When I first set out to write this post, I felt as though the world was in the perfect state to compare it to the fictional ones of these novels. We have never been closer to an actual dystopia and likely will not advance further for quite some time. Now that I am currently under government recommended lock-down in my girlfriend’s house and can only leave to do shopping and other essential tasks such as breathe in fresh oxygen, I feel incredibly naïve.

This is definitely a stretch, but the recent pandemic and all the new governmental restrictions that came with it have reinvigorated my thoughts on these novels and given them another perspective. I will not be drawing too much on this though, since my own personal situation does not come close to the horror of an actual totalitarian regime, but I merely wanted to provide an example of how still relevant the ideas present in dystopian novels are.

The titles in my heading are not necessarily the best dystopian novels or even the best to be compared to our times, but merely the ones I like the most and also happen to be writing my undergraduate dissertation on as we speak. To get an even better perspective of the genre, I suggest reading beyond this list. That is more than enough meandering though, so let us get into the books.

1984 – George Orwell

1984 seems to have claimed to the title of most talked about dystopian novel, so it seems fitting to start there. Like most people, it was my first encounter with the genre and had been recommended to me by my more politically inclined friends at school. George Orwell’s frightening glimpse into a world run by a totalitarian regime where freedom of absolutely anything is restricted makes for a very bleak and depressing read, reminding many of us of real world dictatorships past and present. Dread is the predominant emotion that the novel emanates from its pages as its protagonist, Winston Smith, navigates and attempts to survive life under the watchful eye of Big Brother. The constant threat of being found out for treason against the Party or even committing the most heinous “thought crime” hangs over every single sentence and can be felt very effectively throughout the narrative. If I were to pick out one theme that separates 1984 from the other novels on my list, it would have to be surveillance. The eye of Big Brother that I mentioned earlier is all over the covers of various editions of the novel and posters for the film adaptation and as we find out, nothing can escape his gaze. Considering that we live in an age where it is possible to follow a person’s entire commute going into and out of London using cameras and even our online presence is anything but private should a government decide it, I believe it is fairly safe to say that this novel has got plenty of its details on the future correct. Technology provides many wonders, but if it is abused by authority we will ultimately be enslaved by it.

Another big takeaway, and the one I believe to be much more relevant, is the reason for the novel’s huge resurgence following the 2016 American presidential election. Yes, even before fake tan enthusiast Mr Trump was talking about “fake news” and “alternative facts”, Big Brother’s Ministry of Truth was fabricating reality far better than they ever could. Winston’s job as a member of the Party is to change what is written in newspapers and other official documents in order to keep them in line with whatever the regime claims is the truth. As the famous quote from the novel goes, “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” My manipulating past information, present truth becomes a matter of opinion; specifically theirs. While the novel keeps this to the realm of which of the other two superpowers is Oceania at war with and what rations have or have not been lifted, reality has far more sinister implications. When trusted news outlets lean into political or private agendas, then we know that truth is not their main concern.

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

On the other end of the bleak and depressing totalitarian regimes, Aldous Huxley’s novel provides an insight into a society that supposedly makes everyone happy. Out of all of these novels I find that, at least in the Western world, we have come the closest to a Brave New World type of society than any other kind of dystopia, where want and suffering are not exactly eradicated, but there are enough distractions to keep us from thinking too much about it. As we now have multiple services that let us stream almost any film or TV show directly to our phones, World State has its “feelies” which allow audience members to physically feel what the characters do through a device that transmits signals to their brains. We have various legal drugs that allow many to cope with the stress of daily life, such as caffeine, alcohol and nicotine, whereas Huxley’s characters have the all-purpose happiness pill “soma” for whenever they start to feel any form of negative emotion.

For most in the novel, this system works. They are kept drugged-up, ignorant and happy so therefore know nothing of want or suffering. Yet others, like our protagonist Bernard, his friend Helmhotz and the “savage” John born outside of World State, take up various issues with it. For Bernard, he feels as though the elite caste he was born into does not suit him due to a lack in confidence. He is an alpha, designed from birth to be in the upper echelons of society, yet lacking in many of their expected traits. He therefore, hates World State for entirely selfish reasons. He does not want it changed, he would just rather that it liked him more. It is Helmhotz and John’s views that interest me more. Unlike Bernard, Helmhotz is very well adjusted. He is liked, respected and generally considered a good bloke. However, he, like John and the reader, find this world to be shallow and lacking in anything authentic. While the “feelies” do stimulate an emotional response, their content is bland, fabricated and lacking in substance. It is art literally developed in a laboratory. Soma does trick their brains into being happy, but authentic happiness can only occur when one has known suffering, and since that has been eradicated, no one is actually happy. Brave New World is an exaggeration, but when we think about how much consumer culture has enveloped the Western world, where we buy so much with the promise that it will eventually bring us happiness, we do not seem to be far off.

We – Yevgeny Zamyatin

This is a bizarre one. As the oldest entry on my list, Zamyatin’s dystopian novel of a mathematically ordered society does seem to have passed down certain traits to its literary descendants of 1984 and Brave New World. George Orwell himself explicitly mentions We as an inspiration for his novel, whereas for Huxley it is a bit more ambiguous how much he knew of it. Regardless, We does stand out to me in that when I first read it, knowing that it inspired a lot of 1984, I found it to be far different than Orwell’s famous novel. This is mostly due to its unique narrative perspective. Here, a man by the name D-503 (all the characters are assigned as a letter followed by a number) is tasked with writing in a journal that is to go with a rocket called the “Integral”, which will allow the regime One State to colonise other planets with their ideology. The story is told through said journal with each chapter being a record that D-503 has made on his experiences. It should be said that he is a very strange individual, so the story is written in a very disorganised and rambling manner, a stark contrast from Orwell’s very clean prose. I think this is likely one reason the novel has not taken up as well in the mainstream; it can be a challenge to read at times, but I believe very worth working through.

In terms of what We has to say, the importance of individuality would be what I would pick out the most. D-503 struggles constantly with trying to conform into the society he grew up in, while at the same time discovering, through the help of his lover I-330, that he has a soul, something unique and distinct to him that cannot be defined. A √−1, as he calls it. That mathematical concept is a very appropriate expression, as One State’s entire world is mathematically organised. So much so in fact that the language of maths seeps into everyday conversation. As nightmarish as that sounds to those of us who dreaded the subject in school, as I mentioned We‘s dystopian world never caught on nearly as well as those of its successors. Though its themes were very relevant to an author and the people who lived through both Czarist and Stalinist Russia, later novels capitalised on other ideas and further advances in technology, or just outright predicted them. We may be a strange relic, but I still highly recommend it if you wish to see where all this dystopian writers got their ideas from.

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

At long last, we come to a novel whose author is still alive (and also female)! Atwood’s story of a woman named Offred struggling to survive in the theocratic, patriarchal world of Gilead, where fertile women are considered the property of wealthy families and exist solely to procreate with them. In terms of lineage, Atwood does cite 1984 as an inspiration for her novel (so by extension I choose to also associate We and Brave New World with it) and one can see many of the similarities the two share. For one, the paranoia felt by their protagonists on being constantly watched. In The Handmaid’s Tale the reason for fertile women becoming essentially the property of the wealthy and powerful is that, due to some not fully explained nuclear and biological issues, birth rates in America are down and many of the population have become infertile. Seeing this as the beginning of the downfall of white society in America (or potentially just an opportunity to gain power), some lunatics seize control of the country, impose laws based on heavily selected biblical passages (particularly the ones about Abraham having a child with his wife’s servant, Hagar) and rounded up all fertile women. These women then have every aspects of their lives controlled and kept under constant surveillance.

Conclusion

There are two unique things I really like about this novel, the first being that we have an actually detailed description of how this dystopian society came to be. While my previous three novels all explain it away with a long, nondescript war in which the totalitarian regime won (or three did, as is the case in 1984), The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates more creativity than the others in its setup. A country with declining birthrates could easily be convinced that their way of life would become extinct, and so would therefore be gripped by the terror inspired by fundamentalists. It is all explained very believably and was a welcome change in the genre, for me at least. The other is Atwood’s handmaid protagonist, Offred. We like her not just because we feel sorry that she is trapped in this sexist, oppressive regime straight out of a religious fundamentalist’s wildest dreams, but she reacts to it in likely the way anyone would. She is not the leader of a rebellion, nor does she take any active steps towards undoing Gilead unlike many of our other protagonists, she just tries to keep her head down and survive. Her passivity is what makes her interesting. Not a heroic quality, but I guarantee it is what most of us would do and that is what makes her so relatable. Her little human moments of recalling memories from the time before Gilead, or her habit of messing with word meanings to pass the many dreary hours in isolation, demonstrate her as the perfect surrogate for the reader; someone stuck in a system beyond their comprehension just trying to survive the daily ordeals.

When coming to re-read these novels for my dissertation, I was surprised at how comforting I found them. This may come down to the feeling one gets with reading something familiar (the book equivalent of wearing your favourite jumper), but I think it cannot be just that. As far as I am concerned, these novels depict the utmost worst states a society can fall into in a variety of forms. Where dearly held values such as, freedom, individuality, humanity and equality are things of the past. Each is a nightmare world, so I find it very comforting and feel very lucky when I remember that I do not live in a reality quite that bad, yet. So when you feel angry at society, when the government or big businesses are ruining everything again as they usually do, be furious at them. Protest, complain, shout, do all those right things. But then sit down, read a dystopian novel and remember: it could be a lot worse.