University Student Number: C1101917

Module Number: SE2581

Module Title: Utopia: Suffrage to Cyberpunk
Question Number and Title: Utopian writing is as much about an escape from real
politics as an encounter with them. Discuss.

Both 1984 and Brave New World are a complex encounter with real politics. They
depict a totalitarian future where the ideology of the state is applied vigorously to
its subjects either through punitive measures as seen in 1984, or through the
genetically engineered acceptance of subjects as in Brave New World. Orwell draws
upon the failure of totalitarian collectivism,1 English capitalism and the rise of fascism
in Germany, Italy and Spain to show a prophetic vision of the future of totalitarian
states, represent[ing] the fear of what the future may hold if we do not act to avert
catastrophe.2 Huxleys Brave New World is the classic extrapolation dystopia, in
which contemporary trends are projected into the future.3 He envisions the rise of
Anti Depressants (Soma), euthanasia, genetic engineering, the hegemony of sex and
pleasure in one of the most powerful denunciation of the scientific world view that
has ever been written.4 Both of these texts are inextricably bound to real politics.

I. Manufacturing Consent / Crime and Punishment

The World State of Brave New World manufactures the consent of its people
through a strictly regimented eugenics programme to create a servile population. The

1 Gregory Claeys, The Origins of Dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell in The
Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature 1st edn. Ed Gregory Claeys (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010) pp.107-134 (p.108).
2 Andrew Hammond, The Twilight of Utopia: British Dystopian Fiction and the
Cold War, The Modern Language Review, n.s 103 (2011) pp. 662-681 (p.664).
3 Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent, The Utopia Reader (New York: New
York University Press, 1999) (P.345)
4 Krishan Kumar Science and Anti Utopia: Aldous Huxley and Brave New World in
Utopia and Anti Utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp. 224287 (P.244)

Big Brother government of 1984 implements its politic from observation5, spreading
an atmosphere of fear and terror through highly punitive remunerations for party
members who fail to uphold party ideology. The rise of totalitarianism in the 20th
Century (Stalins Russia, Hitlers Germany, Mussolinis Italy, Francos Spain) and the
implementation of power hungry politics from quasi-religious leaders aligns real
politics with these texts. Instead of Stalin or Hitler, we have Big Brother & Our Ford6.
Krishan Kumar suggests: that the deformations of Fascism and Communism are
central to the assault on utopia, yet we should remember that these were initially
Utopian schemes. It is the failed implementation of these deformed schemes7 that
aligns these texts to the real politics Of Stalinism and National Socialism, by offering
a dystopian vision of the future if these schemes were fulfilled as intended.8

The one party state with a secret police to enforce party ideology is seen in
both texts. The riots police of Brave New World dissipate an angry crowd with water

5 A party members lives from birth to death under the eye of the thought police. Even
when he is alone he can never be sure he is alone. George Orwell, 1984 (London:
Penguin, 1989) (P.104)
6 Henry Ford [..] is elevated as the avowed missionary and saint of the new
dispensation is elevated as the avowed deity of the future society Krishan Kumar
Science and Anti Utopia: Aldous Huxley and Brave New World in Utopia and Anti
Utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp. 224- 287 (P.244)
7 Krishan Kumar, Utopia and Anti-Utopia in the Twentieth Century in, Utopia and
Anti Utopia In Modern Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp.380-424 (P.384)
8 Utopias simply could not stand up to the battering that it received from 20th century
history [] the shock administration to Western ideas of progress and reason by the
horrors of trench warfare of World War I, the Nazi attempts at genocide, the purges
and gulags of Stalinist Russia, the atomic bombardment of Hiroshima Krishan
Kumar, Utopia and Anti-Utopia in the Twentieth Century in Utopia and Anti Utopia
In Modern Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp.380-424 (P.381)

pistols charged with a powerful anaesthetic9 and pre-recorded Synthetic Anti-Riot

speech[es] (ibid.) while the omniscient Thought Police of 1984 spread terror through
the ranks of the party by jealously observing10 and torturing dissidents who harbour
rebellious views and engage in thought crime. The use of the telescreen serves as a
constant visual reminder of their observation, aligns the telescreen with Benthams
Panopticon.11 Winston never knows when he is being watched, yet the deterrent is in
that he might be being watched. The idea of using a secret police to enforce politics
was certainly not a new one. Orwell and Huxley will already have seen the Gestapo,
SS, Cheka, GPU and the NKVD cast terror upon the people of Russia and Germany
who didnt believe in the utopian future of their respective governments, and while
Huxley offers a more benign method of control, Orwells depiction of torture and
Pavlovian experiment to extract compliance was much more representative of the real
method used by the various secret police forces mentioned above. These secret police
forces would engage in tactics of sleep deprivation to augment suggestibility12,
intimidation and torture to extract compliance, much like the torture of Winston Smith
in 1984.
9 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (London: Vintage Books: 2007) (P.147) All
further references are to this edition and will be quoted in parenthesis in the body of
the essay.
10 George Orwell, 1984 (London: Penguin, 1989) (P.266) all further references are to
this edition and will be quoted in parenthesis in the body of this essay.
11 Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of
conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.
So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is
discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its
actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for
creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in
short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are
themselves the bearers. Michael Foucault, Discipline: Panopticon, in Discipline
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995) pp. 195-228
(P. 199).

We can draw the analogy between Brave New World and Stalins Russia, in
that dissidents (often academics) would be sent to gulags and forced labour camps.13
People who have become too self consciously individual to fit into community life
(P.155) are sent to isolated islands of academics. Huxley here is depicting the
friendly face of totalitarianism14 utopian alternative to Stalins gulags, where the
punishment is really a reward. (ibid.) Huxley suggests in Brave New World Revisited
that this was much more effective than 1984s punishment, reflecting his belief in
the effectiveness of non-violent manipulation of the environment and of the thoughts
and feelings of individual men, woman and children15 to obtain compliance. Despite
12 We possess detailed descriptions of the methods used by the Communist police for
dealing with political prisoners. From the moment he is taken into custody, the victim
is subjected systematically to many kinds of physical and psychological stress. He is
badly fed, he is made extremely uncomfortable, he is not allowed to sleep for more
than a few hours each night. And all the time he is kept in a state of suspense,
uncertainty and acute apprehension. Day after day -- or rather night after night, for
these Pavlovian policemen understand the value of fatigue as an intensifier of
suggestibility -- he is questioned, often for many hours at a stretch, by interrogators
who do their best to frighten, confuse and bewilder him. After a few weeks or months
of such treatment, his brain goes on strike and he confesses whatever it is that his
captors want him to confess. Then, if he is to be converted rather than shot, he is
offered the comfort of hope. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited Huxley.net
Available at: http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/ [accessed 10th May 2014]
13 Beginning in 1929, over 5,000 Ukrainian scholars, scientists, cultural and
religious leaders were arrested after being falsely accused of plotting an armed revolt.
Those arrested were either shot without a trial or deported to prison camps in remote
areas of Russia. Philip Gavin, Stalins Forced Famine The History Place N.S 5,
(2000) Available online:
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm [Accessed 5th May
2014]
14 Krishan Kumar Science and Anti Utopia: Aldous Huxley and Brave New World
in Utopia and Anti Utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp. 224287 (P.260)
15 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited Huxley.net Available at:
http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/ [accessed 10th May 2014]

being politically subversive, Bernard Marx can still be free to happily fulfil all his
curiosities and desires away from civilised society. Orwell uses the forced labour
camp (P.83) as a deterrent that assimilates it with the historical examples of Stalins
Gulags and Hitlers Concentration camps. This example is therefore both an
engagement with historical politics and an escape from them as Huxley offers an
alternative in which all parties can be content. 1984 draws inspiration from
Stalinisms punitive measures, punishing dissidents in the Ministry of Love. Torture,
drugs, delicate instruments that registered your nervous reactions, gradual wearing
down by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning (P. 210) are all used
against Winston in order for him to finally be coerced into the philosophy of Big
Brother & the principles of INGSOC. The centralised government of 1984
respectively mirror real politics of totalitarian states that destroy large numbers of
domestic enemies in the name of the goals of the regime such as: Pol Pots and the
Khmer Rouge persecution and murder of Intellectuals16, Stalins suppression of the
Kulaks17 and the Nazis brutal genocide against the Jews.

II. Autonomy of The Individual

Gregory Claeys distinguishes that the common tropes of both texts are the
quasi-omnipotence of a monolithic, totalitarian state, demanding and normally
exacting complete obedience from its citizens, challenged occasionally but usually
16 The Khmer Rouge had expelled all Westerners (and most other foreigners),
emptied all the towns of people, and embarked on a radical Maoist experiment to
return the country to an autarchic preindustrial age. [.] They spoke of Khmer
Rouge cadres beating babies to death against trees, of any adult suspected of ties to
the old regime being clubbed to death or shot, of starvation and total lack of medical
care, of men with glasses being killed because they were intellectuals. William
Shawcross, Persecutions on Political, Racial, or Religious Grounds , Crimes Of War
n.s 4 (2011), available here: http://www.crimesofwar.org/a-z-guide/persecutions-onpolitical-racial-or-religious-grounds/ [Accessed 5th may 2014]

ineffectually by vestigial individualism or systemic flaws, and relying upon scientific

and technological advances to ensure social control.18 In his essay Literature and
Totalitarianism (1941), Orwell declares that the autonomy of the individual is ceasing
to exist19 as the world is entering the age of the totalitarian state, which does not and
probably cannot allow the individual any freedom whatever.20 Both texts set up the
individual against the collective: Bernard Marx, John the Savage and Winston Smith
are all dissatisfied with their lot as provided by of their respective totalitarian
governments. It is clear that Orwell had contemporary politics of 1941 in his mind

17 Stalin also imposed the Soviet system of land management known as

collectivization. This resulted in the seizure of all privately owned farmlands and
livestock, in a country where 80 percent of the people were traditional village farmers.
Among those farmers, were a class of people called Kulaks by the Communists. They
were formerly wealthy farmers that had owned 24 or more acres, or had employed
farm workers. Stalin believed any future insurrection would be led by the Kulaks, thus
he proclaimed a policy aimed at "liquidating the Kulaks as a class." Declared
"enemies of the people," the Kulaks were left homeless and without a single
possession as everything was taken from them, even their pots and pans. It was also
forbidden by law for anyone to aid dispossessed Kulak families. Some researchers
estimate that ten million persons were thrown out of their homes, put on railroad box
cars and deported to "special settlements" in the wilderness of Siberia during this era,
with up to a third of them perishing amid the frigid living conditions. Men and older
boys, along with childless women and unmarried girls, also became slave-workers in
Soviet-run mines and big industrial projects. Philip Gavin, Stalins Forced Famine
The History Place N.S 5, (2000) Available Here:
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm [Accessed 5th May
2014]
18 Gregory Claeys, The Origins of Dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell in The
Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature 1st edn. Ed Gregory Claeys (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010) pp.107-134 (p. 109).
19 George Orwell, Literature and Totalitarianism in, The Collected Essays,
Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. Volume 2: My country, Right or Left, ed.
Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (London: Penguin Books, 1971) pp.161-164 (P.162)
20 George Orwell, Literature and Totalitarianism in, The Collected Essays,
Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. Volume 2: My country, Right or Left, ed.
Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (London: Penguin Books, 1971) pp.161-164 (P.163)

when he was writing 198421, reflecting his fear of rapidly evaporating individual
liberty.22 This is encapsulated by Winston Smiths rejection, isolation and struggle
against the oppressive state apparatus showing an engagement with real politics of the
day. State infiltration into the personal sphere permeates 1984, as we see when
Winston Smith elucidates:
In Principle a party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in
bed. It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping he
would be taking part in some kind of communal recreation: to do anything that
suggested a taste for solitude, seen to go for a walk by yourself, was always
slightly dangerous. (P.104)
The autonomy of the individual in Brave New World is engineered by the World
Controllers in hatchery and conditioning centres into their genetic subtypes of
Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons that fulfil pre-ordained roles in society.
The conveyor belt production of children is as the director says the principle of mass
production at last applied to biology (P.8) akin to the production of goods in a
modern factory as humans are made to order.23 It is important to note that the two
21 For all those whom Soviet Communism was the God that failed, Orwells [..]
1984 was the precise expression of [..] [his] own bitter feelings about the Soviet
Union. Krishan Kumar, Utopia and Anti-Utopia in the Twentieth Century in Utopia
and Anti Utopia In Modern Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp.380-424
(P.382).
22 The aim of the communist revolution in Russia was to deprive the individual of
every right, every vestige of personal liberty and to transform him into a component
cell of the great Collective man that single mechanical monster who it to take
the place of the unregimented hordes of soul encumbered individuals who now
inhabit the earth. Krishan Kumar, Science and Anti-Utopia: Aldous Huxley and
Brave New World in Utopia & Anti Utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1987) pp.224-287 (P.250).
23 Krishan Kumar, Science and Anto-Utopia: Aldous Huxley and Brave New World
in Utopia & Anti Utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp.224287 (P.244).

rebellious individuals of Brave New World are the result of mistakes in their
engineering processes. Bernard Marxs individual streak is a result of alcohol in his
blood surrogate (P.33) and Helmholtz Watsons mental excess makes him self aware
of his difference (P.45) that alienates him from other the other Gamma plus
humans. They are connected by shar[ing] knowledge that they were individuals
(Ibid), who threaten society itself with its most heinous (P.100) crime, that of
unorthodoxy. (Ibid.) Community, Identity, Stability (P.1) forms the World States
motto in Brave New World, and subjects are taught the maxims when the individual
feels, the community reels (P.63) and everybody belongs to everyone else. (P.81)

The State dissolves conventional notions of the nuclear family in both 1984
and Brave New World. Brave New World depicts the family home as something to be
abhorred:
Home was something as squalid physically as physically. [..] it was a rabbit
hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with
emotion. What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, insane, obscene
relationships between members of a family group! (P.27-8)

Instead, all are permitted to indulge their sexual impulses without let or hindrance24
that is only made possible by the destruction of the family unit, by destroying all
notion of emotional tension. Huxley predicted the era of the pill nearly thirty years
before its actual era25 with the Malthusian drill. The dissolution of the family draws a
parallel with Platos Republic, where no parent is to know his own child (Loc 3259)
and children are to be raised communally for the good of the state. Platos children
24 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited Huxley.net Available at:
http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/ [accessed 10th May 2014]

(like those of Brave New World) are taught to hold the ideals of the state in higher
regard than the suffocating influence of the intimacies of the family unit. From a
feminist perspective the application of in vitro fertilization and liberation of women
from childbirth creates a society where men and women are truly equal. The issue of
the equality of gender is present in other Utopian novels such as Marge Piercys
Woman on the Edge of Time26, and remains a highly conscientious political issue
today. In 1984, the conventionality of marriage is also disrupted by the state:
Not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties that it might
not be able to control [] but to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not
love so much as eroticism was the enemy inside marriage as well as outside it
(P.83)
This links back to the points made earlier about the autonomy of the individual. By
destroying the loyalty of the relationship the government ensures the solidarity of
the individual. By destroying the enjoyment it discourages it strongly. Winston
furthermore states that the only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children
for the service of the party (Ibid.) and thus continues the cycle of oppression.

25 Krishan Kumar, Science and Anto-Utopia: Aldous Huxley and Brave New World
in Utopia & Anti Utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp.224287 (P.262).
26 It was part of womens long revolution. When we were breaking up all the old
hierarchies. Finally there was one that one thing we had to give up too, the only power
we ever had, in return for no more power for anyone. The original production: the
power to give birth. Cause as long as we were biologically enchained, wed never be
equal. Marge Piercy, Woman On The Edge Of Time (London: A Womans Press,
2000)

III. Who Controls the Past, Controls the Future: Who Controls the Present
Controls the Past
State suppression of previous culture is a key thematic of both 1984 and Brave
New World. Literature, art and music all suffer in the hands of state politics in the
imagined world of the texts, but also draw salient parallels from history, such as
Stalins prolekult cultural revolution27 and Chairman Maos Cultural revolution
(1966) that removed capitalist, traditional and cultural elements from Chinese society,
in order to impose Maoist orthodoxy within the Chinese Communist Party and
subsequently, China28. These efforts to re-calibrate a cultures politics are mirrored in
Brave New World, as the campaign of the past results in the closure of museums, the
destruction of physical monuments and the suppression of all books published before
A.F 150.29 The World State replaces culture with their own approved forms, such as
soma and the feelies. The campaign of the past (ibid.) includes the murder of people
who were interested in culture and the intelligentsia who could be critical of the new
27 In the field of intellectual life a so-called proletarian 'cultural revolution' was
undertaken from 1928 to 1931 which swallowed up, for the time being at least, most
of the great names of artistic life of the 1920s, forcing them into silence, exile,
imprisonment or death and replacing them with the by-and-large undertrained and
undereducated graduates of the Soviet education system, who responded to what
could be called Stalin's proletarian chauvinism. Christopher Read, Russian
Intelligentsia and the Bolshevik Revolution History Today n.s 34, (1984) [accessed
5th May, 2014] Available at http://www.historytoday.com/christopher-read/russianintelligentsia-and-bolshevik-revolution
28 In an attempt to re-assert his authority, Mao launched the 'Cultural Revolution' in
1966, aiming to purge the country of 'impure' elements and revive the revolutionary
spirit. One-and-a-half million people died and much of the country's cultural heritage
was destroyed. In September 1967, with many cities on the verge of anarchy, Mao
sent in the army to restore order. BBC History, Mao Zedong [Accessed 9th May, 2014]
Available Here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/mao_zedong.shtml
29 Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing of museums, the
bowling up of historical monuments [..] by the suppression of all books published
before A.F 150 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (P.36)

government model. We see this as the director of the hatchery talks of the famous
British Museum Massacre that resulted in the death of 2000 culture fans, gassed with
dichlorethyl sulphide. (P.34) The destruction of culture is recurring political motif in
real politics when oppressive totalitarian governments are involved. Orwell mentions
that the most characteristic activity of the Nazis is burning books30 The danger of
books to politics of governments both real life and fiction is well known. There are
several examples of this throughout history, such as the Nalanda Book burning in
1193, The Spanish inquisitions burning of heretical books, Nazi
Verbrennungskommandos burning Warsaw Librarys books that would result in
irreparable damage to the respective cultures in an attempt to implement the new
regimes vision. It is important to note that the two of Winstons most subversive acts
in 1984 are committed through the use of books. Firstly, he begins his rebellion
against the state through keeping his diary and writing down with big brother (P.25)
and secondly in obtaining Goldsteins The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical
Collectivism. The ideas they contain are subversive to ideals of state, and therefore
must be removed. In Brave New World it is only world controllers such as Mustapha
Mond31 who have access to literature. The D.H.C shows clear anxiety when books are
mentioned, as he has been conditioned through hypnopaedia to dislike them. It is only
on Monds promise that he wont corrupt them (P.26) that the group can move on.
Mustapha Monds exclamation that history is bunk (P.26) correlates with Winston
Smiths assertion that history only exists in his own consciousness (P.42) as the past
was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth. (Ibid.) Winstons job in
30 George Orwell, Literature and Totalitarianism in, The Collected Essays,
Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. Volume 2: My country, Right or Left, ed.
Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (London: Penguin Books, 1971) pp.161-164 (p.164)
31

the Ministry of Truth is the destruction of history, as he tosses page after page of
history into the memory hole to fulfil the party slogan of who controls the past,
controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. (P.44) The party are
able to re-assemble history in their own image:
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten,
every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been
renamed, every date has been altered. [.] History has stopped. Nothing
exists except an endless present in which the party is always right. (P.195)

Orwells growing concern was particularly with the totalitarian disregard for historical
truth, as well as the possibility that mass propaganda could produce a population who
no longer loved liberty. By creating people with no past or history these states can
mould people into their own image. This is perhaps best elucidated by OBriens
comment to Winston in the Ministry of Truth that We shall squeeze you empty, and
then we shall fill you with ourselves. (P.323) This serves as a wider metaphor for the
destruction of previous cultures and the states re-education of its subjects.

III. Sex and Population Control

Eugenics and population control is also a common theme of Dystopian texts.
Books such as Pyrna: A Commune, Under the Ice by Harold Davies, A New Eden by
Andrew Acworth, even Platos Republic advocate a system of selective breeding32 in
32 Had we not better appoint certain festivals at which we will bring together the
brides and bridegrooms, and sacrifices will be offered and suitable hymeneal songs
composed by our poets: the number of weddings is a matter which must be left to the
discretion of the rulers, whose aim will be to preserve the average of population?
There are many other things which they will have to consider, such as the effects of
wars and diseases and any similar agencies, in order as far as this is possible to
prevent the State from becoming either too large or too small Plato, The Republic
(London: Penguin Books, 2003) (P.317)

order to streamline their society into the perfect utopian model. Huxley is influenced
by Thomas Malthuss Essay on Population (1798) and the effects that over-population
would have on quality of life on an over populated planet. Huxley feared33 the effects
of stretching the worlds resources on the happiness and misery of the worlds
inhabitants, if rises in population went on unchecked.34 Huxleys depiction of a
society where institutionalized eugenic engineering underpins a rigidly stratified
class society, the World State, based upon breeding both intelligent leadership and
complacent subservience, and governed by a privileged group of controllers35
engages with a response to this fear expressed by Malthus. He was an advocate of

33 The problem of rapidly increasing numbers in relation to natural resources, to

social stability and to the well-being of individuals -- this is now the central problem
of mankind; and it will remain the central problem certainly for another century, and
perhaps for several centuries thereafter Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
Huxley.net Available at: http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/ [accessed 10th May
2014]
34 We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy
support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population, which is found to
act even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the
means of subsistence are increased. The food therefore which before supported seven
millions, must now be divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions. The
poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to severe
distress. The number of laborers also being above the proportion of the work in the
market, the price of labour must tend toward a decrease; while the price of provisions
would at the same time tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn
the same as he did before. During this season of distress, the discouragements to
marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so great, that population is at a
stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour, the plenty of labourers, and the
necessity of an increased industry amongst them, encourage cultivators to employ
more labour upon their land; to turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more
completely what is already in tillage; till ultimately the means of subsistence become
in the same proportion to the population as at the period from which we set out.
Thomas Malthus, Essay on Population (London: Esp, 1998) P.9 [Kindle Edition]
35 Gregory Claeys, The Origins of Dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell in The
Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature 1st edn. Ed Gregory Claeys (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010) pp.107-134 (P.115).

Eugenics36 and reflected this in Brave New World, engaging public anxieties about
the supposedly degenerating hereditary quality of the population and how this decline
would affect Englands economic future.37 The fear of overpopulation and food
shortages remains to this day a huge political issue, as Genetically Modified
foodstuffs are being more widely sought in order to solve problems of famine in
African and other resource deprived countries38. In the society of Brave New World it
is the World Controllers mission to stabilise the population (P.8) and create
synthetically modified foodstuffs to feed the population, although with the population
rigidly controlled they prefer to keep one third working the land because is takes
longer to get food out of the land than out of the factory. (P.154) Juxtaposed next to
1984, there is a constant shortage of consumption goods (P.235) caused by the
continuous war between the three powers that vie for control of the labour and
resources of peripheral territories in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.39 The need for
war is a political one, as it upholds the whole structure of world power that will be
discussed in part IV of this essay.

36 He defended Eugenics policies of encouraging higher birth rates among the

intellectual classes and sterilising the lower-class unfit, which he believed would
improve the inherited mental abilities of future generations and lead to responsible
citizenship Joanne Woiak, Designing A Brave New World: Eugenics, Politics and
Fiction, The Public Historian, n.s 29 (2007) pp.105-129 (P.106).
37 Joanne Woiak, Designing A Brave New World: Eugenics, Politics and Fiction,
The Public Historian, n.s 29 (2007) pp.105-129 (P. 106).
38 John Vidal, GM crops: European scientists descend on Africa to promote
biotech, The Guardian 24th February 2014 Online edition [accessed 16th April 2014]
Available here: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/feb/24/gmcrops-european-scientists-africa-promote-biotech
39 Andrew Hammond, The Twilight of Utopia: British Dystopian Fiction and the
Cold War, The Modern Language Review, n.s 103 (2011) pp. 662-681 (p.665).

IV. THE WORLD STATE

In 1984 Orwell depicts a world organized into three world powers, Eurasia,
Eastasia and Oceania. This division of world power is an extension of a fear
expressed in his essay You and Atomic Bomb (1945), where he depicts the prospect
of two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions
of people can be wiped out in a few seconds, dividing the world between them.40 This
can be read as a prediction in todays geopolitical climate as American, Russia and
China vying for power and the weapon is the atomic bomb. It is hugely important
that Airstrip 1 is in fact London, Kumar suggesting that the description matches the
war weary world of England in the last stages of the second world war and the
immediate post-war period.41 By establishing the contact between this Dystopia and
England, he creates a sense of familiarity and verisimilitude that the events of 1984
could happen, prompting a reflection on real politics. Orwell depicts the state of the
world after the bomb is developed and used as a political bargaining chip by the three
world states, used to convince the ruling groups of all countries that a few more
atomic bombs would mean the end of organized society, and hence of their own
power. (P.246) Looking retrospectively at this portrayal of international relations after
the development of the atomic bomb, he has effectively predicted the main narrative
of the Cold War (1947-1991) and the subsequent frosty politics that would ensue. The
stockpiling of nuclear weapons from both Russia and America would prove a decisive
theme in real politics and 1984 as all three powers merely continue to produce atomic

40 George Orwell, You and the Atomic Bomb in The Collected Essays, Journalism
and Letters of George Orwell: Volume 4, In front of your nose 1945-1950 (London:
Penguin, 1980) pp23-25 (p23).
41 Krishan Kumar, Politics and Anti-Utopia in, Utopia and Anti Utopia In Modern
Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp.287 (P.296)

bombs and store them up against the decisive opportunity and would come to a head
in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, where Fidel Castro allowed the Soviets to build
nuclear missile bases in close proximity to American cities as a retort to the US
building missile bases in Turkey and Italy that pointed at Moscow. Orwell predicted
correctly through 1984s narrative that the art of war [would] remain almost
stationary (P.246) as the prospect of mutually assured destruction would loom over
the world for the duration of the Cold War. He furthermore predicted that none of the
three super-states ever attempts any maneuverer which involves the risk of serious
defeat. (P.246-7) If the peoples of the three super states ever met each other, they
would realise that their ideologies are barely distinguishable from their neighbouring
states. In Real political terms Orwell elucidates this It was the Hitler-Stalin pact of
1939, thought Orwell, that finally forced people to see that Nazism and communism
were no more than variants of a single type.42

Krisham Kumar suggests that for whatever else 1984 might mean, it appeared
clearly enough to most its early readers and reviewers to be centrally about socialism,
fascism, democracy and the prospects for all three in the contemporary world.
Orwell's writing is shaped by the real political context of oppression he sees around
him. Moreover he pushes this reality, and trends he sees, to some dystopian future.
Huxleys conviction in Brave New World is that practically the whole of modern
Western Development has been a steady descent into nightmare [..] progress a
grotesque and cruel illusion43 like Orwell shapes his writing on political context.
Both texts are predictive of the future, and despite being open to the diversity of
interpretation, we can clearly see that they harbour a salient engagement with real
42 Krishan Kumar, Politics and Anti-Utopia in, Utopia and Anti Utopia In Modern
Times (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp.287 (P.305)

politics. Both novels have a prophetic function, serving as a warning as to the future
direction of our real politics to avoid an anti-utopian future.

WORD COUNT 3240

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