Student: Mădălina Mihalcea

Group: 7304 (English- German)

Utopia vs. Dystopia

- Do both represent a totalitarian regime? -

The aims of this essay is to analyse the notions of utopia and dystopia and to
demonstrate that both originate in totalitarian thinking of the humankind. In order to support
my statements, I will relate to an important novel for each notion: Sir Thomas More’s
‘Utopia’ for utopia and George Orwell’s ‘1984’ for dystopia, respectively.
According to Longman English Dictionary Online1, utopia is ‘an imaginary perfect
world where everyone is happy’2. Literally, ‘utopia’ means ‘a place that does not exist’. Sir
Thomas More invented the term in his novel with the same name, in which it refers to a
fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, More writes about a society similar to his own
1516 society, but based on better principles and he tries to encourage his readers to reflect on
improving reality itself.
According to the same cited dictionary, the antonym of ‘utopia’ is ‘dystopia’, and it is
explained as ‘an imaginary place where life is extremely difficult and a lot of unfair or
immoral things happen’3. In contrast to ‘utopia’, the term ‘dystopia’ appeared in the late 19th
century. The first known use of dystopian, as recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary, is a
speech given before the British House of Commons by John Stuart Mill in 1868, in which
Mill denounced the government's Irish land policy: "It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call
them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, or caco-topians. What is
commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to
favour is too bad to be practicable." 4 In literature, the author of dystopian novel also takes his
inspiration from his own society, but his point of view of the future is a more pessimistic one.
In totalitarian regime, the monoculturalism is promoted. In Longman English
Dictionary Online the word ‘monoculturalism’ does not exit, but there is its antonym
‘multiculturalism’, which is defined as ‘the belief that it is important and good to include
people or ideas from many different countries, races, or religions’ 5. Hence we can conclude
that monoculturalism is the practice of actively preserving a culture to the exclusion of
1
http://www.ldoceonline.com/ accessed January 14,2011
2
http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/utopia accessed January 14,2011
3
http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/dystopia accessed January 14,2011
4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia accessed January 14,2011
5
http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/multiculturalism accessed January 14,2011
external influences and that a monocultural society exists due to undeveloped
communications structures, geographic and/or political isolation.
In the Book Two of ‘Utopia’, Hythloday begins by discussing the geography and
history of Utopia, each of which proves perfect for development of an ideal society. Utopia
occupies an island that is as isolated as it wants to be; the Utopians interact with the rest of the
world on their terms. With the story of General Utopus the ideal geography is given a source:
the island was built, cut off from the mainland thousands of years ago. Its geography can be
described as ideal.
In George Orwell’s ‘1984’, the setting is not obviously defined. The reader realizes
that ‘Airstrip One’, a part of the larger estate of Oceania, is in fact England, and that the main
character, Winston Smith, lives in what was once London. Winston does not leave his city; he
cannot, even if he wants, because everything is controlled. Therefore the reader has
knowledge only of a small part of Oceania, is isolated too, like Winston.
As in the totalitarian regime, both novels show how the history is controlled.
In ‘Utopia’, General Utopus conquered the territory and installed in a single historical
moment the roots of the present-day Utopian society. Utopia did not develop in a way
comparable to any other state in the history of mankind. Its history, as its geography, is ideal.
Amaurot is laid out much as London is. Amaurot's tidal river finds a corollary in the Thames,
and both rivers are spanned by bridges at the farthest possible point from the sea in order to
provide the greatest number of accessible quays. Thomas More was certainly aware of the
resemblance of Amaurot to London, and no doubt created this similarity on purpose. In
creating Amaurot as a likeness to London, it is almost as if he wishes the two to be compared
in the reader's mind.
In ‘1984’, the Party controls every source of information, managing and rewriting the
content of all newspapers and histories for its own ends. The Party does not allow individuals
to keep records of their past, such as photographs or documents. As a result, memories
become fuzzy and unreliable, and citizens become perfectly willing to believe whatever the
Party tells them. The Party’s slogan ‘Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls
the present controls the past.’ appears twice in the novel. It an important example of the
Party’s technique of using false history to break down the psychological independence of its
subjects. Control of the past ensures control of the future, because the past can be treated
essentially as a set of conditions that justify or encourage future goals: if the past was idyllic,
then people will act to re-create it; if the past was nightmarish, then people will act to prevent
such circumstances from recurring. The Party creates a past that was a time of misery and
slavery from which it claims to have liberated the human race, thus compelling people to
work toward the Party’s goals. The Party has complete political power in the present, enabling
it to control the way in which its subjects think about and interpret the past: every history
book reflects Party ideology, and individuals are forbidden from keeping mementos of their
own pasts, such as photographs and documents. As a result, the citizens of Oceania have a
very short, fuzzy memory, and are willing to believe anything that the Party tells them. In the
second appearance of this quote, O’Brien tells Winston that the past has no concrete existence
and that it is real only in the minds of human beings. O’Brien is essentially arguing that
because the Party’s version of the past is what people believe, that past, though it has no basis
in real events, has become the truth.
Nowadays, the political and ideological superstructure may seem to us of less
importance. There is not much to be said about politics generally in a totalitarian community.
In the novels taken into account in this essay, the regimes are rather similar.
Utopian politics seems a strange mixture of freedom and repression. Utopia employs a
democratic government, its people represented by two layers of elected public officials, the
higher level selected by the lower level. However, the rule abolishing on pain of death any
discussion of politics outside of the political arena seems incredibly repressive. This
repression, though, is a fair repression in the sense that all citizens of Utopia are equally
bound by it. This is a very different repression than those in place in Europe, where the poor
and weak were repressed by the rich and powerful. Utopia is operating under a rule of law,
with all citizens subject to that law, even if the law itself strikes modern readers as excessive.
In ‘1984’, Orwell portrays the perfect totalitarian society, the most extreme realization
imaginable of a modern-day government with absolute power. Throughout London, Winston
sees posters showing a man gazing down over the words “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
YOU” everywhere he goes. Big Brother is the face of the Party. The citizens are told that he is
the leader of the nation and the head of the Party, but Winston can never determine whether or
not he actually exists. In any case, the face of Big Brother symbolizes the Party in its public
manifestation; he is a reassurance to most people (the warmth of his name suggests his ability
to protect), but he is also an open threat (one cannot escape his gaze). Big Brother also
symbolizes the vagueness with which the higher ranks of the Party present themselves—it is
impossible to know who really rules Oceania, what life is like for the rulers, or why they act
as they do. Winston thinks he remembers that Big Brother emerged around 1960, but the
Party’s official records date Big Brother’s existence back to 1930, before Winston was even
born.
 Another important aspect of a totalitarian regime is the cancellation of individuality.
By annulling the qualities that make someone or something different from other things or
people, the ruler has a better control over his people. Moreover, by psychological
manipulation, physical control and uniformity between people, the chances a revolution to
break out are low.
Hythloday trumpets the lack of private space as a wonderful idea promoting friendship
and stifling pettiness and gossip. He invokes the name of Plato, who in ‘The Republic’ calls
for communal property as the basis for the ideal city. Hythloday has been to Utopia and seen a
society of communal property in operation and describes the effort this country has put into
curing social ills. More disagrees, claiming a country with communal property will have no
prosperity. The people will have no incentive to work, since they will be fed by the labor of
others. In More's eyes, the lack of private property will also eliminate all respect for authority,
and with this loss the chance at bloodshed and conflict will increase. Visible in the rules
guarding against adultery, pre-marital sex, and those abolishing campaigning for office is the
Utopian understanding that mankind's baser instincts of lust and greed will never disappear.
Utopian laws, for this reason, are formulated so as to powerfully discourage the vices inherent
in human nature. These laws demonstrate that Utopia is not a society full of ideal people.
Rather, it is a society that is formulated so that the inherent faults of man are contained as
stringently as humanly possible.
In Orwell’s novel, the Party barrages its subjects with psychological stimuli designed
to overwhelm the mind’s capacity for independent thought. The giant telescreen in every
citizen’s room blasts a constant stream of propaganda designed to make the failures and
shortcomings of the Party appear to be triumphant successes. The telescreens also monitor
behavior—everywhere they go, citizens are continuously reminded, especially by means of
the omnipresent signs reading “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,” that the authorities
are scrutinizing them. The Party undermines family structure by inducting children into an
organization called the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and encourages them to spy on their
parents and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party. The Party also forces individuals to
suppress their sexual desires, treating sex as merely a procreative duty whose end is the
creation of new Party members. The Party then channels people’s pent-up frustration and
emotion into intense, ferocious displays of hatred against the Party’s political enemies. Many
of these enemies have been invented by the Party expressly for this purpose.
In addition to manipulating their minds, the Party also masters the bodies of its
subjects. The Party constantly watches for some sign of unfaithfulness, to the point that, as
Winston observes, even a tiny facial twitch could lead to an arrest. The people are destitute of
what in a normal society is considered bare necessities: good food, clean water, good clothes,
and intimacy. The Party forces its members to undergo mass morning exercises called the
Physical Jerks, and then to work long, keeping people in a general state of exhaustion.
Anyone who does manage to defy the Party is punished and “reeducated” through systematic
and brutal torture. After being subjected to weeks of this intense treatment, Winston himself
comes to the conclusion that nothing is more powerful than physical pain—no emotional
loyalty or moral conviction can overcome it. By conditioning the minds of their victims with
physical torture, the Party is able to control reality, convincing its subjects that 2 + 2 = 5.
As in any ideal novel, there are more advanced technologies than in the society where
the novel was published.
In the Utopians' mastery of the technology brought to them by the fortuitous
shipwreck of ancient Egyptians and Romans rests an important theme of Utopia: the belief in
technology and technological innovation as a means toward progress. Such a concept is part
of the bedrock of modernity, but it was quite foreign in a world that was just beginning to
produce technological innovations beyond those of the Romans. The society of More's time
was unsure of technology, and did not quite believe that the progress it brought would be
permanent. Utopians have no such doubts. Whenever they come across new technology, they
do not simply use it, they master the techniques behind it. Technology, for them, is a means to
a better life.
In ‘1984’, by means of telescreens and hidden microphones across the city, the Party is
able to monitor its members almost all of the time. Additionally, the Party employs
complicated mechanisms (‘1984’ was written in the era before computers) to exert large-scale
control on economic production and sources of information, and fearsome machinery to
inflict torture upon those it deems enemies. ‘1984’ reveals that technology, which is generally
perceived as working toward moral good, can also facilitate the most diabolical evil.
Based on the novels of Thomas More and George Orwell, a connection can be made
between utopian society, dystopian society and totalitarian society, in aims of politics,
cancellation of individuality, isolation, psychological manipulation, physical control and
technology. As Benito Mussolini once said: ”Everything within the state, nothing outside the
state, nothing against the state”.
Bibliography:
 Thomas More, Utopia (from C. Dutu, Medieval and Renaissance
English Literature , Bucuresti, Ed. Universitara, 2006, pages 233- 325)
 George Orwell, 1984 ( from http://george- orwell.org/1984 retrieved
last time 15/01/2011 )
 SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Utopia.” SparkNotes LLC. n.d..
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/utopia/ (accessed January 13, 2011).
 SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on 1984.” SparkNotes LLC. 2007.
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/ (accessed January 15, 2011).
 Karl Kautsky, Thomas More and his Utopia, (1888)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1888/more/index.htm (accessed January 17,
2011)
 Longman English Dictionary Online http://www.ldoceonline.com/
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January 13, 2011),
Dystopia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia#mw-head#mw-head (accessed
January 13, 2011), Utopian and Dystopian Fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_and_dystopian_fiction#mw-head#mw-
head (accessed January 13, 2011),
Totalitarianism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism (accessed January
13, 2011)