D for Dystopias and the battle for individualism

1. nineteen eighty-four George Orwell D for Dystopias and the battle for individualism The Shared Study of Paired Texts: Nineteen Eighty-four and V for Vendetta

2. By studying one text in relation to another, students can see that the same idea, experience, emotion, or opinion can be treated in different ways. Students may explore ideas of intertextuality as their interpretation and understanding of the texts chosen for study are informed by their awareness of other texts. Each of the texts being studied forms part of the intertextual context for the other. English 2010 Subject Outline (Stage 2 English Studies from 2011), p.52

3. Nineteen Eighty-four’s dystopian narrative of totalitarianism, as well as its intertextual connection to V for Vendetta through the film’s Big Brother characterisation of the British Prime Minister (reinforced by casting John Hurt, who played Winston Smith in the 1984 film adaptation of Orwell’s novel), make significant connections. • V for Vendetta’s adaptation of a 1989 graphic novel, an Orwellian satire of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, employs comic-book cinematography to graft a revenge melodrama onto a Matrix style political thriller, layered with intertextual allusions. Why pair Nineteen Eighty-four and V for Vendetta?

4. While setting and subject matter make V for Vendetta almost a mirror of Orwell’s dystopian vision, the film self-consciously transforms the novel’s bleak warning of a totalitarian future into a wish fulfilment fantasy of political liberation, lead not by Winston Smith’s tragically doomed Everyman, but an avenging superhero. What does the pairing of these texts reveal?

5. common themes, ideas, or topics • the power of the state over the individual • voyeurism • human vulnerabilities and victimization • sacrifice and redemption • historical or literary periods • mid to late 20th C. modernism & its abuse of political power vs. post-9/11 cynicism & the ‘war on terror’ • genres • feature film vs. novel • political thrillers • revengequest vs. dystopia • cultural perspectives • English (intellectual) vs. American (Wachowski pop-psychology) Options for establishing a link between these paired texts

6. 1984 A novel, a satire, a warning, a text with many prescient and uncanny connections…

7. “God is power” (p.276): 1984’s metaphysical paradox • If God is power, he had to create the world so as to be perceived • Winston Smith’s rebellion is created by O’Brien in order for the party to reaffirm the reality of its power, by creating the consciousness of its power: “a boot stamping on a human face – for ever” cannot exist without a face

8. 2 + 2 = 5 • The only point in making Winston believe that two and two equals five is to break him: • Denying a belief for no reason (to act without reason) is a first step towards losing a sense of self – it makes you irrational in the precise sense of being unable to justify yourself to yourself.

9. Room 101 • Why are rats Winston's deepest fear? • What is the psychological source of this fear?

10. In his selfish and uncontrollable hunger as a child, Winston denied his mother and tore himself away from the primary bond of belonging, loyalty and love. In his uncontrollable fear of the rats, Winston re-enacts that first act of betrayal: he offers up the body of the only person he loves, as a surrogate for his own. When he screams, "Do it to Julia" - offering her as a human sacrifice to the hungry rats - he symbolically devours the one he loves. 101

11. 101 • In Room 101 he can no longer stay "in front of" the wall of darkness: he is forced to get over to "the other side" (p.297). And as the walls of the private self are being destroyed, he feels that he is falling "through the floor, through the walls of the building, through the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into outer space, into the gulfs between the stars - always away, away, away from the rats" (p.300)

12. Room 101 • O'Brien's experiment was successful: man is nothing but a beast who can be degraded until he is deprived of his will to become an instrument in the hands of the Party.

13. Room 101 • BUT the starved rats, just like the child Winston, were themselves the victims of the Party's brutality. Ultimately the real face behind the mask-like cage of the rats is the face of Big Brother himself - who turns his subjects into ferocious, hate-filled beings like himself, forcing them to act out the ritual of his own prime betrayal as human sacrifice.

14. Room 101 • In effect, all the citizens of Oceania are kept in their cage, systematically starved, deprived of food, love, sexual and emotional satisfaction, so that the Party may channel all their pent-up energy into the hysterical quest for new victims, leading to the equally hysterical worship of their leader.

15. But if Room 101 had always been waiting for Winston - as he had often guessed and we now know - then where is the shame and personal responsibility? Here is the novel's complex moral paradox. 101

16. 101 • For thirty years Winston's sense of guilt has been a burden, but it also served as a reminder that he still had a sense of personal loyalty and could feel shame. In fact, it was this mysterious sense of guilt or shame that made him start his search for the Truth in the past, the search which led ultimately to moral regeneration.

17. Significantly, once he repeats his act of betrayal, he no longer carries the burden of guilt - free of his sense of humanity and basic moral attitudes defining the private self. Once reborn, united with the collective self of Oceania, he is incapable of regret or guilt because he has no further claim to a private conscience. 101

18. Room 101 provides the climactic scene of the novel in which all betrayals are brought together in a series of symbolic reversals Face-to-face through zero: reduced to nothingness through fear and shame, Winston faces the rats in himself Repetition after a reversal: repeating the childhood trial, Winston reverts to another state of childhood 101

19. 101 • Room 101 is at the heart of the novel, wherein all betrayals are brought together in a series of continuous, repeated reversals: • At the centre of the mythical (Oedipal), political (totalitarian), and psychological drama of betrayal.

20. 1010101010101010101010101 • It is here that any victim is turned victimiser by betraying his bond of private loyalty. Paradoxically, it is precisely at this point that he will finally be trapped, 'chained' to become a true victim, willing to stay in his cage forever. • Ironically, it is by adjusting to the norm of the majority that Winston has now become, finally, insane. Having joined in the collective insanity imposed on the population by Big Brother, Winston now willingly joins the other rats in their cage.

21. Alan Kennedy argues that 1984 is not a prophecy or a warning but a challenge to our ability to read critically • Room 101 represents the enactment of the state’s power – as an absolute bondage between the state and its victim • Reading against the grain of the novel, we may reject O’Brien’s version of power by questioning the claim that all reality is in the mind or available in the form of knowledge • ‘The Inversion of Form: Deconstructing 1984’, in George Orwell, ed. by Graham Holderness, Bryan Loughrey and Nahem Yousaf (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1998) Room 101

22. Erika Gottlieb argues that room 101 reveals the psychodynamics of totalitarianism: • Why Western intellectuals were susceptible to the psychosis of nationalistic leader worship • Winston’s ordeal is that of Everyman – our common humanity in confrontation with the dehumanising forces of totalitarianism • The mask-like rat’s cage symbolises loss of face and Winston’s guilt for denying the fundamental values of the private self • Dystopian Fiction East and West: Universe of Terror and Trial. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2001 Room 101

23. The efficiently repressive state induces in its subjects a perpetual state of guilt formed from the knowledge of betrayal – betrayal of the self, of others and ultimately of Big Brother. Room 101

24. In the 1930’s, U.S. psychologist B.F. Skinner extended the work of Ivan Pavlov on conditioned reflexes in animals, by training a laboratory rat to press a small lever protruding from one wall of his specially designed box in order to obtain a pellet of food. • In 1948 he published one of his most controversial works, Walden Two, a novel on life in a utopian community modelled on his own principles of social engineering. Room 101

25. Re-educating the self in Dystopian Fiction NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR &

26. V for Vendetta transforms room 101 from the end-point of totalitarian terror into the education of a resistant self – by reversing Winston Smith’s betrayal of Julia into Valerie’s redemption of Evey Hammond through self-sacrifice

27. Irish Catholic resistance • Appropriating the Shoah • The philosophy of Thomas Hobbes • Critical theory and spirituality – Slavoj Žižek Theoretical approaches to V for Vendetta

28. Worksheet for Comparative Analysis of Paired Texts

29. Comparison by ‘tone’ • The novel’s bleakness is still present in this passage but it is modulated by the sense of security and freedom that Charrington’s room brings, with its association with the forbidden past and Julia’s love. The freedom of the past and the despair of the present are linked on p.150 when Winston contemplates ‘whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this… making love when they chose’. And the doubts become focussed when the rat appears to invoke Winston’s nameless childhood terror, only to be forgotten by the sensuality of the present moment. Nineteen Eighty-four, chapter 4: pp. 150-154

30. Comparison by ‘tone’: • The same ‘split’ in tone between the abject fear of Evey’s captivity and the nostalgia tinted memories of Valerie’s past run through the film episode. The literal tone of actors’ voices reflects this with the harshness of the faceless interrogator and the gentleness of Valerie’s voice-over narrator, which is paralled by the contrast in lighting (dark blue shadows vs. golden orange light) and camera movement (still, claustrophobic C.U. vs. flowing pans, zooms and occasional long shots).. V for Vendetta, DVD Ch. 18-21, 1:06:50 – 1:22:30

31. pp.103-107: ‘Winston knew the place well…’ to ‘IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH’ • When Evey first meets V and he demolishes the Old Bailey • pp.128-133: ‘The first fragment of chocolate…’ to ‘It was a political act.’ • Valerie’s story up to and including meeting Ruth on The Salt Flats set • pp.186-189: ‘On the sixth day of Hate Week,…’ to ‘… an opportunity to look inside it.’ • Prothero’s ‘voice of London’ on TV, while V and Evey put on their makeup. • pp.150-154: ‘Presently they fell asleep…’ to ‘…at the heart of the crystal.’ • pp.230-234: ‘The birds sang,…’ to ‘…a member of the Thought Police.’ • pp.296-300: ‘ “The worst thing in the world,”…’ to ‘…shut and not open.’ • Parts of Evey’s incarceration, up to and including the roof top scene in the rain Episodes from the novel with potential film pairs

32. Evey Hammond’s imprisonment Critical reading of a film sequence

33. Compare the ways in which the authors of two texts explore the idea that it is important to have something to hope for. • Compare the ways in which the authors of two texts explore the idea that redemption can be found even in the most adverse circumstances. • If your study involved paired texts of contrasting text types, compare the ways in which the authors use the conventional features of each text type to explore similar ideas. • Compare the ways in which the authors of two texts use hostile environments as a context for the exploration of ideas 2011 exam questions – PAIRED TEXTS

34. How does the author of a prescribed text explore the idea that it is essential to confront the truth about the past? • How does the author of a prescribed text explore the idea that freedom is worth the cost? 2011 exam questions – SINGLE TEXTS