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Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four - two of the most influential dystopian novels to come out of the post-war era - have greatly shaped the way the general public think about totalitarianism and oppressive government systems, and have been particularly successful in presenting effective warnings about the possible consequences of government surveillance and censorship. In fact, Protherough says about 1984 that ‘The title has become a symbolic shorthand sign for totalitarian oppression… it is a chilling picture of how the power of the state could come to dominate the lives of individuals through cultural conditioning.’ (Protherough, P1). Both of these books follow the stories of early middle aged male protagonists, Guy Montag and Winston Smith, that are designed as relatable characters that the audience can project their own experiences and emotions onto, which lend a more familiar lens through which we perceive the dystopian futures that they exist in. When it comes to considering the context of the novels, both were written in Allied countries after the Second World War, however, Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in the United Kingdom in 1949 and Fahrenheit 451 was published in the United States in 1953, inspired by Ray Bradbury’s earlier short story, The Pedestrian, in 1951. These slight differences in context set the novels apart in their perceptions of what oppression and conflict look like, leading, for example, to Bradbury’s focus on atomic weapons following the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and perhaps to Orwell’s naming his protagonist ‘Winston’ after UK war-time political leader Winston Churchill.
Bradbury demonstrates censorship, particularly through the lens of mass media, as one of the defining features of an oppressive government in Fahrenheit 451, as the future world the novel is set bans all books. This book ban is enforced by ‘Firemen’, which the protagonist, Guy Montag, is one of. This censorship is inspired by the Nazi book burnings and the second red scare, which Brabury talks about in his Fahrenheit 451 audio guide- ‘Hitler burned books in the streets of Berlin. And it terrified me… Then I found out about Russia burning the books behind the scenes. But they did it in such a way that people didn't know about it. They killed the authors behind the scenes. They burned the authors instead of the books.’ (Bradbury). In the world of this novel, censorship doesn't begin as something that is forced on the citizens, but rather a form of self-censorship, as Montag’s boss, Beatty explains. Due to the rise of mass media, people gradually stopped reading books and media was shortened to fit the culture of instant-gratification that was developing. ‘classics cut to fit fifteen minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column.’ (Bradbury, F451, P72). This censorship is taken to such an extreme that it leads to the deaths of people who step out of societal norms, such as the death of the old woman who is reported by her neighbours for having books, and is inadvertently burned to death by the firemen as she refuses to leave when her house and books are set on fire. This mass-media censorship highlights Bradbury’s fears that the power of mass-media could surpass that of an organised totalitarian regime, and that it’s media becoming shortened that can lead to an entire society becoming a dystopia, rather than the inverse. Mildred, Montag's wife is the perfect example of a citizen whose life fits the culture of instant gratification, whose consumption of mass-media is instrumental to her character. The majority of the time spent with her as an audience is establishing her place in the story as the example of the average citizen. Throughout the text, her focus is shown to be on consumable media, this is demonstrated with her focus on the wall-TVs and the seashell radio. This fixation on consumable content draws Mildred’s attention away from reality, giving her a disinterested outlook on the world to such a degree that in her case, forced censorship is entirely unnecessary, something that contrasts Montag and sets him apart as a societal ‘other’. Montag’s view on the disconnection that media causes in he and his wife’s relationship is shown in the quote, ‘He felt he was one of the creatures electronically inserted between the slots of the phono-colour walls, speaking but the speech not piercing the crystal barrier. He could only pantomime, hoping she would turn his way and see him. They would not touch through the glass’ (Bradbury, F541, P62). Calling the ‘family’ in Mildred’s television programmes ‘creatures’ highlights that Montag sees through the deceptive, attempt to fill a hole in someone’s life that the media is, dehumanising the ‘family’ and not accepting them into his life as companions in the way that Mildred does. This makes him appear to the reader as far more grounded in reality. Abass suggests in their critical reading that ‘Mildred and Beatty are the representatives of consumable material culture led by the ideology of the ruling powers’, suggesting that their function in the story is to demonstrate how easy it is to become infatuated with media lies for the purposes of self-gratification.
Censorship is also a main theme of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, as his main character, Winston Smith, lives in a totalitarian, dystopian future society where everything is monitored through devices called ‘telescreens’, including one’s facial expressions. Laws are then enforced by a group called the ‘Thought Police’, who are able to effectively remove someone from existence, leaving it up to the workers of the Ministry of Truth to edit and delete all records of their life. This phenomenon contextually, may have been inspired by Stalin’s Russia, where a person could be ‘purged’ and records would be changed, for example, photographs being doctored so that the victim would no longer appear on a public platform with Stalin. This context can be connected to Fahrenheit 451’s inspiration from the red scare, and how authors of books were being killed as a form of censoring their opinions from society. Much like in Fahrenheit 451, the main character, Winston’s, job is to enact this censorship as a member of the Ministry of Truth. This job requires him to go through documents and alter them, in effect altering history, for example when the Party reduces the chocolate ration, they eliminate all evidence that they had promised to increase it. The best physical representation of this censorship is the pneumatic ‘memory holes’ that exist in the offices of the Ministry of Truth- including Winston’s own office. Anything that is placed into these tubes is destroyed. This form of censorship is a lot more complicated and indirect than the book-burning that takes place in Fahrenheit 451, which adds interest but makes the method less believable. Another difference between the two novels to note is that although both protagonists’ roles in the world consist of destroying the written word, Winston’s is far more detached and impersonal, whereas Montag’s is extremely hands-on, contrasting the quote from 1984 ‘When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in’ (Orwell, The Complete Novels, P764) to Montag’s words in Fahrenheit 451, ‘We burned a thousand books. We burned a woman’ (Bradbury, F541, P66) One is portrayed as a passive action, a day at work like any other- while the other is shown as a horror, an atrocity that Montag struggles to process even in the dystopia he lives in. Drawing this comparison shows the extreme levels of cognitive dissonance that Winston struggles with throughout the book and draws attention to his internal struggle that mirrors the external one of society. This is demonstrated through the use of the emotionally detached pronoun ‘one’ which creates a dissociative effect between the physical and the internal. Comparing these two quotes, and how Winston is more dissociated from his actions that Montag also sets up the fact that, through capture and torture in Room 101, Winston is able to return to society and function in a ‘normal’ way, once again under the control of the party, whereas Montag never returns to his life complicit in the totalitarianism that once surrounded him.
The changing of language to suit the goals of the ruling class is something seen time and time again in oppressive systems of government, changing the very way the population thinks and communicates to suit the needs of the system. This subject is heavily featured in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four: A Novel, with the concepts of Newspeak and Doublethink. Newspeak is a form of language being developed by the party as a way to cut down the amount of words in the English language and to simplify communication to its barest roots. The best way that we can explore this ‘Newspeak’ is by discussing the character of Syme, a member of the research department, working on compiling the 11th edition of the Newspeak dictionary. He takes great pleasure in his work, and tells Winston ‘You think, dare I say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words… We’re cutting the language down to the bone’ (Orwell, The Complete Novels, P772). The use of language here is very telling, particularly ‘cutting… down to the bone’, which gives the audience connotations of death, of pain and murder. This violent act, this murder of language, is something Syme talks happily about, oblivious to its horrifying implications. The destruction of words and simplification of language, leads very easily to thought control. When the words with which to express a specific idea are absent from language, it becomes harder to express that idea, or to even think it. ‘Language becomes a mind-control tool, with the ultimate goal being the destruction of will and imagination.’ (Berkes). By its very design, Newspeak shortens vocabulary, and with that, shortens the scope of memory, leaving the internal landscape of one's mind barren, for if there is no language with which to think, thoughts and memories cease. Syme tells Winston that ‘Even when you write it [Newspeak] you’re still thinking in Oldspeak… They’re good enough but they’re translations. In your heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning.’ (Orwell, The Complete Novels, P773) The fact that Winston is ‘still thinking in Oldspeak’ is what sets him apart from the rest of the party members throughout the course of the novel- giving him his ability to remember the long-term, the ability to write his diary in ‘Oldspeak’ with its emotive language. This is Winston's main internal driving force throughout the novel, which is stripped from him following his torture in room 101, where his mind becomes forgetful and complacent, mirroring the rest of the party. The clinging onto ‘Oldspeak’ is the only way one can really combat the party at all, the only hope of fighting back against the unjust system. Coming back to language, it is also important to mention Doublethink, a concept present in the novel. Doublethink is defined by Winston as ‘To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them’ (Orwell, The Complete Novels, P763). Which means, more simply, that Doublethink is that act of believing something, and believing its opposite simultaneously. This is highlighted by the party motto, War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. This idea of Doublethink is deliberately confusing, and Orwell tells us that ‘even to understand the word ‘Doublethink’ involves the use of Doublethink’ (Orwell, The Complete Novels, P763). We are effectively warned against trying to comprehend Doublethink. ‘Does this imply that in trying to comprehend ‘Doublethink’, we lapse into the same kind of irrational thought process which it supposedly refers to?’ (Martin, P1). To have a government that is so adept at controlling the minds of its populace that it can make them take on an idea as nonsensical and paradoxical as Doublethink, highlights how deeply ingrained the lies of the state are into the minds of the population, how easy it is then to implant any thought they wish into the minds of any member of state. Language in 1984 is the most powerful weapon the party has at their disposal, and by repeating the party motto again and again throughout the novel until it becomes a real-life slogan, an unquestioned quote that people will reference without the context of the text, that will appear in lists of ‘classical book quotes’ without any context of the book just demonstrates how easy it is for Big Brother’s motto to become passively ingrained into the minds of the collective consciousness, planting the seeds of Doublethink into the subconscious mind. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
In Fahrenheit 451, books, and with them, all the literature and great ideas of the world are consistently destroyed by firemen. However, Montag clings onto a few books here and there rather than destroying them, hiding them behind the vent in his house. The most notable of these books that he saves is the Bible. ‘Old and New Testament’ (Bradbury, F451, P99) The Bible’s role in Fahrenheit 451 is comparable to the role of Winston’s diary in 1984, as they both represent the final shreds of literary hope that both men cling to in a world trying to destroy them. For both men, having these objects is an act of rebellion against the totalitarian systems that seek to control them. Montag first takes the bible to his friend, Faber (named after the famous publisher), who tells him the rarity of the book, that it could be the only one left in existence. Telling the audience that in this world, the Bible, which today is the most printed book, could have only one copy left, highlights the total destruction the firemen cause. Frenning calls the bible ‘a guiding beacon of sorts for the main character’ (Frenning, P2). Along with the bible, another important piece of literature in Fahrenheit 451 is the poem ‘Dover beach’ by Matthew Arnold, which Montag reads to Mildred and her friends. This scene further ingrains into the readers the rift between Montag and the rest of society, as all it does is upset the women, with Mrs Bowles saying ‘Silly words, silly words, silly awful hurting words.’
Much like in 1984, a reduction in language leads to a reduction in the scope of thought, though 1984 achieves this through changing language, while Fahrenheit 451 achieves it through slow societal move away from the literary. This overwhelmingly benefits the governments, as it causes their population to be far easier to control as they lose their critical thinking skills. For example, democracy is still technically in place, but instead of choosing candidates for their actual policies, they’re now chosen for arbitrary characteristics, such as appearance. This is seen when Mildred and her friends ‘discuss politics’ with Montag, with one of them saying ‘I laid it on the line for President Noble. I think he’s one of the nicest-looking men that ever became president.’ (Bradbury, F451, P125). This method of societal control through reduction in the literature is much more subtle than in 1984, and is thus accepted as the value consensus.
In Bradbury’s post-war novel, warfare is portrayed as something that citizens are entirely dissociated from. It is portrayed as operating away from and separate from the average man, somewhere far away, somewhere unmentioned. Due to his job, Guy Montag is not one of the men that fights distantly on the front-lines, nor are any of the other main characters we meet. Contextually this relates to the fact that Ray Bradbury was rejected for induction into the military during World War II due to his poor eyesight, so it makes sense that the author would feel more comfortable writing from a home-front perspective, thus a place of emotional disconnect. The unspecified war that is raging is mentioned distantly throughout the course of the text, never the main focus of a scene of conversation, we, the audience, are made distantly aware of it nonetheless. Montag, presented as the societal other, seems the only person aware of the lack of conversation surrounding the war, saying to Mildred ‘How the hell did those bombers get up there every second of our lives! Why doesn’t someone want to talk about it?’ (Bradbury, F451, P96). This ever-present, looming threat of war doesn’t affect most of the overall plot of the story, with the characters being too distracted by the smaller level things that affect their own daily life. Mass media is used as a tool to distract the masses from larger scale things like war, but even Montag, who is constantly presented as a character who sees past trivialities like mass media, is too concerned with self-preservation to focus on the war. This apathetic view towards war that the book does well to showcase reflects, of course, real world views of war, particularly during WWII. Cognitive dissonance and dissociation from the very real looming threat of death is a common way of coping, however it will not save you, something we see when Montag runs from the city. This is when the faceless enemies of America drop a bomb that flattens the entire city, killing every single one of its residents. ‘The city rolled over and fell down dead. The sound of death came after’ (Bradbury, F451, P205). This erases every connection that Montag has spent the course of the book developing. His wife, Mildred is dead and it is unclear if Faber survived the blast, but it is not only the living that the bomb kills, but also the dead. If Clarisse had not been killed by a car, she would most certainly have been killed by the bomb, and had Montag not killed Beatty, he would certainly be dead too. It doesn’t matter when they died, they were going to in a matter of days no matter what, by the inevitable that is war. Montag survives, however, only due to his complete and total rejection of society and his escape from the city with his memorised bible verses. McGiveron mentions that ‘without the mirror of the Bible, however, Montag would be hard pressed to see any positive “truths” in his postnuclear world.’ (McGiveron, P6) which calls attention to that overarching theme that books and the literary can be relied on above all else, even in the face of total destruction.
In Orwell’s novel, very similarly to Fahrenheit 451, has the looming idea of constant war present in the background of the novel, something which almost all of the citizens seem completely apathetic to, particularly Julia, who doesn’t concern herself with wider ideas and the greater good, but only with the things that directly affect her. The wars that rage continuously in 1984 are described in much more detail than those in Fahrenheit 451, described in Emmanuel Goldstien’s book, which is contextually a parody of Marx's works. Goldstein describes the three states of Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania, saying that ‘In one combination or another, these three super-states are permanently at war’ (p854) For the superstates, war is not something that any of them can win or lose, it becomes simply a way to use up resources so that they can keep the lower classes subordinate, working in the factories to produce materials that are immediately destroyed by the war. This absolutely meaningless state of total war, just designed to keep the working class in line, presents no real threat to any of the main characters, just perceived threat. ‘War, being continuous, ceases to be a threat to existence. Rather, it becomes a way of life.’ (Gomez).This is the opposite of the war in Fahrenheit 451, in which the threat is hardly perceived, but still kills. These, although both take place in futuristic settings, are at heart two different depictions of world war two, something that both authors lived through. It is interesting to note that the book in which bombing presents an actual threat, something that we see kill main characters, is the one written by an american author, whereas the work by a british author, whose country was subject to more actual bombing, doesn’t present the idea of wars causing actual death.
In conclusion, throughout both of these novels. Bradbury and Orwell both draw on their own experiences having lived through the Second World War to accurately write influential portrayals of oppressive war-time governments. They draw on the key ideas of forced censorship and the removal of language from society to demonstrate the effect of government control on the minds of the population. As well as this, both novels cover the concept of eternal, never-ending war, and the destruction that comes with it. Both books present warnings about the present and future of society, warning against the over-consumption of mass media and demonstrating how easily language changes can lead to changes in thought.