COMPARE AND CONTRAST DYSTOPIAN NOVEL

In what ways do Atwood's “The Handmaid's Tale” and Orwell's “Nineteen Eighty Four” use language to create a dystopian novel?

In what ways do Atwood's “The Handmaid's Tale” and Orwell's “Nineteen Eighty-Four” use language to create a dystopian novel?

Introduction

Margaret Atwood and George Orwell are considered by many to be among the greatest fiction writers of modern time. Both authors are particularly famous for their depictions of political dystopias, in their respective novels ''The Handmaid's Tale' and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four. These works have a number of similarities reflecting the author's ideas of the dystopia, though there are also a number of differences relating to the style in which the texts are written and the dystopias themselves. These similarities and differences can be attributed to the upbringing of the authors, as well as the ideas presented by society at the time of writing. The key similarity between the novels is that both Orwell and Atwood are attempting, through the medium of fiction to demonstrate how society might turn out if certain modern issues are not tackled (Amin, 1987, pp.11).

Discussion and Analysis

By publishing “The Handmaid's Tale” in 1985, Margaret Atwood openly invited comparison between her own dystopian novel and George Orwell's 1984. (Amin, 1987, pp.13) She herself draws the parallel when in an interview of 1986 she compares her epilogue to his:

“In fact, Orwell is much more optimistic than people give him credit for. He did the same thing. He has a text at the end of 1984. Most people think the book ends when Winston comes to love Big Brother. But it doesn't. It ends with a note on Newspeak, which is written in the past tense, in standard English--which means that, at the time of writing the note, Newspeak is a thing of the past”.

Indeed, if his Winston Smith had imagined "little knots of resistance ... leaving a few records behind, so that the next generation can carry on where we leave off", the Handmaid's tapes similarly survive. As Atwood remarks in the same interview, "I'm an optimist. I like to show that the Third Reich, the Fourth Reich, the Fifth Reich did not last forever." By means of a recorded voice she creates the same miracle as in Shakespeare's sonnet 65, where black marks on white paper still express love: she allows the dead to speak. And although Atwood says that "writers frequently conceal things. They ... don't want them known, or they think of them as trade secrets they don't want to give away," I shall argue that she wants us to notice whenever she imitates and diverges from Orwell. Her invitation has vital theoretical implications for this author's use of allusion, and more generally for the way that books are made (Orwell, 1988, pp.106).

First, the similarities. Gilead, the world of The Handmaid's Tale, is recognizably Orwellian in both structure and minute detail. In both novels, a totalitarian society is divided by hierarchy; at a time of rations and austerity, only the privileged in Atwood receive real food, ...