If in the last post I gave off the impression that I’m anything but an ardent fan of George Orwell, please allow me to correct myself. 1984 is one of my favorite novels. But recently I’ve become more aware of the less-than-coincidental similarities between that book and the way the modern world is governed. Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903) published 1984 in 1949; it directly followed the 1945 publication of Animal Farm. As C.M. Woodhouse says in the introduction to Animal Farm, the novel was presented to the public in the same month as the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
A quote from Orwell in the introduction makes the purpose of both of these books very clear.
“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism” (p. vii).
However, I may have previously insinuated that, although 1984 was almost certainly intended as a protest against government, it might have had the adverse effect of teaching governments how to achieve an even greater level of control. In fact there’s an extensive section of that book in which the protagonist is allowed to read the guidebook of the government’s inner circle. It’s no cursory outline; it’s practically a working model for the American Empire from the end of WWII right on through the Bush era. What I mean is just that Orwell may have given more ammunition to the governments than to the oppressed citizens. According to Woodhouse, this was the exact opposite of Orwell’s intention.
“This personal enemy was no single individual or government—it was the system of the world capable of producing and using atomic bombs” (p. vi).
Furthermore, Woodhouse argues that Orwell saw the utmost importance in words and language — not an uncommon trait among professional writers. Woodhouse therefore poses this question: was Animal Farm the first instance of the pen being not only mightier than the sword, but even mightier than the bomb?
“The pen’s response to the challenge of force is at least not ludicrous and hopeless; indeed, it is perhaps the one serious hope we have” (p. vii).
I want to return to Henry Miller, but first I’ll discuss this story some more. For those not familiar with it, Animal Farm is a tale of revolution in which farm creatures overthrow the human farmer and set out to govern themselves. The pigs take charge since, unlike the other animals, they can read and write, and at first Napoleon and Snowball lead a sort of democracy together. They scrawl the Seven Commandments on the barn wall:
“1) Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. 2) Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. 3) No animal shall wear clothes. 4) No animal shall sleep in a bed. 5) No animal shall drink alcohol. 6) No animal shall kill any other animal. 7) All animals are equal” (p. 33).
And then everything falls apart. The deterioration is well-calculated and many steps are predictable; the supposedly unalterable commandments are, one by one, edited and/or erased, for the benefit of those in power, to the great disadvantage of the other animals. There are traces of every violent, corrupt government that existed in the 20th Century, especially the Soviets. And as Woodhouse points out, “all this is related by the fairy-story tellers without approval or disapproval, without a glimmer of subjective feeling…” (p. xi).
On that subject, Woodhouse spends a large portion of the introduction examining the book’s subtitle, “A Fairy Story.” As he explains,
“The point about fairy-stories is that they are written not merely without a moral but without morality. They take place in a world beyond good and evil, where people (or animals) suffer or prosper for reasons unconnected with ethical merit” (p. x).
“Its message (which is by no means a moral) is that of all the great fairy-stories: ‘Life is like that—take it or leave it’” (p. xii).
Now perhaps you can see why I got sensitive about the criticism of Henry Miller. If Orwell’s longest piece of literary criticism claimed that Miller’s greatest fault was being passive and complacent, then how can the point of Animal Farm be, as Benjamin the donkey puts it, “life would go on as it had always gone on—that is, badly”? What’s the point of writing only against totalitarianism and becoming nearly synonymous with the word “dystopia,” if Orwell couldn’t devise anything better? What’s so wrong about the idea that some kind of utopia is possible, even if it’s just inside the imagination of an individual mind?
That’s one way of describing what Miller was after: a utopia of the mind. Or at least he was seeking perfect expression. It’s very evident throughout Animal Farm that the animals cannot revolt against the powerful pigs because they lack the means to even form rebellious thoughts. Also, because they cannot write, there is no written record of the farm’s history. Napoleon and his propagandist Squealer use this fact to manipulate the farm animals, altering history however it suits their agenda. I don’t think this should be taken lightly. Miller understood that the freedom and pursuit of expression were some of the most important things in life. This leads me to wonder if expression, or “the pen,” is really what will put us back on the track of progress. And there’s also the fact that all history will now be recorded and disseminated over the Internet (that’s a topic I’m currently sculpting into a longer essay).
I’m willing to staunchly defend Miller because—as he himself said of Goethe—he was a beginning, not an end. Miller made himself into a platform to build upon, a bridge spanning the void of modern humanity. Orwell was a terrific writer and his most popular works show us how not to operate the world. But if “how not to operate the world” is the same as “how the world is actually operated,” then what do we have? We have nausea, I suppose—but that’s another story (one I’ve also discussed here).
This was one of the most difficult posts I’ve ever written on this blog, and I think that stands as evidence that these are not easy topics to tackle. If it’s still questionable, let me say clearly that I think Orwell was a genius. Instead of a list of quotes from the book itself, I’d simply like to share my favorite passage:
“As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak… Instead—she did not know why—they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. [...] She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. [...] But still, it was not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled” (p. 85).
Similar Posts:
- Henry Miller: Prototype For a New Kind of Protest (March 11, 2009)
- To Write for the Sake of Writing (May 3, 2009)
- Welcome! (May 28, 2008)
- We Must Give the Void Its Colors (September 3, 2009)
- The Sin of Lifelessness (November 25, 2008)
