Comparing the Novels 1984 and A Brave New World - Essay Example

The novels Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, and 1984, by George Orwell, contain many interesting parallels to the world that the communist Soviet governments created during their time in power. These governments attempted to control every aspect of peoples’ lives by taking away individuality and forcing the inhabitants to simply accept what was occurring. Brave New World is set in the future, in a world where the government has developed a way to control the minds of everyone in society, in order to make them content with everything that is happening in their lives. This society is one in which individualism is non-existent and no one has the capacity to challenge authority in any way. The characters in this novel simply accept everything that happens in their lives and continue on as if everything is acceptable. In the Soviet Union, people had to accept what was going on because they were afraid of questioning their leaders, for fear of reprisal. The novel 1984, by George Orwell, contains some interesting parallels to the Soviet Union in the way that a particular individual was used, in order to create fear and hate among the people of these countries. Emmanuel Goldstein gave the government a convenient scapegoat on which to place all of its negativity, much the same way that Trotsky was treated by the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Creating a common public enemy is a very clever political trick because it clouds the judgment of the citizens. If the people believe that there is an external force to fear and hate, they will, in turn, give the government more power with which to eliminate this fear. It does not matter if the fear is real or fabricated because it is the idea of that person or idea that is causing the fear. This is a way for a government to stop any sort of revolutionary movements because it paints these movements in a very negative light. They are no longer seen as desirable because the government has manipulated the people into believing otherwise. Both of these situations are similar to how the communists controlled their population in the Soviet Union because they used a form of mind control in order to get a desired reaction from the people. In Brave New World, the government has developed a drug with which to keep everyone happy without having to do anything to accomplish this. This is a particularly interesting issue to discuss in relation to the Soviet Union, because its governments were known to have kept things from the public in order to further their own interests. Keeping people from the truth in a very common practice among government officials and this novel explores this idea in a very different manner. A Brave New World takes place in a world where individuality has been basically removed from society and human beings have been industrialized, which is similar to how “State control was absolute throughout” (Berlin et al. 4) in the Soviet Union. A few people at the top control everything in the world, and they even create babies in a lab rather than allowing them to be conceived naturally. This novel deals with issues such as the dangers of a totalitarian government, the use of technology to control society, and it is also a satire of how capitalism has created a society where material goods are the driving force behind everything and are also the meter by which success is measured. Also, individualism has been eliminated in this society, which is made apparent by the constantly repeated phrase “everyone belongs to everyone” (Huxley 38, 41, 109, & 115). This is a very liberal idea because it promotes a unity that is not consistent with society’s current value system. Through the use of science and technology, the powers at the top are able to control the minds of the people in this novel. The people are impervious to this, however, as they are trained into believing that they are happy, which hides the truth and allows for the status quo to remain. In the Soviet Union, however, much of this was done through censorship and fear. Vasily Grossman made this point when he said, “This fear that millions of people find insurmountable, this fear written up in crimson letters over the leaden sky of Moscow - this terrible fear of the state” (Conquest 1). In 1984, information is never given as to whether or not Goldstein actually ever existed in this book, but that is not even relevant. It is what Goldstein is symbolic of that is important to the story. Goldstein is symbolic of the power of creating someone to hate and fear. The general public does not even know if he exists, but he is subjected a 2 Minutes of Hate everyday. This is and example of the power that a government can hold over the people. The government in this book uses Goldstein’s ideas to create a fear in the people of something other than reality. The people will not question what is happening if they believe that the alternative is much, much worse. Also, they will give their leaders unconditional support, due to the fact that they wish to keep these other ideologies out of the country. Goldstein is accused of being the leader of a rebel movement called “The Brotherhood,” which is a movement that is supposed to be trying to overthrow the government in some sort of way. While we never learn for sure if Goldstein exists or not, we do learn that the government is using fear to manipulate the people and keep their minds off of what is actually going on both inside and outside of the country. This is shown to be true when Orwell writes, “And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested” (Orwell 93). In the Soviet Union, Stalin put all of Trotsky’s high ranking followers on trial in what has become known as the Moscow Show Trials. During these trials, Trotsky’s supporters were forced to testify that Trotsky had been orchestrating a plan to have Stalin assassinated. All of Trotsky’s followers were found guilty of being involved with these crimes and were sentenced to death. Stalin used Trotsky to further his own agenda by using Trotsky’s differing political ideologies to create a sense of fear in the people. The ideas were presented in such a way that they could do nothing but facilitate fear in the people. This was used as a way for the government to gather support which, in turn, allowed for them to get away with more. In his autobiography, Trotsky describes his views on the Revolution when he says, This is a book of polemics. It reflects the dynamics of that social life which is built entirely on contradictions. The impertinence of the schoolboy toward his master; the pinpricks of envy in the drawing-room, veiled by courtesies; the constant competition of commerce; the frenzied rivalry in all branches of pure and applied science, of art, and sport; the parliamentary clashes that reveal the deep opposition of interests; the furious struggle that goes on every day in the newspapers; the strikes of the workers; the shooting down of participants in demonstrations; the packages of explosives that civilized neighbors send each other through the air; the fiery tongues of civil war, almost never extinguished on our planet– all these are the forms of social “polemics,” ranging from those that are usual, constant and normal, almost unnoticed despite their intensity, to those of war and revolution that are extraordinary, explosive and volcanic (Trotsky iii). The similarities between Trotsky and Goldstein are quite numerous. For starters, they are very similar in appearance. Goldstein is never seen, but the way he is described in his pictures is very similar to how Trotsky looks. They are also both Jewish, as Trotsky’s real name is Lev Davidovich Bronstein. They both also escaped in some sort of way from the oppression they were suffering from. The most important similarity between the two, however, is the way in which they were both used to create an Us Vs. Them type of mentality amongst the people in their respective countries. They were both portrayed as being against the governments and, therefore, as being a threat to national security. This propaganda that was used by the governments in both of these situations was a way for the governments to further their own interests. They needed to create a national enemy to manufacture some sort of unity between the leaders of the country and the people. A common enemy goes a long way in doing this because of the fear it create within people. In fact, this fear was used in a number of different ways as “Communists lived with the expectation, justified or not, of foreign attacks” (Fitzpatrick 17). The citizens of a country will be a lot less likely to question authority if they think that some sort of danger is lurking. Basically they will be a lot more content with what is happening internally, if there is something to fear externally. In both cases, it does not matter if the person is still alive, or even if the person really ever existed, because it is the ideas that are created in the minds of the people that is the important thing. By vilifying Trotsky, Stalin was able to make his own political ideologies seem more appealing to the people, just as Big Brother was able to do with its vilification of Goldstein. In fact, many of the propaganda posters in 1984, do not have even have the correct war on them. None of this matters because a common enemy has been created, giving the government a lot more power in achieving exactly what it wants, without any internal conflict or protest. Both Trotsky and Goldstein are also accused of terrorist attacks, which is another way for political leaders to create fear within people, which was possible because they “were able the establish control over a large number of presses, paper supplies, and other printing establishments” (Suny 23) . If people believe that their physical well-being is in jeopardy, they will look to their leaders for protection. Creating fear among the population base is a good way of blinding them to the real motives behind their actions. In both situations, the governments create a representation of evil, in order to achieve a certain goal. A scapegoat is created in order to distract the people from reality and make the powers that be less accountable for their actions. This is best summed up when Orwell writes, “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy” (Orwell 80). The communist leaders of the Soviet Union were notorious for the manner in which they were able to control their population. These leaders used methods that are very similar to the methods used in Brave New World and 1984, as these novels show situations in which mind control and totalitarianism are used in order to keep a population under control. In Brave New World, a mind controlling drug is used in order to achieve this, while in 1984, fear of an unknown enemy is how the population in controlled. In both cases, the government uses whatever methods are necessary, just as the Soviet governments did during the Cold War. Works Cited Berlin, Isaiah; Hardy, Henry; and Talbott, Strobe. The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture Under Communism. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 2004. Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. Oxford University Press. Oxford: 1990. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Oxford University Press. Oxford: 1999. Huxley, Aldous. A Brave New World. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. 1998. Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Signet Classic. 1949. Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Structure of Soviet History: Essays and Documents. New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Trotsky, Leon. My Life. Charles Schriber’s Sons. New York: 1930. Read More