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Christianity in Orwell's Oceania

Kandidat: Fran Kušan Munjin

Mentor: dr.sc. Iva Polak

Kolegij: Alternativni svijetovi u britanskoj suvremenoj prozi

Ak. god.: 2023/24.

1. Introduction
When George Orwell's wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, he did so with the intentions of warning
humanity of the dangers of totalitarianism, a nightmarish political realm that seems to always be
around the corner. Given the enduring nature of this threat, those who are invested in thwarting it
must come to understand some of the constant aspects of the culture over which this threat looms.
This is another way of saying that if humanity has always been (and it has) and continues to be
threatened by despotism and dictatorship, there must be a lingering cause for this hidden at the
very center of the way humans conduct themselves, how they think and how they organize their
societies. Since there are few things that influenced the development of societies more than
organized religion, this paper will endeavor to investigate the complex relationship between
religious doctrine and totalitarianism as seen in Orwell's novel.
A possible beginning of this enquiry might be Orwell's own relationship with religion, important
for understanding his works - Nineteen Eighty-Four, his very last novel, can be seen as a
culmination of a lifelong struggle to understand the subordination of people to various dogmas,
among which religion plays an important role. The goal of the paper is to prove that each tool of a
totalitarian regime is merely an aspect of Christian thought repurposed and modernized. The
method of proof will therefore be to juxtapose aspects of Oceanian society from Orwell's novel
with ideas from Christian philosophy present in British and European societies of the 20th century.

2. Elaboration

2.1. Orwell the anguished agnostic

Ever since his days with the Ursuline nuns and later at St. Cyprian college, where he received a
strict Catholic education, Orwell had been distrusting to religion, especially Roman Catholicism.
His time in those institutions had, however, left a lasting mark, his internal thoughts would
continue to revolve around Christian concepts such as damnation and salvation, while he continued
to reject any authority of organized religion over him. Orwell was known well to the world as an
anti-fascist atheist journalist committed to socialist democracy but there was also Orwell the
anguished agnostic (Hunter, 549), one who despaired over his loss of religion, most of all in his
final days. Though skeptical, he was well-versed in Christian philosophy and the subject continued
to interest him throughout his lifetime. His last novel, which he wrote already stricken by his final
illness and conscious of his numbered days, has for the most part been interpreted as a vision of
totalitarianism, mirroring the regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. While this is true
without a doubt, a diverse set of circumstances, emotions and ponderings went into the creation of
the novel. " In the summer of 1947, Orwell’s youthful memories of feeling ‘‘damned,’’ (...) by ‘‘the
armies of unalterable law’’ seem to have blended with and reinforced his anxieties about the future
of civilization, as well as his concern about his own declining health. All of these emotions fueled
the composition of Nineteen Eighty-Four." (Hunter, 547)

The brilliance of the novel is that it uses a wide variety of composite metaphors, allowing him to
express simultaneously the two burdens plaguing him (future of civilization and religion). This
means that images, characters and events in the novel come to possess a double meaning. The Nazi
and Stalinist interpretation encapsulates only one side of it, with the other being occupied by
religious motifs. The purpose of this paper is to explore this other, lesser known, side of the novel's
imagery, and to draw connections between the two.

2.2. Dantean subtext

The first clue that Nineteen Eighty-Four might be a world rife with Christian imagery is its Dantean
subtext. Here the paper borrows heavily from Orwell’s Commedia: The Ironic Theology of
Nineteen Eighty-Four, an article by William Hunter, who appears to see the novel as a parody of
Dante's Divine Comedy. The similarities are numerous - Orwell's novel is split in three parts, like
Commedia, but the order is reversed, Winston begins in purgatory (wandering around London,
seemingly unperceived by the powers that be), continues to paradise (with Winston having a sexual
affair with Julia) and they both end in hell (in the hands of the secret police and the chambers of
torture). Furthermore, the significance of numbers is an important part of both works, and they are
often the same numbers, who bear religious meaning. In Christianity, there are four cardinal virtues
- wisdom, justice, courage and temperance, in Commedia each is represented by one of the four
celestial spheres in Paradise. In Orwell's novel, there are four central ministries, each of which is
a perversion of one of the virtues (Hunter, 541).
The effect of the Dantean hypotext is to transform Nineteen Eighty-Four into a kind of theological
fable, more akin to Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday than to Zamyatin’s We (1922) or
London’s The Iron Heel (1908), though it is a fable told by a skeptic rather than a Catholic convert.
(Hunter, 544.) When looked at like this, Winston tragedy becomes ontological, rather than just
political. He is not merely trapped in a repressive regime, his soul is stolen from him, and he is
sentenced to damnation. The goodness that Winston seeks is what Hunter calls "romantic
medievalism" (553). His love of old things, like the notebook, the paperweight and the nursery
rhymes that echo a time that is past is, in this case, not only an escape from the totalitarian present,
but a longing for Dantean past, where ontological horror and despair could be overcome by love
and optimism. Such hope is, of course, impossible in Orwell's novel, hence the inversion of the
storyline - Winston does not end up in celestial spheres with his beloved, rather he ends up
separated from her, content, but emptied of himself, in a living nightmare.
What Hunter observes here is certainly interesting, and it raises an issue. Dante himself was a
devout Catholic, and his work, the Commedia, is an expression of that faith. Orwell had been,
throughout his life, repelled by Catholicism. His use of Dantean imagery shows that his bond to
literary precursors was much stronger than the religious differences that seemingly pulled them
apart. Literature may be stronger than faith. On the other hand, what Hunter observed could point
to Orwell being far from a resolute atheist. Perhaps Nineteen Eighty-Four is an expression of an
agnostic who searches for hope and meaning in the face of his own impending death.
The issue that appears from this alternate reading of Orwell is that one cannot be sure whether
religion is complicit to totalitarianism (as this paper had set out to show), or its remedy (as it
appears to be from the Dantean perspective). Maybe truth lies in some kind double nature of
religion, which allows it to sustain in equal measure, the power that crushes human spirit and the
power that sustains it?

2.3 Internal sin and thoughtcrime

An aspect of Orwell's work which seems to show the connection between totalitarianism and
Christianity is the concept of thoughtcrime. In the novel, it is one of the tenets of Ingsoc ideology
(that of the ruling Party) which holds that even a thought, an immaterial thing, can be considered
a crime. The most terrifying aspect of this society is that it strives to control not just the external
actions of its citizens, but their very minds as well.
While the word thoughcrime comes from Orwell, the concept is not original to him, nor to 20th
century dystopian literature, rather it is a fundamental tenet of traditional Catholicism, where it is
called internal sin. Catholics maintain that there are two kinds of sin - external, committed, and
internal, imagined or thought up. For example, sleeping with a neighbour's wife is considered an
external sin, while imagining the act is an internal sin. Catholic tradition places equal gravity on
both, with internal sin sometimes being thought of as worse. It is not uncommon for practicing
Catholics to enter confessional booths and receive absolution for their "sinful thoughts". While
Oceania, being more technologically developed, goes so far as to monitor and police people's
thoughts, in the Catholic tradition an intent to do so exists. It would not be far-fetched to say that
the monitoring machines invented and used by totalitarian society, are but a realization of a dream
dreamt up by religion long ago. The dream being mind control.

In both cases, thoughts are not free, and people receive punishments, in this world or the next, for
thoughts.
2.6. Goldstein and the Devil

Another link between Christianity and totalitarianism can be seen in the character of Emmanuel
Goldstein. He is very interesting because he is not really a character - he never appears physically
in the novel and at the end it is revealed that he never existed at all - yet his presence (his supposed
existence) plays a large role in the story. Firstly, his image is used by the Party to focalize the
Party-members negative emotions into a single point (lest they should be uncertain of what to
hate), in the same way that Big Brother (who also doesn't exist in physical form) absorbs all their
positive emotions. As a literary device, Emmanuel Goldstein serves two purposes - one is political,
the other religious. The political purpose of his presence in the novel is to draw a connection
between Oceania and the regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The connection with
Stalinist Russia is that Goldstein bears a striking resemblance with Leon Trotsky, an initial member
of the revolution turned dissident. The book that he purportedly wrote, The Theory and Practice
of Oligarchical Collectivism, is analogous to Trotsky's own book A revolution betrayed.
Furthermore, Goldstein appears to be Jewish in both name and appearance - " it was a lean Jewish
face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard"(Orwell, 14). That the
Party's hate should be directed at such a character points clearly to the Antisemitism that was the
fundamental facet of Nazi ideology.

But this is only one half of the Goldstein metaphor. From David Walton's remark that he is "a
composite scapegoat deriving from Christianity's Devil and Stalinism's Trotsky..."(Brennan, 147)
a candidate for the second half is presented. The two even share a common narrative - both were
one members of the side they rebelled against - Goldstein had been one of the Party's founding
members, and Lucifer had been one of God's most trusted angels. Christianity's invention of the
Devil as an inherently evil and powerful, but never actually seen, figure might serve the very same
purpose in the Christian world as Emmanuel Goldstein serves in Oceania. The channeling of all
negative emotions into a single point - the Devil - and all positive emotions into another and
opposite point - God - leaves one with a simplified view of the world, a world of black-and-white.
Since it is possible for representative of the Church to choose at will what constitutes a work of
God and what a work of the Devil, it is therefore easy for them to suppress and prevent any
behavior they deem "wrong", as well as elevate and support any behavior they deem "right". This
binary distinction that exists in the Christian world, the totalitarian worlds of our history and in
Oceania, creates an atmosphere were morality hangs on artificial statements made by the ruling
order. Wrong becomes something not suitable to the ruling class, something that has destabilizing
influence over the established order.
Through Goldstein it can be seen how totalitarian worlds of our history used scapegoats (Trotsky
in Russia and Jews in Germany) to incite and control their followers, and it has been demonstrated
that in the Christain world the figure of the Devil has been used in much the same way as the
scapegoat Emmanuel Goldstein. Therefore, it can be stated without a doubt that the three worlds
share a common nature.

3. Conclusion

The issue, after all this introspection into Orwell's novel, of whether the analogy between
totalitarianism and religion is meant to represent the sinister nature of religion, or present religion
as the salvation from the coldness of a mechanical dictatorial society, remains unsolved. Orwell
himself remained uncertain - on one hand, he feared Roman Catholicism and organized religion in
general, and on the other, he believed that repressive regimes of the 20th century came to fill the
spiritual emptiness that appeared when Christianity in Europe began to wane. What is certain,
however, is that these religious questions stand at the very center of Orwell's novel. A more
complete explanation to the issue presented requires a theological reading of Orwell, or at least a
literary one that examines the influence of Dante. A view from which the novel is only political
satire fails to see the bigger picture.

Works cited:

Brennan, Michael G. George Orwell and Religion. Bloomsbury Publishing, 3 Nov. 2016.

Hunt, William. “Orwell’s Commedia: The Ironic Theology of Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Modern

Philology, vol. 110, no. 4, May 2013, pp. 536–563

Orwell, George. 1984. London, Secker & Warburg, 8 June 1949.