Student: Mădălina Mihalcea

Group: 7304 (English- German)

Utopia vs. Dystopia

- Do both represent a totalitarian regime? -

The aims of this essay is to analyse the notions of utopia and dystopia and to

demonstrate that both originate in totalitarian thinking of the humankind. In order to support

my statements, I will relate to an important novel for each notion: Sir Thomas More’s

‘Utopia’ for utopia and George Orwell’s ‘1984’ for dystopia, respectively.

According to Longman English Dictionary Online1, utopia is ‘an imaginary perfect

world where everyone is happy’2. Literally, ‘utopia’ means ‘a place that does not exist’. Sir

Thomas More invented the term in his novel with the same name, in which it refers to a

fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, More writes about a society similar to his own

1516 society, but based on better principles and he tries to encourage his readers to reflect on

improving reality itself.

According to the same cited dictionary, the antonym of ‘utopia’ is ‘dystopia’, and it is

explained as ‘an imaginary place where life is extremely difficult and a lot of unfair or

immoral things happen’3. In contrast to ‘utopia’, the term ‘dystopia’ appeared in the late 19 th

century. The first known use of dystopian, as recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary, is a

speech given before the British House of Commons by John Stuart Mill in 1868, in which

Mill denounced the government's Irish land policy: "It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call

them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, or caco-topians. What is commonly

called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too

bad to be practicable."4 In literature, the author of dystopian novel also takes his inspiration

from his own society, but his point of view of the future is a more pessimistic one.

In totalitarian regime, the monoculturalism is promoted. In Longman English

Dictionary Online the word ‘monoculturalism’ does not exit, but there is its antonym

‘multiculturalism’, which is defined as ‘the belief that it is important and good to include

people or ideas from many different countries, races, or religions’5. Hence we can conclude

that monoculturalism is the practice of actively preserving a culture to the exclusion of 1 http://www.ldoceonline.com/ accessed January 14,20112 http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/utopia accessed January 14,20113 http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/dystopia accessed January 14,20114 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia accessed January 14,20115 http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/multiculturalism accessed January 14,2011

external influences and that a monocultural society exists due to undeveloped

communications structures, geographic and/or political isolation.

In the Book Two of ‘Utopia’, Hythloday begins by discussing the geography and

history of Utopia, each of which proves perfect for development of an ideal society. Utopia

occupies an island that is as isolated as it wants to be; the Utopians interact with the rest of the

world on their terms. With the story of General Utopus the ideal geography is given a source:

the island was built, cut off from the mainland thousands of years ago. Its geography can be

described as ideal.

In George Orwell’s ‘1984’, the setting is not obviously defined. The reader realizes

that ‘Airstrip One’, a part of the larger estate of Oceania, is in fact England, and that the main

character, Winston Smith, lives in what was once London. Winston does not leave his city; he

cannot, even if he wants, because everything is controlled. Therefore the reader has

knowledge only of a small part of Oceania, is isolated too, like Winston.

As in the totalitarian regime, both novels show how the history is controlled.

In ‘Utopia’, General Utopus conquered the territory and installed in a single historical

moment the roots of the present-day Utopian society. Utopia did not develop in a way

comparable to any other state in the history of mankind. Its history, as its geography, is ideal.

Amaurot is laid out much as London is. Amaurot's tidal river finds a corollary in the Thames,

and both rivers are spanned by bridges at the farthest possible point from the sea in order to

provide the greatest number of accessible quays. Thomas More was certainly aware of the

resemblance of Amaurot to London, and no doubt created this similarity on purpose. In

creating Amaurot as a likeness to London, it is almost as if he wishes the two to be compared

in the reader's mind.

In ‘1984’, the Party controls every source of information, managing and rewriting the

content of all newspapers and histories for its own ends. The Party does not allow individuals

to keep records of their past, such as photographs or documents. As a result, memories

become fuzzy and unreliable, and citizens become perfectly willing to believe whatever the

Party tells them. The Party’s slogan ‘Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls

the present controls the past.’ appears twice in the novel. It an important example of the

Party’s technique of using false history to break down the psychological independence of its

subjects. Control of the past ensures control of the future, because the past can be treated

essentially as a set of conditions that justify or encourage future goals: if the past was idyllic,

then people will act to re-create it; if the past was nightmarish, then people will act to prevent

such circumstances from recurring. The Party creates a past that was a time of misery and

slavery from which it claims to have liberated the human race, thus compelling people to

work toward the Party’s goals. The Party has complete political power in the present, enabling

it to control the way in which its subjects think about and interpret the past: every history

book reflects Party ideology, and individuals are forbidden from keeping mementos of their

own pasts, such as photographs and documents. As a result, the citizens of Oceania have a

very short, fuzzy memory, and are willing to believe anything that the Party tells them. In the

second appearance of this quote, O’Brien tells Winston that the past has no concrete existence

and that it is real only in the minds of human beings. O’Brien is essentially arguing that

because the Party’s version of the past is what people believe, that past, though it has no basis

in real events, has become the truth.

Nowadays, the political and ideological superstructure may seem to us of less

importance. There is not much to be said about politics generally in a totalitarian community.

In the novels taken into account in this essay, the regimes are rather similar.

Utopian politics seems a strange mixture of freedom and repression. Utopia employs a

democratic government, its people represented by two layers of elected public officials, the

higher level selected by the lower level. However, the rule abolishing on pain of death any

discussion of politics outside of the political arena seems incredibly repressive. This

repression, though, is a fair repression in the sense that all citizens of Utopia are equally

bound by it. This is a very different repression than those in place in Europe, where the poor

and weak were repressed by the rich and powerful. Utopia is operating under a rule of law,

with all citizens subject to that law, even if the law itself strikes modern readers as excessive.

In ‘1984’, Orwell portrays the perfect totalitarian society, the most extreme realization

imaginable of a modern-day government with absolute power. Throughout London, Winston

sees posters showing a man gazing down over the words “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING

YOU” everywhere he goes. Big Brother is the face of the Party. The citizens are told that he is

the leader of the nation and the head of the Party, but Winston can never determine whether or

not he actually exists. In any case, the face of Big Brother symbolizes the Party in its public

manifestation; he is a reassurance to most people (the warmth of his name suggests his ability

to protect), but he is also an open threat (one cannot escape his gaze). Big Brother also

symbolizes the vagueness with which the higher ranks of the Party present themselves—it is

impossible to know who really rules Oceania, what life is like for the rulers, or why they act

as they do. Winston thinks he remembers that Big Brother emerged around 1960, but the

Party’s official records date Big Brother’s existence back to 1930, before Winston was even

born.

Another important aspect of a totalitarian regime is the cancellation of individuality.

By annulling the qualities that make someone or something different from other things or

people, the ruler has a better control over his people. Moreover, by psychological

manipulation, physical control and uniformity between people, the chances a revolution to

break out are low.

Hythloday trumpets the lack of private space as a wonderful idea promoting friendship

and stifling pettiness and gossip. He invokes the name of Plato, who in ‘The Republic’ calls

for communal property as the basis for the ideal city. Hythloday has been to Utopia and seen a

society of communal property in operation and describes the effort this country has put into

curing social ills. More disagrees, claiming a country with communal property will have no

prosperity. The people will have no incentive to work, since they will be fed by the labor of

others. In More's eyes, the lack of private property will also eliminate all respect for authority,

and with this loss the chance at bloodshed and conflict will increase. Visible in the rules

guarding against adultery, pre-marital sex, and those abolishing campaigning for office is the

Utopian understanding that mankind's baser instincts of lust and greed will never disappear.

Utopian laws, for this reason, are formulated so as to powerfully discourage the vices inherent

in human nature. These laws demonstrate that Utopia is not a society full of ideal people.

Rather, it is a society that is formulated so that the inherent faults of man are contained as

stringently as humanly possible.

In Orwell’s novel, the Party barrages its subjects with psychological stimuli designed

to overwhelm the mind’s capacity for independent thought. The giant telescreen in every

citizen’s room blasts a constant stream of propaganda designed to make the failures and

shortcomings of the Party appear to be triumphant successes. The telescreens also monitor

behavior—everywhere they go, citizens are continuously reminded, especially by means of

the omnipresent signs reading “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,” that the authorities

are scrutinizing them. The Party undermines family structure by inducting children into an

organization called the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and encourages them to spy on their

parents and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party. The Party also forces individuals to

suppress their sexual desires, treating sex as merely a procreative duty whose end is the

creation of new Party members. The Party then channels people’s pent-up frustration and

emotion into intense, ferocious displays of hatred against the Party’s political enemies. Many

of these enemies have been invented by the Party expressly for this purpose.

In addition to manipulating their minds, the Party also masters the bodies of its

subjects. The Party constantly watches for some sign of unfaithfulness, to the point that, as

Winston observes, even a tiny facial twitch could lead to an arrest. The people are destitute of

what in a normal society is considered bare necessities: good food, clean water, good clothes,

and intimacy. The Party forces its members to undergo mass morning exercises called the

Physical Jerks, and then to work long, keeping people in a general state of exhaustion.

Anyone who does manage to defy the Party is punished and “reeducated” through systematic

and brutal torture. After being subjected to weeks of this intense treatment, Winston himself

comes to the conclusion that nothing is more powerful than physical pain—no emotional

loyalty or moral conviction can overcome it. By conditioning the minds of their victims with

physical torture, the Party is able to control reality, convincing its subjects that 2 + 2 = 5.

As in any ideal novel, there are more advanced technologies than in the society where

the novel was published.

In the Utopians' mastery of the technology brought to them by the fortuitous

shipwreck of ancient Egyptians and Romans rests an important theme of Utopia: the belief in

technology and technological innovation as a means toward progress. Such a concept is part

of the bedrock of modernity, but it was quite foreign in a world that was just beginning to

produce technological innovations beyond those of the Romans. The society of More's time

was unsure of technology, and did not quite believe that the progress it brought would be

permanent. Utopians have no such doubts. Whenever they come across new technology, they

do not simply use it, they master the techniques behind it. Technology, for them, is a means to

a better life.

In ‘1984’, by means of telescreens and hidden microphones across the city, the Party is

able to monitor its members almost all of the time. Additionally, the Party employs

complicated mechanisms (‘1984’ was written in the era before computers) to exert large-scale

control on economic production and sources of information, and fearsome machinery to

inflict torture upon those it deems enemies. ‘1984’ reveals that technology, which is generally

perceived as working toward moral good, can also facilitate the most diabolical evil.

Based on the novels of Thomas More and George Orwell, a connection can be made

between utopian society, dystopian society and totalitarian society, in aims of politics,

cancellation of individuality, isolation, psychological manipulation, physical control and

technology. As Benito Mussolini once said: ”Everything within the state, nothing outside the

state, nothing against the state”.

Bibliography:

Thomas More, Utopia (from C. Dutu, Medieval and Renaissance

English Literature, Bucuresti, Ed. Universitara, 2006, pages 233-325)

George Orwell, 1984 ( from http://george-orwell.org/1984 retrieved

last time 15/01/2011)

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Utopia.” SparkNotes LLC. n.d..

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/utopia/ (accessed January 13, 2011).

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on 1984.” SparkNotes LLC. 2007.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/ (accessed January 15, 2011).

Karl Kautsky, Thomas More and his Utopia, (1888)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1888/more/index.htm (accessed January 17,

2011)

Longman English Dictionary Online http://www.ldoceonline.com/

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Utopia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia#mw-head#mw-head (accessed

January 13, 2011),

Dystopia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia#mw-head#mw-head (accessed

January 13, 2011), Utopian and Dystopian Fiction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_and_dystopian_fiction#mw-head#mw-

head (accessed January 13, 2011),

Totalitarianism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism (accessed January

13, 2011)