George Orwell, 1984

- Neo-modernist literature: focus on political/public evil  dystopia (personal alienation/trauma

caused by radical/totalitarian ideologies)
- life translated into ideas/slogans/wooden language, people turned into victims (the proles) 
evil explored against natural laws (post-humanist, fantasy mode)
- pedagogical function of dystopia  anti-exemplary, rational models of imperfect/threatening
societies that crush man’s hopes and aspirations
- dystopia written in 1949; dark fantasy concerned with the future of mankind, with the
organization of society; communist welfare state policy; the novel = a warning against the rise
of communism Orwell witnessed in Spain and the Soviet Union < inspired by the post-war
realities of 1940
- revival of REALISM > Modernist consciousness comes to an end in the early 1940s >
continued by absurdist writers; in the same Orwellian vein: Iris Murdoch, Under the Net; W.
Golding, Lord of the Flies; A. Burgess, The Clockwork Orange – NOVELS OF IDEAS,
allegories based on political ideology, dogma, falsification of the past and particularly
PRESENT  obliteration of the progressive and rational discourse of modernity
- post-humanist implements (telescreens) for controlling people; “ideological repressive
apparatuses” (Louis Althusser) used as modern psychological conditioning
- conflation of modern technology (West) and social democracy (East) in order to show the
separation of East (the communist bloc) from West
- main character – Winston Smith, working in the Record Dpt. Of the Ministry of Truth, forging
the past; Oceania – Big Brother = omnipotent and infallible vs. Eurasia – irony: the name of
institutions in the novel meaning their opposite: Ministry of Truth (falsification of history),
Ministry of Love (propaganda), Ministry of Plenty (poverty/proletarian democracy as pure
fiction)
- Orwell’s coinages: DOUBLETHINK, DOUBLESPEAK (Crimestop, INGSOC – 2 + 2 =5,
Fiction Dpt., the Brotherhood – underground group aiming to overthrow the Party)
- THE WILL TO POWER: panopticon (the telescreen, the Big Brother)/‘docile bodies’
(coercion, mechanics of power)//̔technologies of the self’ = social and political control (cf.
Michel Foucault):

“Political power, before acting on ideology, on the consciousness of individuals, exerts itself in a much more
physical way on their bodies. The way in which gestures, attitudes, usages, allotments in space, and modalities of
housing are imposed – this physical, spatial distribution of people belongs, it seems to me, to a political
technology of the body.”

- reeducation through torture (the O’Brien case); no morality, no emotions; technology as the
embodiment of EVIL; Newspeak – the new lgg. of the Party acting as brainwashing/people as
social automatons > loss of history (past) and individuality => MANIPULATION,
PROPAGANDA; PROLETARIAT (like the red-armed prole woman trying to stand against the
ruling Party called Oceania)

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone –
to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone:
From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of double think –
greetings!
COMMUNIST DYSTOPIA - He [i.e. the Party member] must be cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off from
foreign countries, BECAUSE IT IS NECESSARY FOR HIM TO BELIEVE THAT HE IS BETTER OFF THAN HIS
ANCESTORS and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising. [...] This day-to-day falsification of the
past, carried out by the Ministry of Truth, is as neccesary to the stability of the regime as the work of repression and
espionage carried out by the Ministry of Love [equivalent ot the Securitate].

CENSORSHIP, ERASING/FORGING MEMORY: And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally
full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. [...] But it is also
necessary to remember that events happened in the desired manner.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory belief in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
The Party intellectual knows in what direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows he is playing tricks with
reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. [...] Ultimately, it is by means
of doublethink that the Party has been able – and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years - to arrest
the course of history.

The Theatre of the Absurd – Samuel Beckett

- Absurdism - creative movement in the modern theater, defining a particular type of realistic drama
after WW II; term coined by the American critic Martin Esslin in the 1960’s;
- Focuses on an existentialist point of view which determines the audience to consider the meaning
of their existence in a world where there appears to be no true order or meaning;

- PRECURSORS: Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi; it emerged in France after WW II, as a rejection of
traditional Western values and beliefs > Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus >> Eugene Ionesco,
Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, and Harold Pinter.

- FEATURES: a) no real story line but ‘free floating images’ (cf. Jacques Derrida’s
deconstructionism) which influence the way in which an audience interprets a play; parody, irony,
indeterminacy (anticipating postmodernism) < Roland Barthes’s “death of the author”

- b) the world is incomprehensible > rationalizing the irrational, disorderly world, incoherence
and randomness as method;

- c) language – a barrier to communication, indeterminacy, deferral of meaning, nonsense,

clichés, speech almost futile, lack of logic, broken syntax, no coherent speech acts  ‘the language
of silence’, alienation in the outside world

Martin Esslin: ‘The Theatre of the Absurd attacks the comfortable certainties of religious or political
orthodoxy. It aims to shock its audience out of complacency, to bring it face to face with the
harsh facts of the human situation as these writers see it. But the challenge behind this message
is anything but one of despair. It is a challenge to accept the human condition as it is, in all its
mystery and absurdity, and to bear it with dignity, nobly, responsibly; precisely because there
are no easy solutions to the mysteries of existence, because ultimately man is alone in a
meaningless world […] The moment we realize that we may have to live without any final
truths the situation changes; we may have to readjust ourselves to living with less exulted aims
and by doing so become more humble, more receptive, less exposed to violent disappointments
and crises of conscious - and therefore in the last resort happier and better adjusted people,
simply because we then live in closer accord with reality’ > focus on understanding the ‘true’
meaning of life
Waiting for Godot – written in French in 1948, premiered in 1953 in Paris and in 1955 in England >
new theatre conventions – 2-act play concentrating on ‘the power to survive tomorrow’ through
repetition/routine; uncertainty of life (Godot never comes)
- religious and Biblical allusions, yet God reduced to a ludicrous absence – paradox/double attitude
- God defined via apophatic/negative theology

VLADIMIR:
Well? What do we do?
ESTRAGON:
Don't let's do anything. It's safer.
VLADIMIR:
Let's wait and see what he says.
ESTRAGON:
Who?
VLADIMIR:
Godot.
ESTRAGON:
Good idea.
VLADIMIR:
Let's wait till we know exactly how we stand.
ESTRAGON:
On the other hand it might be better to strike the iron before it freezes.
VLADIMIR:
I'm curious to hear what he has to offer. Then we'll take it or leave it.
ESTRAGON:
What exactly did we ask him for?
VLADIMIR:
Were you not there?
ESTRAGON:
I can't have been listening.
VLADIMIR:
Oh . . . Nothing very definite […]
ESTRAGON:
And what did he reply?
VLADIMIR:
That he'd see.
ESTRAGON:
That he couldn't promise anything.
VLADIMIR:
That he'd have to think it over.

Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?

Vladimir: Yes, yes, we're magicians.

Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are
needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still
ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the
most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us!

Vladimir: I don't understand.

Estragon: Use your intelligence, can't you?
Vladimir uses his intelligence.
Vladimir: (finally) I remain in the dark.
We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A
diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let's get to work! (He advances towards the heap,
stops in his stride.) In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone more, in the midst of nothingness!