Literature and Ideology in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty -Four (1949) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago (1973)

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Date

2020

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou

Abstract

Our research studies two twentieth century literary texts: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago (1973). To our knowledge, many critics view these two texts as condemnations of the authoritarian Soviet communist ideology and its spread. Despite the validity of this view, critics overlooked how each of the works express latently the ideologies of the British author Orwell, and the Soviet Russian author Solzhenitsyn, as well as their aspirations to change the social order in each of Britain and Soviet Russia. On the one hand, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) is a fictional work of the dystopian type, in which he portrays a nightmarish future for the civil liberties. On the other hand, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn‘s The Gulag Archipelago (1973) is rather a non-fiction text. It recounts the personal experience of the author as well as the testimonies of the Gulag victims. Totalitarianism is clearly portrayed in the two works; it refers to a system of government in which individuals are deprived of authority. As a dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) pictures how the state uses technology to monitor its citizens. We illustrate many similarities between the two texts. For example use of torture, arbitrary arrests and obliteration of the identities of political opponents. The totalitarian authorities in the two texts use all these practices in order to remain in power. Our theoretical part takes its bearing from Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia (1936) and Engels’s characterization of literature as discussed by George Steiner in his theoretical book a Reader (1984). By applying these two theories, our findings suggest that the two texts are reactions of their authors to remedy the social conditions. Indeed, we also find that within the literary crafting of the two texts, lies the ideological standpoint of the two authors. In the first chapter, we apply the concept of ‘Sociology of Knowledge’ of Karl Manheim (1939) to explore how the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four reflects the socio-historical conditions of post-second World War Britain. In parallel, we illustrate how life in the Gulag delineates the historical transformation in Russia, after the Bolshevik Revolution, and mainly in Stalin’s era. In the second chapter, we rely on Manheim’s conceptualization of ideology and utopia, to demonstrate how Orwell generates hope and calls for action even in the gloomy futuristic world. In fact, the ideology that blocks change in Orwell’s novel is referred to as ‘Ingsoc’. Similarly, by applying Manheim’s view on ideology and Utopia, we examine in the third chapter how Solzhenitsyn’s depicts Stalinism as a mortifying ideology; and how the author employs his poetic and vivid description to expose the Soviet practices to the world and to the Western Bloc; the opponent of the Soviet regime. Further, Through Engels’ characterization of literature, we also discuss in the last two chapters how the two authors view on literature coincide with Engels perspective

Description

30cm ; 79p.

Keywords

Aestheticism, Socialism, Democratic, socialism, Totalitarianism, Ideology, Utopia and Dystopia, Para-Marxism, Zhdanovism

Citation

Literature and Civilization