摘 要

1. Introduction 1

1.1 About George Orwell 1

1.2 About Nineteen Eighty-Four 1

1.3 Need for the study 2

2. Literature Review 3

2.1 Totalitarianism 3

2.2 Dystopia 4

2.3 Human nature 4

2.4 Previous studies on Nineteen Eighty-Four 5

3. Distortion of Human Nature under Totalitarianism 7

3.1 Distortion of human nature 7

3.1.1 Distortion of human nature in family 7

3.1.2 Distortion of human nature in friendship 8

3.1.3 Distortion of human nature in love 9

3.2 Causes of distortion of human nature 9

3.2.1 Education 9

3.2.2 Environment 10

4. Conclusion 11

References 12

Abstract

The study intends to analyze the distortion of human nature under the totalitarianism in Nineteen Eighty-Four. By analyzing the main characters, the paper probes into the harmfulness of the distortion of the human nature and explores the causes of the distortion of human nature. The main part of the paper consists of two aspects. It discusses the distortion of human nature in family, friendship and love. In the novel, the relationships among people are distorted, children become tools for monitoring their parents; Friends can be used and cheated by each other; Lovers betray each other. The paper explores the causes of the distortion of human nature from two points: education and environment.

Nineteen Eighty-Four exposes the ugly practices of personal dictatorship and the impact of education and environment on human nature, as well expresses Orwell’s hatred for totalitarianism and warns people against its dangers. Therefore, as a political fiction Nineteen Eighty-Four exposes the dangers of totalitarianism, which will be significant for the development of society.

Key words: totalitarianism; Nineteen Eighty-Four; distortion of human nature

中文摘要

本文旨在研究小说《1984》中极权主义下的人性扭曲。通过对小说中的主要人物进行分析，探析人性扭曲的危害以及造成人性扭曲形成的原因。本文主体部分主要从两方面探讨人性扭曲。从亲情、友情、爱情三方面探讨人性的扭曲。小说中，人与人之间的关系发生扭曲，孩子成了监视父母一言一行的工具；朋友可以被利用、被欺骗；情人之间相互背叛。其次，将从教育和环境两方面探析对人性扭曲的影响。

《1984》揭露了个人独裁的丑恶行径以及教育和环境对人性的影响，表达了作者奥威尔对极权主义的痛恨，同时警告人们要重视其危害。作为一部政治寓言小说《1984》揭露了极权主义的危害，对社会发展有重大意义。

关键词：极权主义；《1984》；人性的扭曲

Introduction

1.1 About George Orwell

George Orwell, a British left-wing writer, is famous in the history of English fiction in the 20th century. He writes authentically with honest political beliefs. His works have distinct political tendencies and expose the horror and darkness of totalitarian politics. His works are concise and lively and have a strong artistic appeal. In A Collection of Essays, Orwell expresses the idea that if he lacks political purposes, everything he writes, without exception, is lifeless. The workings are flashy paragraphs, meaningless sentences, artificial adjectives, in short, nonsense. Therefore, when he states his political views and social understanding, he chooses the written form that ordinary people can read and understand. His writing relies on his own experiences and feelings, which connects with the reality of other people's lives. Both Orwell himself and his works have a profound impact on later writers.

1.2 About Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel, one of the Anti-Utopia Trilogy (anuother two are Brave New World by Huxley and We by Zamyatin). The novel describes the year of 1984, there are three superpowers in the world: Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia. The wars among the three countries are continuous. The story takes places in Oceania. The internal social structure of Oceania is thoroughly broken down, and a highly totalitarian rule is implemented to control the history, language and to suppress people's thoughts and instincts. There is only one political party in the Oceania, IngSoc (Orwell, 1961, 1). Big Brother is the ruler of the country. The party uses telescreen to monitor so as to control those people's behavior, and takes advantage of the personal worship of Big Brother and hatred of enemies at home and abroad to maintain the operation of society. The society is divided into three strata: core party, periphery party and proletarians. The government agencies includes four departments: the Ministry of Peace, which is responsible for war; the Ministry of Love, which maintains law and order; the Ministry of Truth, which concerns with news, entertainment, education and arts; and the Ministry of Plenty, which concerns with production and distribution. According to the Newspeak, the official language of the Oceania, they are abbreviated as Minipax, Miniluv, Minitrue and Miniplenty respectively, among which the Ministry of Love is the really frighting one (Orwell, 1961, 3).

Winston Smith, the protagonist, a peripheral member of the party, works in the Records Department of Minitrue. He has the ability to think independently and is suspicious of the society he which lives in. What’s more, he falls in love with another peripheral party member, Julia. As a result, he makes a crime of thought that doubts Big Brother and becomes an ideological prisoner. In the end, after experiencing the ideological transformation of the Ministry of Love, Winston finally becomes a faithful believer of Big Brother.

As a political prophecy, Nineteen Eighty-Four has a profound influence. George Orwell creates many new words in the novel, like “Big Brother”, “double thought” and “Newspeak”. All these new words have been included in the authoritative dictionary, which is extremely rare in the history of literature (Lian, 2010).

1.3 Need for the study

Every country and social system that respects the most basic human nature and is good at mobilizing human nature can greatly promote its social development. This is the most important reason for the majority of countries in the world to regard individual freedom and private property as the sacred and inviolable thing.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, children are trained to monitor their parents by participating in juvenile reconnaissance teams from young age. O'Brien, in the name of friends, deceives Winston. Julia and Winston betray each other. All these plots show the distortion of human nature. Therefore, it is necessary to make an analysis of distortion of human nature under such a totalitarianism. This paper aims to help one gain a more thorough understanding of the novel by analyzing the main characters, probe into the harmfulness and causes of the distortion of human nature, take importance to the development of human nature.

Literature Review

2.1. Totalitarianism

What is totalitarianism? Totalitarianism is defined as a nation, a country and a leader, which means modern despotism. It appears in 1925 and is invented by fascism. Mussolini was one of the inventors. It is essentially the same as the autocracy in ancient or medieval times, but different from these traditional autocracies, Totalitarianism has mastered the ruling means of modern politics, making political organizations, social life, tools of public opinion, artistic creation, historical tampering and even more (Huang, 2012). Totalitarianism implies that social order is controlled entirely by political or state power, that private space is almost nonexistence, and freedom is minimized. Just as described in the novel that except for several facets in the head of yourself, nothing belongs to you.

In the first half of the 20th century, the West experienced various wars, such as the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War. In the era, totalitarianism had endangered the freedom and the lives of all mankind. Hitler and Mussolini's fascism prevailed, and bloody rule took place in many European countries, such as the appalling policy of genocide against Jews; from 1937 to 1938, Stalinism in the Soviet Union also carried out the policy of “great cleansing” against the opponents. In The Origin of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt points out that totalitarianism is an unprecedented new form of domination. In the past, no authoritarian dictatorship, however cruel, has divided people into “races or classes that ought to be eliminated” (Hannah, 2008) and carried out collective transformation and massacre. In the past, the totalitarianism regime merely persecuted the political enemies who opposed to the regime. However, totalitarianism ruthlessly annihilates the obedient people in modern days (Wang, 2011, 113).

What is a totalitarian society scared most? It’s afraid of the ability to think independently. Therefore, it is not enough for having knowledge but also an ability to think. Without thinking can only become a machine for the Party to enslave the people, just like most of the people in the novel. Totalitarianism is modernity. Without modern political, it is impossible to extend to everyone and every corner. It takes technology as its condition and imprisons the whole society in the state machine, namely, the pervasive political domination of people’s non-political life.

2.2 Dystopia

What is dystopia? Comparing to Utopia, it refers to a place full of ugliness and misfortune. If Utopian literature expresses the whole idea of an ideal society, then dystopian literature has written an eschatological myth through the reflection on the humanization of society and human beings. The Utopian novel explores its perfection through the hypothetical progress of human society in terms of technology, philosophy and social structure, so that perfect or near-perfect society can be reached in the future. Then Anti-Utopia is the consequence of the extreme Utopia. The imperfection of human beings has been pushed to its climax through the tragic inference of the trend of contemporary social development, and it is predicted that human society may become a depressing and frightening society (Wang, 2011, 113).

It is seemingly full of peace in a dystopian society, actually it is full of uncontrollable social evils, such as class contradictions, shortage of resources, crime, persecution and so on. Dystopia always portrays a desperate future. In some anti-utopian works with flush material civilization, psychological dependence is highly controlled by material, and human spirit has no real freedom in the highly developed society.

2.3 Human nature

There are two aspects of human nature. Narrowly speaking, it refers to the essential psychological attributes of human beings, just these attributes consisting of human beings that distinguish human beings from other animals. Broadly speaking, it refers to the psychological attributes of human beings, including the part attributes shared by human beings and other animals.

Human nature is always a significant focus among scholars. Human nature and society are inseparable. Every country and social system that respects the most basic human nature and is good at mobilizing human nature can greatly promote social development. This is the most important reason for the majority of countries in the world to regard individual freedom and private property as the sacred and inviolable thing. While the human nature is completely strangled by the might in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Might is right, that is the logic of the Oceania.