Ignorance is bliss. Or so they say. But some of the greatest authors of all time warn us against the safety and comfort of which ignorance offers, suggesting that our perception of the world as we know it today is distorted by a veil of ignorance to which we are seemingly unaware. A world of perceived freedom, autonomy, and independence; concepts that have never before seemed as tangible as the present. But what you do not realize is that your freedom is an illusion; the choice and autonomy that you believe you hold are mere fantasies created to control every facet of your life. It is extreme, dangerous even to possess this realization, yet it is theories similar to this that are presented in a selection of the most influential texts in history. In their famous works, Steven Spielberg (Minority Report), George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four), Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange), and Margaret Atwood ( The Handmaid’s Tale), explore the dangers of technology, complacency, and the manipulation of both choice and language, presenting futures where the world is devoid of humanity and individuality. Yet what is more frightening about these dystopian nightmares than their extremely oppressive nature, is the subtle yet profound resemblance they have to the society in which we live in today. Together, they cause readers to question whether we are actually as free as we once would have thought, and issue a warning of the future if we fail to act now; a future that holds nothing more than “a boot, stamping on a human face, forever.”

Today, technology is an aspect of society to which we are all well acquainted, yet films such as Minority Report, directed by Steven Speilberg, cause us to question exactly how well we know our newfound ally. Minority Report is set in a futuristic Washington D.C of 2054, where society is overrun with technology. Although advanced, the technologies presented in Minority Report are not unrecognizable to the technologies within our own society today. Dynamic retina scanners, personalized advertising, and robots are only a selection of the technologies present within the film that are used as mechanisms of surveillance and control. To viewers, this technology seems initially, superficially harmless, after all, their resemblance to current day technology is frightfully similar. However, the careful use of cinematography techniques illustrates to viewers the extent of the state’s control and thus exposes the danger such technologies can have. In one particular scene where the police are in pursuit of John Anderton, birds-eye view shots are continuously used to uncover the public residence, exposing personal and intimate aspects of people’s private lives, and this is coupled with the consistent use of high angle shots to frame the police. The polarising contrast between the different shots illustrates the extent to which people’s lives are under constant surveillance, reinforcing to viewers the potential that technology as “harmless” as presented in the film have to control our lives. We too, like the citizens of Minority Report, have simply become numb to the unrelenting control of technology and the extent to which it manipulates us. However, through the presentation of technology in his film, Steven Speilberg challenges viewers to question the apathy that we have developed for technology in our society today and the power which it holds over us. Furthermore, Speilberg also uses an invented, futuristic technology to issue viewers with a chilling warning against technological advancements if we continue to overlook the influence it has in our current day society. A specialized police department known as PreCrime has the ability to predict future murders using psychics known as PreCogs and arrest future criminals on the basis of these insights. PreCrime works upon the belief that one’s future actions are predetermined and that ultimately one will fulfill the prophecy issued by the PreCogs; just because “… you prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact it was going to happen.” Citizens in the society of Minority Report are assured “that that which keeps us safe will keep us free,” which is ironic when you consider that the very technology supposedly creating freedom is the very thing removing their choice and autonomy. For what they are prevented from recognizing is that technology such as PreCrime removes one’s free will, but most importantly the ability that we have to choose our actions and futures. Spielberg achieves more than surfacing a moral dilemma regarding choice in his use of PreCrime, he causes his viewers to reflect on and question choice in our own society today; do we actually yield our power to choose, or are we simply minions to the mere notion of free will?

Anthony Burgess takes the understanding of choice presented by Spielberg one step further in his influential novel, A Clockwork Orange. Written in 1962, Europe and the wider world were consumed by the Cold War and the growing rise of the Soviet Union’s Communist rule. Burgess’ novel was written to reflect the Communist tendency to remove moral responsibility from the individual and transfer it to the state, a practice that notoriously removed one’s choice and disregarded individual wellbeing. In a futuristic England, A  Clockwork Orange was centered around a society where being a good person was no longer a choice, but instead merely a state of being forcibly imposed upon someone by the state. This idea is presented through the protagonist Alex, a young criminal involved in a particularly violent youth culture, who undergoes the Ludovico technique in order to remove his violent tendencies and supposedly restore morality. “To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government,” yet for the state presented in A Clockwork Orange, it is but a victory in its pursuit for control of the individual, achieved in the name of the collective. The metaphorical comparison between Alex and a “piece of clockwork” removes the humanity and individuality which Alex possesses, representing him as solely one cog in a machine that operates allegedly in the name of collective welfare.  It is with this idea that Burgess presents a concept far more chilling than the moral and ethical dilemma that this technique surfaces, he comments on an aspect of humanity and society which would appear to unite all dystopian literature. “But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.” Here, it would appear that the Ludovico technique involves more than just eliminating one’s ‘bad’, but is instead centered around the elimination and control of one’s humanity and individuality by removing the choice involved in morality. This notion is arguably more sickening than the feeling induced by the Ludovico technique itself, because “when a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.” As unnerving as this may be, it embodies a pertinent warning relevant to our own societies today; Burgess prompts readers to realize that even something as intimate as our individuality may simply be a product of manipulation and control by the entities who hold power over us.

The idea that individuality poses a threat to a totalitarian government, as discussed in conjunction with A Clockwork Orange, is an idea presented in many dystopian texts, however never as powerfully as in George Orwell’s revolutionary novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell’s novel focuses on the use of language to manipulate thought, and the damage this causes to one’s individuality and personal identity. Language is frequently used in dystopian literature to highlight differences between the dystopian society and the time in which the text was written, delivering and reinforcing a key warning. The Party, a totalitarian entity presented in Nineteen Eighty-Four, uses an invented language known as Newspeak as one of many mechanisms used to control their citizens. It was designed to “narrow the range of thought” and to ultimately “make all other modes of thought impossible.” Without the words to express it, Party members were not only rendered incapable of challenging the flawed society in which they lived in, but overtime failed to even notice it. Orthodoxy to the Party became so ingrained into all members that it was second nature. “Orthodoxy means not thinking— not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” This blinding and numbing effect that language is seen to have in Nineteen Eighty-Four is experienced by readers themselves when reading Anthony Burgess’ novel, A Clockwork Orange. The novel is founded upon Nadsat, a language Burgess’ himself invented to shape the society in which his novel was derived. Nadsat is heavily influenced by both Russian and Cockney English, representing the notoriously violent teenage culture that was emerging at the time the text was written. This literary device originally alienated readers from both the characters and the society, disguising the brutal tendencies of Alex and his ‘droogs’ amidst the foreign language. After all, Burgess knew that he “imposed [himself] most successfully on people incapable of understanding [him].” However, as the text progresses, readers become increasingly familiar with Burgess’s adopted prose and the violence tainting the society becomes accepted and ‘normal’. As readers, we “simply swallowed everything, and what [we] didn’t swallow did [us] no harm because it left no residue behind…” The employment of this powerful literary device causes even readers to lose themselves as they part with their own morals and begin to simply accept the violence presented in the novel, making it easy to understand the power in which the manipulation of language can have when employed by a government or institution. George Orwell is the third author explored thus far who has presented the idea of the loss of self to a totalitarian entity, both Minority Report and A Clockwork Orange also act as a warning against this threat through their exploration of technology and the jeopardy of choice. However, George Orwell accentuates this concept by extending it to a much more profound level, warning readers that the loss of individuality and humanity to a government or institution can occur through something as intimate as the words in which we express ourselves.

Dystopian novels are known for the warnings which lie disguised amidst their words; Steven Speilberg, Anthony Burgess, and George Orwell all warn their readers against the control in which a totalitarian entity imposes, and the loss of self which occurs to those under this rule. However, in a revolutionary novel known as The Handmaid’s Tale, Margret Atwood deepens this warning by suggesting that our complacency poses a far more dire threat than the control to which we are subjected to. In her dystopian society, The Republic of Gilead, “there is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law.” The novel is told through the eyes of one of few women “blessed” with fertility, a young Handmaid named Offred (Of-Fred) who is seen as nothing more than a “two-legged womb, that’s all.” Handmaids such as Offred are the subjects of extreme systematic oppression and jurisdiction at the hands of the state. However, what is more frightening than the oppression that they face is the apathy to which they hold towards it. Through the eyes of Offred, we see that the other Handmaids simply “accept their duties with willing hearts”. Elements of control imposed upon them, such as the language which shapes them, have simply become an accepted part of everyday life. “I wait for the household to assemble. Household; that is what we are. The Commander is the head of the household. The house is what he holds.” Here, Offred is inspecting the symbolic meaning of her words, exposing the nonsensical and somewhat laughable nature of her society. This metaphor illustrates the structure of each household as a human body, delineating the Commander as the head and the Handmaids as nothing more than some other body part, a comparison awfully similar when you consider that Handmaids are only “two-legged wombs”. This metaphor reinforces the oppressive role dealt to women within Gilead and highlights the danger of our complacent tendencies. Most modern-day readers would ignore this heavy symbol, an element both within the book but also within our everyday lives. However, by challenging these words and recreating the normal household to be yet another symbol of male domination, Atwood causes readers to confront the complacency that we have developed towards elements of control as tenuous as the use of the word ‘household’; complacency that she warns comes with consequences. The importance of this warning is evident through Offred herself, who towards the end of the novel says, “the fact is I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom. I want to be here…” Offred does not only lose her choices and her autonomy to The Republic of Gilead, she freely sacrifices herself to the authorities over her. To anyone well acquainted with dystopian literature, Offred’s words are horrifying for the striking resemblance they have to the final words of Winston in Nineteen Eight-Four; “but it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loves Big Brother.” Winston too, although not easily, gave himself to the state that dominated so much of his life, just as Offred did. This demonstrates that complacency is ultimately a matter of choice even if we are not aware of the autonomy that we have, thus reinforcing Atwood’s message that we are capable of defiance and do not have to fall prey to the powers that be.

Minority Report, A Clockwork Orange, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and The Handmaids Tale each paint a picture of a future devoid of individuality and humanity. This picture is as alarming as it is ugly, yet the beauty of dystopian literature is that it acts as a warning of a future not yet come to be. But these works were created as more than just a warning; they were written as a desperate plea to humanity to act before it is too late. A plea to be aware of the technology that violates your privacy and steals your identity. A plea to use your ability to choose, and more importantly to know that the choices you make can be different from those which society prescribes. A plea to be aware of weapons as innocent as language which manipulate your thoughts and control your individuality. These literary masterpieces have demonstrated that our futures are grim, but will you heed the warnings that their creators have issued? “You know your own future, which means you can change it if you want to. You still have a choice.”

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