Essay Title - By comparing the two novels, in what ways do you think Burgess and Atwood explore the representation of language in dystopian societies?
Introduction
The dystopian novel has become the mainstay of science and near future fiction, from its beginnings in the 1950s with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984 to the more recent cyberpunk works of Jeff Noon and William Gibson, the creation of a future world that is both terrifying and antithetical to humanity allows writers to both exercise their imaginations and comment on their contemporary society. The novel of dystopia then can be viewed from a number of different perspectives: as science fiction, as a warning, as a horror story and, more importantly, as a satire on the contemporary socio-political situation.
With this in mind, this essay attempts to examine the importance that language plays in two of the most widely read dystopian works since the 1960s: Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange (2000) and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1996). Both of these books are set in a near future that is, at once, recognisable and markedly different and each also, as we shall see, asserts the importance of language as a way of controlling thoughts, feelings and behaviours: A Clockwork Orange creating a user defined slang and The Handmaid's Tale, a totalitarian semantic that serves to subjugate and oppress.
Utopia/Dystopia
Before we look at the specific representation of the dystopia in either A Clockwork Orange or The Handmaid's Tale, it would be instructive to define our terms. What exactly do we mean by dystopia and what is its history as a word and as a concept?
Its beginnings can be traced back to the fifteenth century political philosopher Thomas More and especially his work Utopia (1965). Utopia draws from Plato's Republic and depicts a unified and harmonious society that fosters creativity, allows for personal freedom and welcome(s) foreign tourists with open arms (More, 1965: 101). It is easy to see that, in depicting a perfect society, Thomas More was strongly influenced by biblical notions of Eden and Paradise especially as they were translated into social comment by Saint Augustine in his work The City of God and by the Catholic scholar Erasmus; both thinkers upon whom More had lectured early on in his life (Surtz, 1957: 27).
As Paul Turner (1965) suggests, there are conflicting interpretations concerning the philosophical intentions of More's Utopia, some see it as a serious comment on how things could be (for instance see Karl Kautksy's essay Thomas More and His Utopia (1888)) and suggest that More anticipated the ideas of Marx and communism, however others see it as a satirical attack on the impossible and absurd nature of certain protestant notions of the day; for instance the investiture of female priests and the shared ownership of land; More was, after all not only a Catholic martyr but a wealthy landowner.
Whatever the interpretation of the text, one concrete notion that arises out of it is the term Utopia itself as pertaining to a blissful and collective society that promotes freedoms, happiness and creativity.
Of course, the term dystopia can be seen as the antithesis to this and as such was first used by the political thinker J.S. Mill in the House of Commons on 12th March 1868 to mock his opponents' views on the bill they were then debating:
'It is, perhaps, too complementary 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.'
This quote concretises an important point about the dystopia: that is must verge on the unimaginable, or as Mill states be too bad to be practicable. This is undoubtedly what gives dystopian works like Orwell's 1984 their sense of horror and science fiction; the dystopian world is largely one of alienation, of totalitarian regimes, of loss of personal freedom and creativity and of fear and repression.
We certainly see this in both A Clockwork Orange and The Handmaid's Tale; Alex in the former, for instance, is a typically alienated figure of teenage angst and is made to come to order through the intervention of a brutal and uncaring state and Offred, in Atwood's novel, is subjugated and exploited by those in power. Both works are set in a world that has either lost its meaning or whose meaning has been replaced by arbitrary dogma. A Clockwork Orange, for instance, depicts a de-centred society where consumerism and materialism has replaced humanity and in The Handmaid's Tale a similar sense of dystopia arises out of the oppressive affects of the pseudo-religious ideology that permeates the very fabric of the Republic of Gilead As we shall see, these two similar and yet subtly different accounts of dystopia are reflected in the representation of the importance of language and the role it plays in the formation of personal identity.
A Clockwork Orange - A Psychological Dystopia.
From its very beginning, A Clockwork Orange states its mandate as being concerned with the importance language plays in the creation of the self and others. Alex's first words disorientate the reader and this, in many ways is intentional:
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim. Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making our rassoodocks what to do with the evening a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.
The nadsat slang that is employed here allows Burgess to achieve a number of aims; firstly, it places the story beyond the reader's contemporary experience - we understand straightaway that we are dealing with a foreign scenario, one that is strange and disorientating and, secondly, it alienates us from the Droogs, we as readers are placed outside of their group, unable to comprehend what they are saying and thus to empathise with them. This situation is gradually altered throughout the book as we become more and more familiar with the language and by extension, identify more and more with Alex. This heightens the dramatic tension of the novel's conclusion because, by its end, we are literally speaking the same language as the protagonist, a fact that engenders an increased emotional attachment and interest over his fate.
What though is the over all picture of the dystopia in A Clockwork Orange? In his Introduction, Blake Morrison gives us a picture of how Burgess conceived of his near future universe:
Burgess had been struck by the development of coffee bars, pop music and teenage gangs...For his novel, Burgess posited a near future, the 1970s, in which adolescent violence had become a large enough social problem for the government to resort to Pavlovian techniques of 'negative reinforcement'
In line with this, much of the violence and aggression in Part One of A Clockwork Orange comes not from the State but from Alex and his Droogs. Throughout the first section they engage in a series of violent acts that culminate in the death of the old ptitsa (Burgess, 2000: 115) and leads to Alex undergoing the Ludovico technique. The dystopian character of Part One of the novel, then, arises more out of the depiction of a de-centered society that is characterised by violence, lack of meaning and consumption than an overt authoritarian State.
In the scene, for instance, in which he visits Melodia, the music store Alex bemoans the superficiality of contemporary culture, comparing it unfavourably with his beloved classical music:
(The shop) has the gloopy name of MELODIA, but it was real horrorshow mesto and skorry... I walked in and the only other customers were two young ptitas sucking away at ice-sticks (and this, mark, was dead cold winter and sort of shuffling through the new pop-discs - Johnny Burnaway, Stash Kroh, The Mixers, Lay Quiet Awhile with Ed And Id Molotov, and all the rest of that cal).
Alex's violence can be seen as a way out of his bland consumer world that features faceless pop groups whose only purpose is to sell records to pre-teenagers and boast none of the inherent meaning of Beethoven or Mozart. Alex's musical taste is a mirror to his status as an individual in a society that tries constantly to engender homogenisation. There is a suggestion that the culture portrayed in Burgess' novel serves only to palliate and to subdue the members of society that consume it.
Part Two of the novel however depicts a more openly dystopian world; one in which the power of the State, through technology, imposes its will on the individual as Alex is forced to watch scenes of violence and listen to classical music in an attempt to alter his behaviour. The sense of terror and of helplessness is heightened all the more because Alex is a victim of science, a discipline we generally associate with medicine and advancement, he becomes little more than the subject of an experiment, a lab rat:
The like minds of this Dr. Brodky and Dr. Branom and the others in white coats, and remember there was this devotchka twiddling with the knobs and watching the meters, they must haven been more cally and filthy than any prestoopnick in the Staja itself.
The tone of the novel changes in Part Two, as the violence and aggression that emanated from Alex is returned to him through the power of the authorities, the dystopian sense also changes from one of a bland consumerist wasteland to one of State intervention and overt psychological control.
Nadsat
This last point, of course, is also reflected in the novel's use of language; nadsat is a slang and as such is used to sure up social boundaries and instill a sense of exclusivity in its users (Fiedler and Bless, 2001). As Partridge (1933) details, some of the earliest instances of slang date back to the sixteenth century and the attempt on the part of criminal gangs to create a language that allowed them to converse without being overheard.
This is some of the same sense that we see in A Clockwork Orange, Alex and the Droogs' use of nadsat can be seen as a way of not only recognising each other and excluding outsiders but also of asserting ownership over their own thoughts. In a world that is increasingly characterised as being without meaning, Alex literally creates his own by inventing and using slang. His use of language becomes, like every part of his life, a way to assert his individuality in the face of the machinery of the State.
It is exactly this individuality that is at the heart of the 'Lodovico technique', as the State tries to alter Alex's very thoughts and behaviour patterns to make him conform to their notions of the correct citizen; a point testified to by the words of Dr. Branom when he says:
'You felt ill this afternoonbecause you're getting better. When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy that's all. You'll be healthier still this time tomorrow.
In the dystopian world of A Clockwork Orange langauge, in the form of slang, is used as a way of desperately clinging to the notion of individuality in the face of the homogenising forces of the State and at the book's conclusion it is ultimately successful as Alex retains both his language and his sense of Self.
The Handmaid's Tale - Gender Dystopia
Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale offers us a similar and yet subtly different dystopian vision, one that is based on direct physical aggression and suppression. Whereas A Clockwork Orange depicts a society and a State whose violence and exploitation is, at first covert and is then revealed, in The Handmaid's Tale the power of Gilead over the bodies and minds of the women is obvious from the book's very opening:
We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes of and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there, the hoops for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone.
There is no covert State power here, none of the hidden agenda of A Clockwork Orange, this opening scene reminds us of the images of disenfranchised and alienated refugees or concentration camp prisoners. The women have been stripped of all material worth, ready to be molded into what the patriarchal State desires. Women are classified and characterised according to their relative usefulness to the male dominated social order, a point most clearly reflected in the colour of their clothes: red for the Handmaids, blue for the Wives, brown for the Aunts etc. The desires of the patriarchy are literally inscribed on the bodies of the women in the form of their attire and, through the use of names (Offred, Ofglen etc.) their status not only as objects but as possessions is constantly asserted.
Women in are Gilead not only suppressed and exploited, they are dehumanised and de-individuated. In chapter twenty seven, for instance Offred offers us a description of the local town that has had all reference to femininity removed:
We turn out backs to the Wall, head left. Here there are several empty storefronts, their glass windows scrawled with soap. I try to remember what was sold in them, once. Cosmetics? Jewelery? Most of the stores carrying things for men are still open; its just the ones dealing in what they call vanities that have been shut down.
In Gilead, female sexuality is deemed as either dangerous or worthless, it needs to be either restricted or expunged. Handmaidens are used purely as vessels for children, they are robbed of their sexuality, not even being allowed to use soap or cosmetics.
Again, as Nancy Walker (1990) points out, control in Gilead is closely linked to language and its uses:
In The Handmaid's Tale only the ruling class have access to books, biblical injunctions are distorted, and even Scrabble is a clandestine activity.
The language that Atwood utilises for her novel is a strange mixture of archaic Biblical reference and contemporary concatenation, as we have already seen, the naming of the Handmaids reflect their status as possessions through the evocation of Fred or of Glen but there are deeper significances: Gilead, for instance is found in the Old Testament (Jeremiah 46: 11), the dresses are called 'habits' (Atwood, 1996: 34) and the citizens of Gilead greet each other by saying Praise be (Atwood, 1996: 29), all are clearly references to the revision of language to reflect religious indoctrination.
The Handmaid's Tale, as David Sisk (1997) tells us concerns itself, to a very large extent, with the degree that control over a society's language also means control over the minds of those within it. It is no accident that Offred's moment of minor rebellion, in the form of the Scrabble game with the Commander, is twinned with an ecstatic use of words, as if their very sound signals some exciting glimpse of liberation:
We play two games. Larynx, I spell. Valance. Quince. Zygote. I hold the glossy counters with their smooth edges, finger the letters. The feeling is voluptuous. This is freedom, an eyeblink of it. Limp. I spell. Gorge. What a luxury
Here we see some of the linguistic sense of A Clockwork Orange, like Alex, Offred finds a sense of freedom in the use of words that are outside of the proscribed, regulated language. However, whereas, in Burgess' novel the semantic alteration of language comes from the user (Alex's slang) in The Handmaid's Tale it comes from the oppressive power of the State: Gilead restricts language and so too the thoughts and responses of those that use it.
Conclusions
As we have seen, the depiction of dystopian societies and the representation of language in A Clockwork Orange and The Handmaid's Tale are linked and yet noticeably different. Ultimately both concern themselves with the extent that control over language and expression equates to control of lives and destinies; Alex is all the stronger for asserting his control via nadsat and Offred is all the weaker for relinquishing hers to the language of the Republic of Gilead.
Both novels feature State violence of a kind, Burgess' through Capitalist brainwashing and behaviour modification and Atwood's through an overt patriarchal subjugation of women; both of these quite clearly have a contemporary relevance, the former to theories of psychological intervention prevalent in the 1960s and 70s (see for instance Alan Kazdin's book Behaviour Modification in Applied Settings (1975)) and the latter to feminist authors such as Andrea Dworkin and Laura Mulvey's assertions on the imperative for censorship in debates concerning pornography and the objectification of women in the modern media.
In an increasingly diverse and technologically based society, however, the real relevance of both of these works lies in their depiction of the power of language to both liberate and subjugate. Each suggests that there is a direct correlation between the ownership of language and the flexing of power, a point made by Robin Tolmach Lakoff in his study Talking Power: The Politics of Language in Our Lives:
Language is powerful; language is power. Language is a change-creating force and therefore to be feared and used, if at all, with great care, not unlike fire. (Tolmach Lakoff, 1990: 13)
References
Atwood, M (1996), The Handmaid's Tale, London: Vintage. (ISBN 0099740915)
Burgess, A (2000), A Clockwork Orange, London: Penguin. (ISBN 0141182601)
Fiedler, K and Bless, H (2001), Social Cognition, published in Hewstone, M and Stroebe, W (eds), Introduction to Social Psychology, London: Blackwell, pp.115-150, (ISBN063120437)
Holy Bible (1991), Oxford: Oxford University Press. (ISBN: 0195283708)
Kautksy, K (1888), Thomas More and his Utopia, available online at J.S. Mill House of Commons Debate, Hansard 12th March 1868, cited in Sisk, D (1997), Transformations of Language in Modern Dystopias, London: Greenwood Press, p.14
