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“War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is strength” is the anthem resounding throughout George Orwell’s bokk 1984: it is the antithesis of all the values that the world collectively advocates. In the dysfunctional world of Dystopia, the controlling state is the central i.e. a totalitarian form of government. This government is for the purpose of ensuring the complete control of every single thing in the economy, even down to the behaviours and thoughts of its people. This futuristic sort of government has been described in many forms of contemporary arts.
The theme for the dystopian society is almost always presented by people to throw a warning to the people of the cause and effect phenomenon. In Huxley’s book, he depicts a scene of naked children running and playing around a writes: “For a very long period before the time of Our Ford (.) erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (.) and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.1” (c3). This is very much representative of our times today when instances of paedophiliac behaviour are erupting astonishingly.
In the dystopian society, sexuality for and between children would be normal and encouraged. In the Dystopian world, different control tactics are used by the regime to control. These can be through eliminating any sort of external forces that can affect people and immunizing their internal processes so as to develop a ‘pacified world’ (Izzo p52), as is seen in Huxley’s Brave New World; conversely, these tactics can be defensive by employing inclusion and exclusion policies (Izzo). Orwell’s character O’Brien says in the book: 'The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.' (c3) After which he claims that this power is demanded and asserted by making men suffer.
Another aspect of the Dystopian society is the profuse use and abuse of technology. Guns and ammunition are common. More importantly, the use of drugs is extremely common and these are administered to children and adults alike. The Dystopian ideal is very comprehensively described in the following quote from Huxley’s book (chapter 17), where Mond talks to the Savage and explains to John: And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.
In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears–that's what soma is." There is a incessant need to control and ebb feelings and emotion in the human being. The Dystopian society requires the desensitizing of its people because feelings prove counter-productive to this system, in the sense that they create unrest in the society who are then encouraged to question the system.
With the government having complete control over the lives of the people, they are generally poor as well, having only their baser needs satisfied. About the people Winston in 1984 says: “A nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting - three hundred million people all
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