженного конфликта между Личностью и Государством. Писатель настаивает на мысли о том, что под натиском общества сломается любая Личность. Подчеркивается, что яркие характеры героев делают книгу захватывающей и интересной для широкого круга читателей. В данном исследовании подчеркивается, что дляДж.Оруэлла наиболее трагическим и ужасающим является образ лидера тоталитарного государства - Голдштейна. А все произведение направлено против тоталитарных идей, призванных захватить все аспекты человеческого бытия, ради формирования нации воинов и фанатиков. Ключевые слова: антиутопия, тоталитаризм, драматический конфликт, утопия, проблематика, мораль, личность.

Introduction

What is most looked forward in Utopian societies is the concept of justice. They seek justice both in state and in society (Walsh, 1975). According to some Utopian writers, the main reason of the corruption in the world is attitude to injustice. Thus, they, first of all, try to find the reasons of this injustice and inequality in the society. Both Plato and More take money and private property as the reason of this chaos, so in both of their Utopias, there is the abolition of money and private property. Yet, they differ in terms of their ideas on education and class system. According to Plato, in order to set up a just society, there should be division among labours. Every person is suited for a certain job and he/she should do his/her work, so social stability will be provided. And also, for Plato, the rulers should be philosopjjprs because they are the qualified ones than others. Thomas More, on the other hand, arranges similar working standards and working hours for people. Yet, although they are different in some of their Utopian visions, basically both writers seek the ways to eliminate the greediness, corruption, vanity and crimes in their societies.

Results and discussion

What concerns anti-utopian works, we can state that, on the other hand, the laws of justice do not work. Generally, there is not social equality among people and they do not have any rights to protest. There are hierarchical social classes in these societies. While some lucky ones seem superior, some others are inferior and it's their destiny. There are many inequalities in their lives. In Huxley's dystopia, Brave New World, for instance, people are divided into classes and there are sharp divisions between them starting from smart ones to inferiors; Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Everybody in the system, however, seems to be pleased with their situation except for some marginal characters who are conditioned from their very early age. The rest of the population seem to be obedient because their brains are washed, and they had already lost their individuality. In Orwell's dystopia, in the same way, there are Party members; Outer-Party and Inner-Party members. And also, there are Proles, populations who are the lowest part of the society. Other than these inequalities, when you commit a crime, you have no right to defend yourself. As an individual, you are always alone and succumbed.

The Utopian aim is an ideal community which posses a perfect socio-political legal system and circumstances. The rulers in this community try to create perfect environment governed by the laws that provide equality, freedom, and happiness to everyone. In dystopian communities, however, the state is represented as brutal and uncaring. Rather than working for the goodness of the population, the rulers, in dystopian communities search the ways to control and suppress the citizens in order to secure their position and their own interests. They condition, manipulate or brainwash the citizens by using various types of methods including advertising, media, regulations, technology, and philosophical or religious ideologic.

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people... (Orwell, 2013: 17).

It is important to mention that Utopian society is not interested in educated people, on the contrary, they try to keep people illiterate. Therefore, they will maintain their domination. It is such an egoistic, repressive and cruel system. In Ray Bradbury's famous dystopia, Fahrenheit 451⁰, for example, the state represses the intellectuals and forbids the reading of essential books. People's minds are filled with unnecessary things from TV, advertisements, such as products for consumerism. Nobody is interested in the realities of their world or what is really happening around them because they are blind to them. Books, which are seen as threats to status quo, are abolished and burned. Thus, it seems that whereas Utopian rulers seek ways to provide social harmony, dystopian rulers create social chaos.

Contrary to dystopian point of view, Utopia is not against freedom. Scientists assert that utopia struggles to give «true freedom, as individual men and women find their own destiny fulfilled by co-operating freely with the purposes of society» (Walsh, 1975: 71). Utopia creates an earthly welfare by rational planning but according to dystopian writers it is not so easy. For some dystopian writers, although Utopia seems to promise freedom, it is not so possible for an individual to flower as a part of the social whole. As an individual, he/she has his/her thoughts, ideas, longings and emotions, so his/her Utopia can also be a dystopia of others who have different world views (Постмодернизм, 2001: 74). At this point, dystopia comes into existence. In dystopia, freedom is totally destroyed. What is left is artificial liberties. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, people have no right to write, to question and even to think freely. There is always a crime of thought. In Never Let Me Go, q^Aones have no rights even on their own bodies. Both their bodies and minds are exploited.

In spite of the fact that Utopia and dystopia seem to differ in many aspects, they share some important points. After all, in both Utopian and dystopian communities, what is aimed is to alter the existing social order. As Ruppert claims, «their shared effects lie in their thought - provoking power, in their capacity to intensify contradictions and to arouse a desire for change. The enemy of both Utopia and antiutopia is the status-quo, which both seek to transform» (Коссак, 1980: 104). While Utopia gives the reader a hopeful image with a heaven-like picture that awakens our desire for change, dystopia provide us a negative picture that is full of hopelessness that arouses our fears even if it may seem a hopeful image with a heaven-like picture at first glance. In other words, in Utopian fiction, by creating a perfect environment, the writer tries to "make us aware of the distance between «the is» and «the ought». In dystopian fiction, however, this is done through satire and parody. They reimagine their present and create a plausible future.

Summing up we can state that although these two genres sometimes challenge each other, they flourishe side by side and they coexist, the tension between the two remained, linking them in a single arc. The underlying unity was a necessity of their continuing mutual survival. They fed off one another, deriving an equal and opposite energy from each other's affirmations and negations (Kumar, 1987: 126).

As hopeful and joyful picture of Utopia life gives way to the emergence Utopian fiction, the dark and distorted image of life gives way to the existence of dystopian fiction. The dystopian literature and its main concepts and themes will be analyzed in detail in the next section.

The novel «1984» is built on the acute conflict between Personality and State, freedom and fear. Its plot is dramatic, tense, the denouement is unusual, it provides the idea that under the pressure of society any person can be ruined. Outstanding characters of the book make it interesting and exciting for a wide circle of readers.

The main protagonist of the book is a usual misfit - intellectual with eloquent surname Winston Smith, which clearly speaks about his colourlessness and facelessness, the man is physically sick and weakened by bad food and beggarly existence. It is important to mention that Winston Smith is a marginal character. The marginal situations cause the appearance of so called cultural hybrids that balance between the dominant group of the society, the group which never accepts them and the group from which they dissociate (Оруэлл, 2012: 443).

Protest against regime arises in Winston's soul especially after unhappy family life. However, his protest is expressed only in seditious notes in his diary which themselves are considered to be crime punished by death. First of all for him any woman is a Party spy. Thus, such important feeling as love is transformed with this man into suspicion, hatred, hopelessness:

« Winston had disliked her from the first moment he saw her. He disliked nearly all women, especially young and pretty ones. The young women were always most loyal to the Party and were happiest to spy on others. But this girl was especially dangerous, he thought. Once, when he had seen her in the canteen, she had looked at him in a way that filled him with black terror. He even thought she might be working for the Thought Police» (62-63).

But it was already the strongest form of protest - Winston does not obey to the laws of totalitarian universum: criminal thought is the worst crime in that state. Дж. G. Orwell deals with the problem of subconscious analysing relations between men and women. All of a sudden Julia breaks into Winston's life. Though he hates practically all women, especially young and beautiful ones, to this woman he feels attraction and wants to take hold of her. At the same time, he is afraid of Julia and feels burning hatred to her because she is an embodiment of the regime. Julia is young, energetic, beautiful, practical, she is able to adapt to a situation (observe less important rules and you can violate more important ones).

«Julia was twenty-six years old. She lived in a Party buildingwith thirty other girls ('Always the smell of women! I hate women! ' she said) and she worked, as he had guessed, on the story-writing machines. She enjoyed her job, looking after a powerful electric motor» (42).

Julia is in love and she can share everything with her beloved man. She also hates the Party but the reason is that this Party deprives her of pleasures. However, in contrast to Winston, she understands why sex is strictly forbidden, she likes to seduce party members and indulge in carnal joys together with them. Contrary to Katrin, who was Mrs. Smith once, Julia is a normal woman. The latter, according to G. Orwell is a foolish, vulgar, empty creature, «a walking gramophone». Katrin is a shining example of what the Party is trying to make out of a usual «warm» woman. In his turn Winston dreams that such women as Julia were more and the party would rot from inside, that it would cover with siphilic chancres. But after the love-protest, after the love-despair there comes real love and the special flavour of danger is changed with the premonition of quick death.

«Life, as she saw it, wasquite simple. You wanted a good time, they (meaning the Party) wanted to stop you having it, so you broke the rules as well as you could» (52).

It is clearly seen that creating a character G. Orwell, as a writer, reflects the features of a real person in it. Personality of O'Brian, a high rank party member, constantly worried Winston. He could not understand what troubled him more: the unusual combination of an intellectual and a boxer - weightlifter in O'Brian's appearance or his insincere, in Winston's opinion, devotion to the Party... Winston's liking for him and total confidence in this man, who morally degraded long ago, is simply impressing. O'Brien is a worthy son of his system. He covered Winston with a web of lies and brought him to where people ruin themselves, that is to say to his doom. Indifferent to any party in the world Julia followed him to satisfy his interest in the world order. They are eager to tell a lie, to betray, to douse children with acid, but not for the sake of the Elder Brother, they have chosen another God for themselves, Goldstein.

The system created them in a way they match it. But they did not agree to sacrifice their love. And this is already challenge, which the Party takes up with pleasure. G. Orwell underlines that subconsious is not always beautiful it can be ugly and awful.

E. Cossak states that dissection is the main feature of the novel. It reveals itself at different levels: material wealth, plan excess according to all indices,slogans and reality. Thus, they are mistaken, or maybe they did not think that they prefer one totalitarian regime to another one, they want to change a moustached fellow for a man with a goatee (Коссак, 1980: 203).

It is important to mention that one the protagonists of the novel «1984» is the Elder Brother. The prototype for this image was the leader of the Soviet state J. Stalin The desription of this character's appearance and of his inner world correspond to the personality of that bloody dictator. Besides the novel shows the cult of personality of The Elder Brother which was artificially manufactured in the Soviet Union. «At the end of the hall a poster covered one wall/ It showed an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a handsome man of about forty-five, with a large, black moustache. The man's eyes seemed to follow Winston as he moved. Below the face were the words BIG B R O TH E R IS W A T C HIN G Y O U» (13).

Conclusions

Gradually gaining strength fear breaks a human's moral and makes him keep all his feelings inside except the instinct for self-preservation. In such a state fear produces constant mimicry until the ability to see things as they really are is absolutely destroyed. The state must only facilitate quick and irrevocable flow of this process. It is also important to mention that in the novel «1984» G. Orwell shows himself as a creator of literary images which cannot be forgotten. His aim is to depict the psycological portrait of his characters, appearance has the secondary meaning.

Bibliography

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6. Walsh, Chad. From Utopia to Nightmare. New York: Greenwood, 1975.

1. Kossak, E. (1980). Modernizm i postmodernizm v filosofii i literature. Moskva: Politizdat. Postmodernizm (2001). Enciklopediya. Minsk: Interpresservis; Knizhnyj Dom.

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3. Orwell, G. (2013). Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Penguin.

4. Kumar, Krishan. (1987). Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times. Oxford: Blackwell.

5. Walsh, Chad. (1975). From Utopia to Nightmare. New York: Greenwood.

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