1984, by George Orwell
This article on the already consecrated book 1984 was written as a counterpoint to the review we made, some months ago, of the novel We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. We suggest reading it before the text that follows.
If we chose to compare 1984 to We, it was not with the intent of dissecting them, point by point, so as to end up with a table of similarities and differences. Such a study would suit some kind of publication specialized in the genre. Our purpose is considerably simpler, and can be outlined pointedly:
- To perceive how certain works/expressions/discourses, at the same time as they gain notoriety, cast a shadow over their “roots” or main influences — when not the sources from which they literally extracted some of their content. We will then try to look a little further, and investigate these influences.
- To see how the negative approach to the concept of plagiarism is a limiting factor in the exercise of creativity. We consider the comparison opportune because these are two landmarks of science fiction, with 1984 largely inspired by Zamyatin’s novel and indisputably the better known of the two. Plagiarism or not, the fact is that, in any case, one great literary work made possible the direct emergence of another — and who knows how many others, indirectly.
The relation between 1984 and We is not casual: Orwell read Zamyatin’s book and maintained a lively interest in it, to the point of publishing a literary review of it in a newspaper, as Anthony Burgess tells us — who also gives us an important clue as to what 1984 would do for the propagation of We:
“Orwell wrote an article reviewing the book [We], published in the Tribune of January 4, 1946, when he finally managed to find it, many years after learning of its existence. It was always a rather difficult book to find and, if it can now be found in almost every language, this is due to the fact that Orwell was influenced by it. But it seems to be impossible to find it in the original language, Russian.” – 1985, p.52
Zamyatin met severe difficulties in publishing his work in his homeland. His novel made no allusion too direct to one government or another, yet his text was considered potentially dangerous, by tsarists and socialists alike, and was banned from the Soviet Union. Naturally, the English translation circulated in greater quantity. Orwell’s novel, though critical and even too literal in its analogy with the Stalinist dictatorship, did not meet with the same persecution, since a decisive historical moment was underway: the Cold War. If Orwell’s text was disagreeable to the socialists, the capitalist West would receive it with open arms. Isaac Asimov, in his review of 1984, highlights some details of Orwell’s biography that well illustrate the arrival of this moment, accompanied by his unfavorable opinion of the book:
“Orwell completed Animal Farm in 1944, but had difficulty finding favorable conditions for causing any disturbance to the Soviets. However, as soon as the war ended, the Soviet Union became fair game and Animal Farm came to light. It was received with great applause and Orwell became sufficiently prosperous to withdraw from other work and devote himself to his masterpiece, 1984. […]
It is exclusively a portrait of Stalinism.
In 1944, at the time the book was published, the Cold War was at its height. For that reason the book became popular. It was almost a matter of patriotism, in the West, to buy the book, discuss it, perhaps read parts of it, although, in my opinion, a greater number of people bought it and discussed it than read it, for it is a tremendously boring, didactic, repetitive book, being, above all, devoid of action.” – Asimov on Science Fiction
It is not the first case in which an artistic or literary work fit like a glove for anti-communist propaganda in Cold War times; the paintings of the American Jackson Pollock were widely diffused as the symbol of freedom of creation and expression in the USA, in opposition to the Socialist Realism imposed by Stalin on Soviet artists. All art produced by the Soviets, literature and poetry included, was to be an instrument of the State, an expression of its visual identity — all-important for a totalitarian state, which must keep the image of its power intact even when the situation is most adverse. Although Hitler was the greatest “aesthete dictator” — as suggested by the documentary The Architecture of Doom, by Peter Cohen — Orwell preferred to keep the focus on Stalin and the Russian Revolution, the greater targets of his rancor and resentment.
Evidently, although his initial target was quite specific, the world’s reading of Orwell’s novel was broader. The somber scenario of 1984 came to represent every sort of danger offered by overly severe state interventions, warmongering maneuvers, control of expression and of the flow of information, and also socialist and/or totalitarian states themselves. The term “Orwellian” and mentions of Big Brother spread from literary and university circles into mass culture, giving its name to the emblematic television reality show. Even though it was evident that Orwell’s post-war world would not materialize, and even from 1985 onward, 1984 remains an ominous reference for anything linked to excessive control or the loss of individual and collective liberties.
“Even if 1984 turns out an idyllic year, this vision of Orwell’s will still serve as a symbol of humanity’s worst fears. 1984 is used as so vague a metaphor for tyranny that we can only regret it is so vague. When asked not to smoke marijuana in the classroom or gently urged to study a little harder, university students reply with a ‘Kind of 1984, man?’. By extension, the term ‘Orwellian’ serves to define anything from a computer printout to the icy functionality of a new airport.” – 1985, p.18
It becomes easier, then, to understand the dimension of 1984‘s reach and the reasons that made possible its wide diffusion, while its sources, among them Zamyatin’s novel, remained unknown to the general public and even to literary circles. Even if we were to write a treatise comparing the two novels and vehemently affirming the greater richness existing in We — which in a way we have already done, as have Asimov and Burgess — we would not manage to eclipse the notoriety and impact caused by 1984. Perhaps this situation is a clear example of successful plagiarism.
External conditions do or do not create the favorable scenario for plagiarism, so that it would be practically impossible to plagiarize a literary work of greater stature, such as Cervantes’ Don Quixote, for example — an appropriation of a work of that magnitude would only be permitted by way of reinterpretation. In the Orwell-Zamyatin case, however, everything seems to conspire in the English author’s favor: besides his intention of mercilessly criticizing Stalinism, his Russian colleague had been sufficiently persecuted (by tsarists and Bolsheviks alike) for We to remain relatively unknown. Thus it was possible for 1984 to propagate, becoming one of the most remarkable novels of its time, coining the term “Orwellian”, and all this without its readers noticing that the misadventures of Winston Smith strongly resemble the exploits of number D-503, the inhabitant of the One State of We.
It is quite possible that Orwell conceived Winston as a kind of shadow or “negative” of D-503. The virtues of the Russian novel’s narrator-protagonist — optimism, clarity and quickness of reasoning, energy and predestination to glory — are gravely corrupted in Winston Smith. His health is fragile, his thoughts wander in circles, and the only thing he is certain of is his physical and historical elimination. His only question is “when”.
The same holds for the destroyed Airstrip One — the new, impersonal name given to Great Britain — when compared with the crystalline, geometric climes of the vitreous world of the One State: decadent facades of Victorian architecture and remnants of a constantly bombed London; housing projects falling to pieces, clogged pipes, broken elevators; stuffy metal tunnels and corridors with grease-caked walls. The only thing that seems to function constantly are the infamous telescreens, two-way television devices that pour out state propaganda and war news while filming and transmitting each individual’s life so they can be watched. Moreover, they can never be turned off. The system of surveillance and punishment works with implacable efficiency, while everything else works deficiently and somewhat randomly (there is no power for the elevators, but there is for the telescreens…). Language is being systematically condensed and simplified into a dialect called Newspeak. All literature, cinema and any form of culture transmitted to the population are produced by machines, which do nothing but recombine different elements atop repetitive structures; except for the machines part, it is basically what is consumed today under the name of mass culture. We have already seen the idea of machine-produced music in We.
It is in this desperation-inducing environment that the plot of 1984 unfolds. Winston takes constant walks to the outskirts, wishing to know what life was like before the war; he buys an old notebook of creamy pages, ink and a pen — thus begins his diary. Unlike D-503’s journal, Smith’s writing is not well articulated and boils down to semi-conscious impulses concerning his freedom and his future. Together with the diary begins the constant paranoia of being discovered and, to make things worse, he notices that a woman from the party is watching him. After several incidents, he begins to hate and fear the woman, but upon receiving a mysterious note from her, he begins his spiral toward damnation. As this is an exceedingly well-known book with numerous critical texts and analyses written about it, we will not enter into details; but, as we tried to show earlier, the structure is exceedingly similar to that of the novel We, with certain particularities that leave no doubt that Orwell was, at the very least, a great admirer of Zamyatin.
Another good example of critical and literary appropriation arising from the same context is the novel 1985, by Anthony Burgess, better known as the author of A Clockwork Orange. The book is divided into two parts. The first is a critical analysis of 1984, in the form of interviews and articles; Burgess lays bare some references, such as the H.G. Wells film Things to Come (1936), and tries to situate the reader in the political environment in which Orwell wrote his novel. The second half of the book, which is the novel itself, is based on the thesis that Orwell made a series of crude and preposterous predictions, and tries to lend more “realistic” airs to a totalitarian state in the year 1985. The result is an England dominated by the unions, symbolized by Bill the Symbolic Worker. “Workers’ English” is the hegemonic language, and old orthographic vulgarities, slang and words from the crude lexicon now constitute the official language. School education aims to prepare individuals for the life of workers, with subjects like history, philosophy and literature banned from the curriculum. The vagrants and muggers are ex-professors and intellectuals, who speak Latin in the streets and survive on robbery and pillage. The protagonist of 1985 is Bev Jones, who has just watched his wife die in a hospital that caught fire during a firemen’s union strike. He also has a mentally retarded, sexually precocious thirteen-year-old daughter, who only seems to enjoy masturbating and watching television. On the verge of despair, Jones makes a series of denunciations and breaks with his union, which precipitates him into a series of misadventures.
It is not with a “witch hunt” purpose that we accuse Orwell’s plagiarizing act. The main idea is to demonstrate that, from one work or creative context, others may arise, readapted to the moment and with a more specific, less encompassing function — precisely the case of 1984 and the political moment in which it was published. A commercially successful work does not necessarily depend on its qualities to secure its success with public and critics. If We is far richer literarily than 1984, we can only regret that Zamyatin’s ideas did not please the publishers and the market — and, above all, the governments of his nation.
Which leads us, finally, to question whether what is sold to us today as masterpieces, great musical hits or best sellers, among other examples, has its cultural and financial value assessed on the notions of original or creative — these words that have appeared so often in the lawsuits against alleged pirates and plagiarists.