37 RAINBOW 3 (1) (2014) Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/rainbow DYSTOPIA AND ORWELL’S PITFALL IN GEORGE ORWELL’S 1984 Erviyan Ragil Wicaksono  English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Semarang, Indonesia Article Info ________________ Article History: Received in April 2014 Approved in May 2014 Published in June 2014 ________________ Keywords: George Orwell, dystopia, 1984. ____________________ Abstract ___________________________________________________________________ George Orwell was ranked as one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century and as one of the most important chroniclers of English culture of his generation. George Orwell as a socialist criticized over a state or a government that claimed that, they are ideologically socialism. In this study, I discussed Dystopia and Orwell’s Pitfall in George Orwell’s 1984. Dystopia is an antithesis of utopia. If utopia is life of a society where a world in safe, happy, and others which are representing all of human dreams, it reflects the desire for seeking the age of the Queen of Justice, then dystopia is the world that became the symbol of human rights destruction of every man with their powerlessness and a hopeless life. This final project is aimed at how totalitarian dystopia reflected in 1984, what are the factors of George Orwell’s idea in 1984, and to identify how George Orwell’s adjusts himself due to his political position. I employ George Orwell’s 1984 as the object of this study. This study is a descriptive qualitative study with sociology in literature approaches. It is descriptive qualitative since the data of the study are in the form of phrases, sentences, narrations and dialogues and I do not employ computation. The data are gained by reading the novel thoroughly, identifying, and selecting. This investigation results in several findings. First, dystopia is really portrays in 1984 as the world deprivation. Second, Orwell wanted to show that basically people have a strong will to look for justice, love, truth, and solidarity. Third, Orwell wants socialism life is not a pure socialism, but socialism which represents the society that has freedom of speech. It can be concluded that Orwell is undogmatic socialist. © 2014 Universitas Negeri Semarang  Correspondent Address: B3 Building FBS Unnes Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229 E-mail: ervianragil@yahoo.com ISSN 2252-6463 Erviyan Ragil Wicaksono / Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies 3 (1) (2014) 38 INTRODUCTION Eric Arthur Blair known by his pen name George Orwell was an English novelist, journalist and essayist. George Orwell was ranked as one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century and as one of the most important chroniclers of English culture of his generation (Ash, 2001). In 1922, he was an Indian Imperial Police in Burma but he criticized the colonial government that makes the existence of social inequalities in Burma, it made him became an anarchist. Later he resigned and then in 1936 joined with P.O.U.M. (rebel army) in Spain. An anarchist in the late 1920s, by the 1930s he had begun to consider himself a socialist (Roden, 2001). Orwell fought for the Republicans against Franco's regime military government. The experience turned him into a lifelong anti-Stalinist (Shelden, 2010). He saw that the rebels only aim as the resistance was to get the power over Franco regime and that they did not fight for any particular form of society to help the people to increase their life standard (Wengraf, 2002). In 1943, he became literary editor of the Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine and joined the International Labor Party. It implies that he declared himself as a socialist (Wengraf, 2002: 6). His refusal to Stalin regime in Soviet is written in his work entitled Animal Farm published in 1945. According to Wellek and Warren in Theory of Literature (1956:94), Literature is the expression of feeling, passion and emotion caused by a sensation of the interestingness of life. It glows from the imaginative mind of the writer. It is an imaginative fable world which is the story of the revolution betrayed. 1984 was his other anti-Stalin book and his last work. 1984 is the conclusion of George Orwell writing because this was the book that he made with full preparation. Politically, Orwell belonged to the Left, and many Leftists accused him as a dissident with 1984 because the book was so obviously anti-communist (Wengraf, 2002: 6). From the description above, it is clear that George Orwell as a socialist criticizing over a state or a government that claimed that, they are ideologically socialism. Sometimes there are some contradictions between what he wrote on his works or his essays and his ideology. It is confusing that he hated communism while his ideology was socialism. According to Wellek and Warren (1956: 94) literary work represents phenomenon of life in society. Some of George Orwell works are based on his life experience and ideological conflict in the society that happen at that time. Orwell is a writer who is critical to the events or the political situation around him. Generally, people will write in their essay or their books about their idea or dream such a prosperous, without misery and peaceful life or they call it, an ideal world (utopia). The problem is Orwell was known as an idealist as I described above with his ideas about Socialism. Surprisingly, in his novel 1984, he described a dark horror world of socialism country that no one would ever thought to live there (dystopia). This is showing an ambiguity, a big question about what is really going on inside Orwell thought with his work, 1984 which is a pitfall for his own ideas. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 1. Ideology Ideology is part of politics. The largely concealed structure of values which informs and underlies our factual statements is part of what is meant by 'ideology'. By 'ideology' is the ways in which what we say and believe connects with the power- structure and power-relations of the society we live in (Terry Eagleton, 2005:23). Ideology is simply the deeply entrenched, often unconscious beliefs which people hold and it is started with the belief that things can be better. Anthony Downs put ideology as a verbal image of good society, and of the chief means of constructing such a society (Michael G. Roskin, 2008: 94). There are various ideologies that appears to the world as the history of nations recorded them such as Liberalism, Socialism, Democracy, Fascism, and so on. Capitalism and Marxist Socialism are two different ideologies which will be investigated through this study. The two are Erviyan Ragil Wicaksono / Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies 3 (1) (2014) 39 very famous for their battle has brought so much misery for people in the middle of 20th century. 2. Socialism Socialism rose due to the obvious excesses of capitalist system. Karl Marx as their leading thinker promoted a revolution. In his gigantic analysis Das Capital, he explains why Capitalism would be overthrown by proletariat. He believed that later would come a perfect society without class distinction. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx said that the proletariats have nothing to lose but their chains and they have a world to win (Michael G. Roskin, 2008: 101). The final goal for Marxist socialists is the emancipation of labor from alienation, and therefore freedom for the individual to receive access to material goods and necessities. It is argued that freedom from need would maximize individual liberty, as individuals would be able to pursue their own interests and develop their own talents without being forced into performing labor for others (the ruling class) via mechanisms of social control, such as the labor market and the state. 3. Dystopia The term of dystopia is often replaced by another one, negative utopia, which relates itself to the realm of utopian literature (Zsolt Cziganyik, 1990:305). A dystopian society is one of in which the conditions of life are miserable, characterized by human misery, poverty, oppression, violence, disease, and pollution. While there have been actual societies which have experienced most if not all of these characteristics, the term dystopia is largely a literary term, referring to a class of literary works that serve as cautionary tales against some form of totalitarianism of the left or right (www.newworldencyclopedia/dystopia.com). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term was coined in the late nineteenth century by British philosopher John Stuart Mill, who also used Jeremy Bentham synonym, cacotopia. The prefix caco means ‘the worst’. Both words were created to contrast utopia, a word coined by Sir Thomas More to describing an ideal place or society. Utopia combined the Greek derived eu (good) and topos (place). Dystopia combined the dys, Greek word for ‘bad’ or negative with topos, meaning ‘bad place’ (Beaumont 2006). According to Donawerth (2003), the literature of dystopia draws on the human experience of the failure of states and ideologies to create the utopians, or even more simple aims of good governance, even totalitarian consequences. Dystopian societies are portrayed with different defining features. There are dystopias of the political left and right, religious and atheistic, futuristic or allegoristic. One thing they often share in common is that they resemble a utopian or harmonious society but with at least one fatal flaw. Whereas a utopian society is founded on the good life, a dystopian society’s dreams of improvement are overshadowed by stimulating fears of the ugly consequences of present-day behavior (2003: 29-31). Dystopia challenges utopia’s assumption of human perfectibility and perfect society (McKenna, 2001: 18). In dystopian fiction, we can rarely find hope. Although creators of dystopian fiction usually describe world set in near future, they write about things they feared in the existing world of reality, exploring the worst possible scenario of the future of our own world, they show their own concern about some social trends (2001: 33). 4. Sociology of Literature We can find many phenomena of life in society. Those phenomena can be found in a literary work such as short story, plays, poem, novel, nursery rhymes and etc. It happens because literary works are reflection of life phenomena. According to Wellek and Warren (1956: 94-95) literature represents life. Life is, in large measure, a social reality, even though the natural world and the inner or subjective world of the individual have also been objects of the literary imitation. Literature is an expression of society. It means that in literary works, we can find phenomena of life in the society because literary work is the reflection of life. Etymologically, sociology derived from the word 'socio' or 'society' which means people and 'logy' http://www.newworldencyclopedia/dystopia.com Erviyan Ragil Wicaksono / Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies 3 (1) (2014) 40 means logos or science. In simple explanation, sociology is a science of society or science of society life. In a broader explanation sociology is objective and scientific study of mankind in society, the study of institutions and social processes. According to Edward Tiryakian (quoted by Hodges, Jr, 1971:8), sociology is the science which seeks universal knowledge about man’s social condition in their specific and general manifestations; its raison d’etre (English: reason or justification for the existence of a thing) is to investigate the implications of Aristotle’s proposition that man is a social animal. Some conceptualizations of the relationship between literature and society are rather straightforward: literature is a reflection of society, a force in society, or simply a separate part of social life (http://www.marxists.org/). Others argue that the enterprise of literature is more complex, potentially capturing diverse forms of interaction between various parts of and players in society. Thus, the roles of literature in society and of society in literature remain open to debate. That literature is best understood only as aesthetic creation silences the debate yet leaves many questions unanswered. In creating a literary work, the work is not only influenced by the society, but also its writer. As stated by Wellek and Warren (1956: 102), a writer is not only influenced by society but also he or she influences it and art does not merely reproduce life but also shapes it. It means that both the writer and society influence the literary work. Thus, there are three points in sociological approach that should be noticed. They are social content of the work, the sociology of writer as a background of his creative process, and the influence of literature society (1956: 96). According the quotations above, I conclude that literature is reflection of life in society and both society and author influence each other. There are three points should be noticed: social content of the work, the sociology of writer as a background of his creative process, and the influence of literature on society. I use this approach because it is suitable with the literature I analyze. In doing this research, I emphasize on the aspect of the sociology of writer as a background of his creative process. 5. Theoretical Framework The framework of analysis used in this study is based on library research, reading of literatures and related sources. In addition, I also use theories that are relevant to my final project to analyze the data and answer the problem statements. The first is sociology of literature. Similar with what I have explained above, according to Wellek and Warren (1956: 94-95) Literature is an expression of society. It means that in literary works, we can find phenomena of life in the society because literary work is the reflection of life. The second is Marxist approach in literature. According to Bressler (1999: 220), Marxism, many believe, enables us to understand ourselves and how we as individuals relate to and are affected by our society. These voices all assert that we must help direct and change our society, our culture, our nation, and our world by leading humanity toward an understanding and an acceptance of socialism. In the study, this proposition will be used to evaluate the main character word view or ideology and determine whether it is related to the dystopia in the novel. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 1. Research Design This research is a qualitative research and it made use of qualitative and descriptive data. According to Moleong (1995: 2), descriptive qualitative research is defined as the qualitative research, a type of research which does not include any calculation or enumerating. Qualitative data is usually in the form of words rather than numbers. They are a source of well- grounded, rich descriptions and explanations of processes in identifiable contexts. With qualitative research one can preserve chronological flow and see precisely which events led to consequences and derive faithful explanation (Miles & Huberman, 1994: 10). Qualitative research is in accordance with this study due to several reasons. First, it is because the aim of this study is to focus on the ‘‘qualities’’ of social life and to show how everyday experience is meaningfully constructed in social interaction. Erviyan Ragil Wicaksono / Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies 3 (1) (2014) 41 Second, the source of the data is a novel which is full of description of situation and dialogues of the characters, and therefore the data is in form of description and not numbers. Third, this study tried to explore what is commonly thought that is true in the society and thereby exposing the shortcomings of everyday understandings as qualitative research explores complexities. The object of this study is a novel entitled 1984 by George Orwell. This novel has been republished several times since 1949 and so it has various editions with various numbers of pages. In this study, I employed 1984 e-book from Planet eBook.com. This edition has 393 pages and I accessed it from www.planetebook.com /ebooks1984.pdf. The synopsis of the novel is attached in the appendices. 2. Instruments The research is based on textual data so that it is analyzed, interpreted, and described supported by accurate references. A literature review is used to familiarize me with the concept and content of literature. The main instrument of this research are the researcher the observation sheets. A manual transcription or note of my findings will be written down in observation sheets that contain data selections. In the observation sheets, the data selections are in the form of quotations presented in 1984 as the data of study. The observation sheets are attached in the appendix. 3. Technique of Collecting the Data Reading is the first and basic step in analyzing a literary work in order to understand the content of the work well. I read the novel (accessed from www.planetebook.com/ebooks1984.pdf) thoroughly to comprehend the content and the message delivered by the author. Since the source of data is a novel. I would like to identify the data in form of sentences, utterances, and paragraphs which are related to the problem of this study. There are two steps in data identification: underlining and numbering. The data were identified as part of the whole story so that the interpretation will be relevant to the theme of the story. In this step, I selected the classified data by reducing them. This step aims to specify the analysis; therefore the classified data must be reduced. I selected the data that deal with character education. I chose only the relevant data and separated the data that are not really necessary. 4. Technique of Analyzing the Data The approach of the research is sociology of literature and the technique of analyzing data will be using this steps as suggested by Bressler (1999: 222) as follows: 1) Identifying the outright rejection existed in the novel. 2) Identifying the fundamental criticism about the emptiness of life in bourgeois society. 3) Identifying the approximation of totality that the author achieved in portraying society and what is emphasis of the novel. 4) Identifying the novel conflicting forces and explaining the fate of the individual who is linked organically to the nature of societal forces. 5) Investigating the points at which solutions or actions to the problems forced or unreal. 6) Investigating the values of each class in the novel. After that, the result of the identifying and investigating are classified according to the research problem. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 1. Dystopia in George Orwell’s 1984 In 1984 novel, the world is divided into three giant countries, Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. The structure and constitution of the three powers are the same that embraces totalitarian system. All three are run by the party that removes all personal wealth and absolute control of the people. Authoritarian government run their ideology according an overview of totalitarianism: ruled with iron fist, firing squad, torture and flogging, prison execution, spies and secret police. Terror spreads for their entire life. The http://www.planetebook.com/ebooks1984.pdf Erviyan Ragil Wicaksono / Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies 3 (1) (2014) 42 movements of each person are monitored by the “telescreen”, it is a kind of “cctv” with dual screens in the lenses. In addition, the posters of Big Brother are displayed throughout the city with the sentence below: “Big Brother Is Watching You”. To organize people in total and absolute is the main goal of the government. O'Brien as an important figure in the Inner Party is giving a clear explanation about this. His understanding of power is as follows: “Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” (Orwell, 1949: 332) One of the mainstay of the party to maintain their power is to create an atmosphere of “less conscious”, or better yet not conscious at all. The atmosphere is achieved by eliminating all records or past history systematically and changed it according to the government wishes. The result of this action is in order to make anyone cannot know anything about the past and they cannot compare with the current time. “Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” (Orwell, 1949: 44) 2. Behind Orwell’s Idea on Dystopia in 1984 George Orwell (1903-1950) is a pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. He was born in Bengal, India in 1903. After came back to England, he became a novelist and essay writer, but he was particularly concentrating on political writings. His experiences when he lived in India, and then also Burma, created his uncertain sense to colonialism and capitalism that he believed was suppressing human rights. Therefore, he named himself a socialist who defends the poor’s. However, in the other hand, he hated oppressions as was done by Stalin and Hitler. When the civil war of Spain clashed, he participated in the war by joining the socialist communist side. His experience in the Spanish civil war explained his posture to socialism. In fact, the main purpose of Orwell was to gather and write articles about the war. When he arrived in Barcelona, he was so surprised seeing the atmosphere of the people. Class differences seemed absent, and although the people lived in poverty, they felt the equality and togetherness. Orwell then joined the communist which opposed fascism lead by General Franco’s regime. For the first time in his life, he believed that socialism in the true sense, which was even distributions among society in all aspects, could be realized in the society. But when he came back to Barcelona three months later, he found changes which was disappointing so much for him and changed his posture to socialism. His brothers in arms, which was the laborers group, was accused of being fascism’s henchman who helped General Franco secretly. Furthermore, the atmosphere in the society changed. The word “comrade” or brother, which earlier really meant brother in the true sense, was not meant the same anymore. The group he was supporting had changed, he even felt that it betrayed socialism in the true sense. From this experience Orwell made a conclusion: first, socialism practice could be done, though only temporary. He could not forget his first days in Barcelona which was full of fighting spirit; when the word ‘brother’ really referred to brotherhood, and fair and prosperous seemed possible. However, after seeing the city became normal. He concluded in his second conclusions is that human always have the nature of hard, opposing and want to control the others. 3. George Orwell’s Political Position in George Orwell’s 1984 It is an exaggeration to say that anarchism was Orwell’s encompassing moral attitude. Although there are many anarchist traits in Orwell’s criticism of society, but one of the most basic principles of anarchism, the rejection of the state, Orwell could not accept. Orwell meant that some form of state was necessary to maintain freedom. In his view, the stateless society of anarchism contained totalitarian tendencies. Erviyan Ragil Wicaksono / Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies 3 (1) (2014) 43 Although rejecting the alternative society of anarchism, Orwell did not have anything better to replace it. He was against the society of the day but had no ideas about how and to what it should change. The importance of Orwell as a political writer is not as a theoretician but as a critic. Orwell regards socialism was the only solution. It would not lead to a perfect world but at least to a better world, but in order for that to happen constant criticism was necessary. We cannot really put a political label on Orwell. We can call him an undogmatic socialist but that is a rather vague description. He had so many views aspects that he escapes any assertive definition. Since he tried to maintain his individuality and avoid the dogmas with their unresolved contradictions, this seems only fair. At one point, Winston in 1984 writes in his diary: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” (Orwell, 1949: 103) Let these words become conclusion of Orwell’s political development. CONCLUSIONS After analyzing dystopia and Orwell political position in George Orwell’s 1984 novel, there are some conclusions drawn as the following: First, Orwell portrays the world in 1984 as the world deprivation. People in dystopia world were living in a situation that was very depressing, both physical and spiritual. They were tamed by means of intimidation by violence and terror. Orwell uses tense atmosphere from the dictator Stalin and Hitler, and from several facts such as the destruction of history and change it with new history, it is the primary work in Oceania. He adopted it directly from both of the dictator. Hitler burned books and Stalin changed its content according to his wishes. Second, in this book, Orwell wanted to show that basically people have a strong will to look for justice, love, truth, and solidarity. On the other hand, through his work he also pointed out that there is a way to turn off the human struggle that want to defend the human rights. In the world of Orwell, a weapon is a terror without limit and brainwashing. Thus, both of it show that humans can be changed by certain medium and certain techniques. Third, Orwell’s view of ideology experiencing several changes in entire of his life, Orwell is a real socialist, but some leaders had misunderstanding about what socialism is, he was also disappointed with his friends when they fought together in Spain. At that time he began to think that socialism is already practiced in the world is not like what he wants. Actually Orwell wants about socialism life is not a pure socialism, but socialism which represents the society that has freedom of speech. It can be concluded that Orwell is undogmatic socialist. REFERENCES Adi, Bani. 2012. Oratory as The Instrument of Totalitarian Regime’s Hegemony as reflected in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Final project. Semarang: Universitas Negeri Semarang. Ash, Timothy. G. 2001. Orwell for our time, London: The New York Review of Books. Ayunda, Nenin. A. 2006. The Capitalist Dominance Found in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. Final project. Semarang: Universitas Negeri Semarang. Andrent, Hannah. 1951. 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