Transformations of Language in Modern

Dystopias
David W. Sisk

Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Number 75

Donald Palumbo, Series Adviser

GREENWOOD PRESS

Westport, Connecticut • London

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData

Sisk David W., 1963-

Transformations of language in modern dystopias / David W. Sisk.

p. cm.--(Contributions to the study of science fiction and fantasy, ISSN 0193-6875; no. 75)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-313-30411-4 (alk. paper)
1. Science fiction, English--History and criticism. 2. Dystopias in literature. 3. English
fiction--20th century--History and criticism. 4. American fiction--20th century--History and
criticism. 5. Science fiction, American--History and criticism. 6. More, Thomas, Sir, Saint,
1478-1535--Influence. 7. More, Thomas, Sir, Saint, 1478-1535. Utopia. 8. Language and
culture. 9. Future in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PR888.D96S57 1997
823'.0876209372--dc21 97-9378

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright © 1997 by David W. Sisk

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique,
without the express written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-9378

ISBN: 0-313-30411-4

ISSN: 0193-68752

First published in 1997

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Copyright Acknowledgments
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission for use of the following
material:
Excerpts from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1985 by O. W.
Toad, Ltd. First American Edition 1986. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin
Co. All rights reserved; reprinted by permission of Jonathan Cape, a division of Random
House UK Ltd.; used by permisison, McLelland & Stewart, Inc.
Excerpts from "Tightrope-Walking Over Niagara Falls," by Geoff Hancock, pages 191-
220 in Margaret Atwood: Conversation edited by Earl G. Ingersoll ( Princeton, NJ:
Ontario Review Press, 1990) are reprinted by permission of Ontario Review Press.
Excerpts from A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Copyright © 1962, 1989,
renewed 1990 by Anthony Burgess. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc.; reprinted by permission of William Heinemann Ltd.
Excerpts from Language and Politics by Noam Chomsky, edited by C. P. Otero
( Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1988) are reprinted with the kind permission of Black
Rose Books.
Excerpts from Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin ( London: The Women's Press
Ltd., 1985) are reprinted by permission of Suzette Haden Elgin.
Excerpts from "A Limited Perfection: Dystopia as Logos Game" by R. E. Foust,
originally printed in Mosaic, Volume 15, Number 3 ( September 1982): pages 79-88.
Reprinted by permission of Mosaic.
Excerpts from Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban ( New York: Washington Square Press,
1982) are reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates (reference:
Hoban/26.6.97).
Excerpts from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Copyright 1932, 1960 by Aldous
Huxley. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.; reprinted by
permission of Chatto & Windus and Mrs. Laura Huxley.
Excerpts from Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times by Krishan Kumar ( Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1987) are reprinted by permission of Basil Blackwell Publishers.
Excerpts from Aldous Huxley: Satire and Structure by Jerome Meckier ( London: Chatto
& Windus, 1969) are reprinted by permission of Chatto & Windus.
Excerpts from "Why I Write" in Such Were the Joys by George Orwell, copyright © 1953
by Sonia Brownell Orwell and renewed 1981 by Mrs. George K. Perutz, Mrs. Miriam
Gross, and Dr. Michael Dickson , Executors of the Estate of Sonia Brownell Orwell,
reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company.
Excerpts from "The Prevention of Literature" in The Collected Essays, Journalism and
 Letters of George Orwell, Volume IV: In Front of Your Nose, 1945-1950, copyright ©
1968 by Sonia Brownell Orwell and renewed 1996 by Mark Hamilton, Literary Executor
of the Estate of Sonia Brownell Orwell, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace &
Company; reprinted by permission of Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd.
Excerpts from "Politics and the English Language" in Shooting an Elephant and Other
Essays by George Orwell, copyright © 1946 by Sonia Brownell Orwell and renewed
1974 by Sonia Orwell, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company.
Excerpts from "Politics Vs. Literature: An Examination of 'Gulliver's Travels'" in
Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays by George Orwell, copyright © 1950 by Sonia
Brownell Orwell and renewed 1978 by Sonia Pitt-Rivers, reprinted by permission of
Harcourt Brace & Company.
Excerpts from Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell, copyright © 1949 by Harcourt
Brace & Company and renewed 1977 by Sonia Brownell Orwell, reprinted by permission
of the publisher; reprinted by permission of Mark Hamilton as Literary Executor of the
Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell, and Martin Seeker & Warburg Ltd.
Excerpts from Cosmic Satire in the Contemporary Novel by John W. Tilton ( Cranbury,
NJ: Associated University Presses, 1977) are reprinted by permission of Associated
University Presses, Inc.

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Contents
Acknowledgments i
1. The Language of Dystopia 17
2. "Plus 'Parfaite' et Moins Libre" 17
3. "It's a Beautiful Thing, the Destruction of Words" 37
4. "Milk with Knives in It" 57
5. The Evolving Nature of Dystopian Languages 79
6. Language and the Feminist Dystopia 107
7. "You Never Know Where It Begun Realy" 137
8. Claiming Mastery Over the Word 161
Selected Bibliography 183
Index 199

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Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the following scholars, whose comments and
criticisms were helpful in clarifying my thinking on a number of points: Howard M. Harper,
Jr., William R. Harmon, Christopher Armitage, Pamela Cooper, Randall Hendrick, Connie
Eble, Doris A. Helbig, Charles H. Heying, Barbara T. Ryan, and Julie M. Johnson. I could not
have completed this project without the loving support of my family, especially my parents
and my wife, Margaret, who never doubted that I would complete the task. I particularly
thank my brother, John, who years ago asked a question about A Clockwork Orange that I
have yet to answer, but the pursuit of which has led to this volume.

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1
The Language of Dystopia
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I
choose it to mean--neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all."

-- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Poor Alice. Humpty Dumpty's argument--that words are not immutable, but up for grabs in a
struggle for control--challenges one of her most basic assumptions. Beyond Humpty
Dumpty's charming image of a speaker wrestling with words for control over their definitions
lie darker questions: how far might a speaker go in enforcing acceptance of, or at least stifling
dissent over, a given meaning and in eliminating other ones? By controlling language, can a
speaker also control the thoughts of others who speak that language? If language can only be
controlled within fiction, why is the idea so effective at terrifying readers? During her travels
in Wonderland, Alice struggles against other speakers for control over words and meanings.
Leah Hadomi and Robert Elbaz argue that:

[M]uch like the development in the utopian genre as a whole, the developmental process in
Alice moves from utopia to dystopia. . . . This world based on a fantastic organization of an
ideal reality, closed, separated and harmonious, is likely, in its exaggeration or extremism, to
become a stifling dystopian reality, static and

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totalitarian, which the hero (and the reader) experiences like a nightmare. Alice too goes from
wonder to quiet disbelief and from there to outright rebellion until the end when she leaves
wonderland [sic] behind. ( 1990, 139)

The looking glass of twentieth-century dystopian fiction in English offers a rich body of
literature in which concerns of social control through forcibly narrowed language play a
critical role. Utopian fiction explores the perfectibility of human society through hypothetical
advancements in technology, philosophy, and social structures, resulting in perfect or near-
perfect communities located in distant lands or in the future. Dystopian fiction, utopia's
polarized offspring, turns human perfectibility on its head by pessimistically extrapolating
contemporary social trends into oppressive and terrifying societies. Utopia's optimistic
portrayal of advancement toward stable human societies gives way, in dystopia, to totalitarian
stagnation. Individual freedom, especially the freedom to entertain and communicate
unorthodox ideas, is ruthlessly suppressed in dystopias. Humpty Dumpty's question of "which
is to be master" thus determines, not only who will control the word, but who will control the
world through the word.

Twentieth-century dystopias in English universally reveal a central emphasis on language as

the primary weapon with which to resist oppression, and the corresponding desire of
repressive government structures to stifle dissent by controlling language. The roles of
language in various dystopian fictions have been briefly discussed as elements of larger
studies, but no critics have attempted to bridge the gaps between different fictions to construct
a generic model of language use in dystopian literature. I focus my investigation on conscious
attempts within dystopian fictions to control language (and, by extension, meaning), as well
as conscious rebellions against such controls. I also examine fundamental assumptions that
dystopian writers make about language, including its development and its relationships to
other conventions of the genre. Other topics discussed include the roles of narration and
narrators, language as a tool for characterization, and some questions concerning artificial
language.

Any discussion of dystopian fiction in general, and dystopian language in particular, must be
grounded in an understanding of how dystopia has evolved from utopia--first as a reaction
against utopian assumptions and gradually developing into a separate, highly didactic genre of
its own. Issues of control in dystopian literature can be traced to similar questions that have
formed a backbone for utopian literature since its "official" inception with Thomas More's
Utopia, first published in an English translation by Ralph Robynson in 1551. 1 Numerous
scholars have identified prefigurations of More's book reaching back to classical Greece, and
others have conflated utopian fiction with utopian manifestos and blueprints for creating
utopian communities. Despite this confusion, More's Utopia is usually taken as the beginning
of what we now call utopian literature. Dystopia begins as a component of the wider form of
the antiutopia, which reacts against the assumptions of the still larger body of utopian
literature.

Charting the evolution of utopian fiction from its beginnings to the present day far exceeds
the scope of the present study. 2 For our purposes, simplifying somewhat from the work of
Alexandra Aldridge (see her Scientific World View in Dystopia, 1984, 3), utopian fictions may
be divided into five basic types: the earthly paradise; the religious utopia; the Golden Age; the
popular, or folk,

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utopia; and the planned society. Of these five varieties, it is the planned society depicted in
Plato's Republic (circa 400 B.C.) and More's Utopia that is most important for the
development of anti-utopia and dystopia. Plato's ideal is easily the most persuasive pre-More
utopic society, and Krishan Kumar points out that More "saw his own Utopia as partly a
continuation of the Republic, fulfilling Socrates' desire in the Timaeus to see the abstract
republic actualized (a task barely begun in the fragmentary Critias)" ( 1987, 5). Only the
planned society gives humanity the full responsibility to build more perfect states without
help or guidance from divine beings--and only these models place the burden of success or
failure solely on human shoulders. Dystopia employs the same structures of deliberately
planned societies, albeit horrible ones.

Dystopian fiction owes More a great debt, as More's coinage has given its name to the genre
of works concerned with perfect societies. 3 Works that react against them are therefore anti-
utopias, and some of them are dystopias. Although More wrote in Latin, the name he gave to
his book and to the fictitious country described in it combines two Greek terms, ou ("not")
and topos ("place")--literally, "no place." The Latin word utopia has the same pronunciation
in Greek and, if transliterated into "ευτοπια," the first syllable becomes eu (good), thereby
changing the meaning to "good place." Utopia, then, is simultaneously a good place and no
place. Robert C. Elliott credits More with punning for satiric effect: "The two senses--the one
associated with escape into the timeless fantasies of the imagination, the other with the effort
to construct models of the ideal society, whether in fiction or otherwise--are inextricably
bound up in our use of the term today" ( 1970, 85).

In addition, More emphasizes control. Utopia is the prototype of a model society in which
people have changed their behavior, or have had change imposed upon them, to achieve
stability. The explorer Raphael Hythloday carefully explains the communistic and egalitarian
society in which the Utopians live. The culture's most important task is to control its citizens'
baser individual impulses and keep them focused on the greater public good. Private property
is unknown ( More 1975, 38); chamber pots are made of gold and gems are used as children's
toys to prevent avarice (51); all Utopians wear the same style and color of clothing to prevent
envy (40); the terminally ill are urged to submit to euthanasia (65); and, as Hythloday proudly
notes, "there is no chance to loaf or kill time, no pretext for evading work; no taverns, or
alehouses, or brothels; no chances for corruption; no hiding places; no spots for secret
meetings" (49). Dystopia relies on many of these same conventions, though used for illiberal
motives.

Finally, More created the basic plot structure of the utopian novel, which has remained
fundamentally unchanged to this day and against which dystopian fiction still reacts. He
simply put a representative of the perfect society (the explorer Raphael Hythloday) together
with equally representative members of contemporary European culture (fictionalized
versions of the printer-poet Peter Giles and Thomas More himself) and had them discuss
every aspect of Utopia. 4 With only minor changes, utopian fiction has hewed to this model
for over four hundred years. 5 Plot and characterization take a back seat to the clear
articulation of the social institutions that make up this more perfect society. Peter Ruppert
argues that readers of utopias tend to bifurcate and read them primarily as fiction or as social
proposal, but never as both. They do so because utopias simultaneously blur the division
between fact and fiction, by proposing "real"

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solutions to "real" problems, while also drawing a sharp line between the reader's reality and
that of the utopia's imaginary construct ( 1986, 13).

Not all writers and thinkers have found the utopian vision persuasive, and some have used the
word utopia as a derisive epithet to ridicule schemes that they consider irresponsible or
impossible. From its beginnings, critics have attacked the ideals of human perfectibility that
serve as the foundation on which all utopias are constructed: these critics take a more
pessimistic view of our race's capability consciously to subordinate individual drives and
desires to the needs of the greater social whole. The Roman writer Lucian of Samosata's
masterpiece The True History, which was written in the second century A.D., parodies the
Arcadian Golden Age so effectively that it is often misread as an Arcadian utopia in its own
right ( Todd and Wheeler 1978, 10). More was not deceived, however. His clear
understanding of The True History is underlined by Hythloday's assertion that the Utopians
are "delighted with the witty persiflage of Lucian" ( More 1975, 63). Furthermore, the
Utopians also enjoy the comedies of Aristophanes, "many of which were aimed at the Greek
utopian tradition generally, and some at Plato's Republic specifically," especially the
Ecclesiazusae and The Birds ( Kumar 1987, 8). Utopia itself may be read as a satire, and it
loses nothing through such an interpretation. Robert Burton Anatomy of Melancholy ( 1621)
and Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels ( 1726) satirize, among other targets, the utopian ideal
in general and More's Utopia in particular. But while these works all fit nicely into the
category of the antiutopia, only one--Swift's--contains elements that qualify it as an early
dystopia.

As Krishan Kumar notes, More's Utopia serves, not only as a point of origin for the formal
literary utopia, but also as the beginning of its opposite, the utopian satire or anti-utopia:

Utopia and anti-utopia are antithetical yet interdependent. They are "contrast concepts,"
getting their meaning and significance from their mutual differences. But the relationship is
not symmetrical or equal. The anti-utopia is formed by utopia, and feeds parasitically on it. It
depends for its survival on the persistence of utopia. Utopia is the original, anti-utopia the
copy--only, as it were, always colored black. It is utopia that provides the positive content to
which anti-utopia makes the negative response. Anti-utopia draws its material from utopia
and reassembles it in a manner that denies the affirmation of utopia. . . . The formal literary
anti-utopia consequently had to wait for the establishment of the formal literary utopia. It does
not, that is, appear before More's Utopia, after which it has a history almost as continuous as
that of utopia itself. ( 1987, 100)

While suggesting that there are as many prefigurations of anti-utopia as there are of the utopia
proper, Kumar asserts that after More, the battle lines were clearly and consciously drawn
between the two forms. He explicitly links the two halves of the diverging genre with the
argument between two antithetical views of the human spirit, as articulated by Pelagius, a
fifth-century British monk, and Augustine, Bishop of Hippo:

Part of the interwoven story of utopia and anti-utopia can indeed be interestingly told as the
longstanding clash between Augustinian and Pelagian traditions within western thought. The
utopian . . . is a Pelagian. He denies original sin, and believes that men can perfect themselves
by creating the right environment. The anti-utopian . . . is Augustinian. He sees weak human
creatures constantly succumbing to the sins

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of pride, avarice and ambition, however favourable the circumstances. The antiutopian need
not believe in original sin, but his pessimistic and determinist view of human nature leads him
to the conviction that all attempts to create the good society on earth are bound to be futile.
( 1987, 100) 6

As the gulf between utopia and anti-utopia widened during the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, the term anti-utopia became increasingly unsatisfactory to denote all fictions that
turn utopian dreams into nightmares. Since no seminal work comparable to More's has arisen
to give this genre a name, critics and writers have coined a number of different labels for
utopia's polarized opposite. J. O. Bailey's 1947 wide-ranging study of science fiction
distinguishes only between utopias and "utopian satire," which suggests (erroneously) that a
work of the latter type must of necessity be simply a parody of the former. Northrop Frye
adopts the same terminology in his essay, "Varieties of Literary Utopias", arguing for

two kinds of utopian romance: the straight utopia, which visualizes a world-state assumed to
be ideal, or at least ideal in comparison with what we have, and the utopian satire or parody,
which presents the same kind of social goal in terms of slavery, tyranny, or anarchy. . . .
Examples of the utopian satire include We, Brave New World, and Nineteen Eighty-four.
There are other types of utopian satire . . . but this particular kind is a product of modern
technological society, its growing sense that the whole world is destined to the same social
fate with no place to hide, and its increasing realization that technology moves toward the
control not merely of nature but of the operations of the mind. ( 1966, 28-29)

Less imaginative critics have been content with anti-utopia, but that term fails to describe a
genre in which writers advocate their own positions rather than merely attacking utopian
ideas. Arthur O. Lewis has assembled a checklist of terms by which the anti-utopian novel
can be designated: "reverse utopias, negative utopias, inverted utopias, regressive utopias,
cacoutopias, dystopias, non-utopias, satiric utopias, and . . . nasty utopias" ( 1961, 27).
Alexandra Aldridge notes that Lewis misses "some bizarre appellations such as George
Knox's 'sour utopias in the apocalyptic mode' and George Woodcock's 'negative quasi-
Utopias'" ( 1984, 5). 7 More recently, Michel Foucault has called such fictions "heterotopias."
8
Of these, "the terms satiric utopia (or utopian satire), anti-utopia and dystopia are the most
frequently used; they provide the most helpful generic distinctions, and taken in that order
also suggest something about the genesis and evolution of the contemporary negative form--
the dystopian novel" ( Aldridge 1984, 5). Aldridge emphasizes the order of these terms since
they reflect a growing gap between utopias and their opposites. Utopian satires, by definition,
ridicule specific utopian visions; anti-utopias merely criticize more generalized utopian ideals,
while dystopias aggressively target contemporary social structures without direct reference to
utopias.

The term dystopia is not a new one. When J. Max Patrick used it in 1952, he thought he was
making it up; 9 in fact, however, John Stuart Mill coined the word in 1868 ( Aldridge 1984, 8).
10
Mill had in mind Jeremy Bentham's cacotopia--"evil place"--which exactly fits the sense of
the definition, but neither term seems to have caught the imagination of critics for the next
hundred years. 11 Dystopia is preferable to anti-utopia for two main reasons. Rhetorically, it
exactly reverses the common misreading of More's eutopia: "δυσ τοποσ" translates literally as
"bad place." Dystopias concern themselves with the moral

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structure of a fictive society, not its physical location. Furthermore, although dystopian
societies may appear to exist "out there," they criticize the reader's world--"displacing" the
reader, if you will. (Conceivably, dystopia "disrespects" utopia.) Many anti-utopian fictions
depict pleasant societies. For instance, of the numerous attacks mounted against Edward
Bellamy Looking Backward ( 1888), William Morris News from Nowhere ( 1890) is easily the
most readable and persuasive. Morris undercuts nearly every aspect of Bellamy's novel by
advancing a very different, but equally attractive, model society. Both by contrast and by
definition, dystopias always depict horrible societies, even though they may at first appear
pleasant (as in Huxley Brave New World, 1932; see Walsh 1962, 25-26). Second, dystopia as
a genre encompasses a spectrum of works ranging from a few anti-utopias proper (such as
some aspects of Book 4 of Swift's Gulliver's Travels) through novels that create miserable
societies without directly attacking utopian ideals (e.g., Margaret Atwood Handmaid's Tale,
1986, examined in Chapter 6). Dystopia remains a much narrower descriptive term and is
rarely applied to other endeavors beyond the particular genre of narrative fiction that I discuss
here. Finally, even the bleakest dystopia offers advance warning of what could happen should
present trends continue unchecked. A dystopian narrative tries to warn, didactically predicting
a coming evil while there is still time to correct the situation. Though dystopian fictions paint
grim views, their political and moral missions are altruistic. Anti-utopias may succeed merely
by criticizing utopian ideals: dystopias, however, always reveal (usually by ironic contrast)
attitudes and suggest actions that can prevent the horrors they depict.

Because of these altruistic and didactic intentions, dystopia connotes a genre actively defining
itself. In a nutshell, all dystopias are anti-utopias, but not all anti-utopias are dystopias. The
question then shifts to one of subject matter: if dystopia describes a "bad place," what makes
it so? If utopian literature describes more perfect societies and a given reader finds a
particular utopian novel persuasive, is not that reader's objective reality a dystopia by
comparison? Alexandra Aldridge argues:

The dystopia is not merely "utopia in reverse" as it has often been called, but a singular
generic category issuing out of a twentieth-century shift of attitudes toward utopia. Dystopia
is composed of unique qualities of imagination and sensibility-certain historically bound
shifts of the social imagination--brought together not as a fictive philosophical tract, but in the
form of the modern novel. However, the dystopian novelist, instead of recreating some
fragment of the actual world, extrapolates from his concept of actuality in order to make a
holistic framework, a complete alternative (inevitably futuristic) structure. Whereas it can be
said that utopia and much utopian thought are the brain children of the scientific world view
in their attempts to "scientifically" restructure society, dystopia always aims to critique and
ridicule that world view for its adherence to instrumental values, its elevation of functional
and collective ends over the humanistic and individual. ( 1984, ix)

The key points in Aldridge's assertion are dystopia's form--the novel--and its role in
criticizing the advancement of the collective over the individual. Both these points are
inextricably tied to dystopia's rapid rise to both popular and critical importance in the
twentieth century. Although the roots of utopian literature stretch back to classical Greece,
dystopian literature as a distinct genre is a comparatively recent phenomenon. 12 The dystopia
begins only in the midto late eighteenth century, when the early promise of the Industrial
Revolution--

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that technological progress would inevitably improve social conditions--gave way to

increasingly impersonalized mechanization and exploitation. 13 Dystopian societies are,
without exception, terrible ones--though not necessarily squalid; consider the clean and
comfortable London of Huxley Brave New World and the physical security of Earth in Suzette
Elgin Native Tongue ( 1984) and The Judas Rose ( 1987).

But Aldridge neglects one issue central to the dystopia--that of satirizing contemporary
society, or aspects thereof, that the writer finds disturbing. This is the most critical distinction
between the broad genre of anti-utopia and the narrower one of dystopia. Dystopian fiction is
fundamentally concerned with the writer's present society and builds its horrific power on
extrapolating current trends to what the writer considers their logically fearsome conclusions.
Dystopian didacticism borders on the hortatory polemic: anti-utopian fiction may (or may not)
address the existing problems of its writer's world, but dystopia must always do so. For this
reason, dystopian novels rarely attack specific utopian visions, lashing out instead at serious
flaws within the writer's contemporary society. There are very few dystopian precursors
before the Industrial Revolution. Augustine City of Man, the sinfully corrupt counterpart to
the City of God, comes to mind; Kumar also suggests Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince ( 1532)
as "a key anti-utopian text--as is clear from the many conscious and unconscious echoes of it
in Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-four ( 1987, 101 ). Kumar buttresses his argument
by pointing out the strong possibility that Machiavelli's guide to statecraft was intended as
satire.

Satire forms the clearest and strongest strain of literary fiction leading to the development of
dystopia, primarily because it, too, is aimed at pointing out problems with the writer's
contemporary world. The large number of powerful anti-utopian satiric works has led some
critics to label the genre--in effect, utopia's "evil twin"--as "utopian satire." Northrop Frye's
arguments along these lines have been the most cogent and, as they concern a genre about
which there has been little critical agreement over formal questions, his conclusions bear
repeating briefly. Satire, Frye states, depends on two elements: "one is wit or humor founded
on fantasy or a sense of the grotesque or absurd, the other is an object of attack" ( 1957, 224).
While few dystopias contain even a shred of humor other than dark irony, all are founded on
Frye's "sense of the grotesque or absurd." The societies that dystopian fictions depict are
fantastic only in the sense that they do not literally exist in the writer's contemporary world--
they easily could come about, given current patterns extrapolated by the writers. The patterns
of behavior or social organization that dystopian writers satirize provide Frye's necessary
second element, the object of attack:

The satirist demonstrates the infinite variety of what men do by showing the futility, not only
of saying what they ought to do, but even of attempts to systematize or formulate a coherent
scheme of what they do. . . . The Menippean satire deals less with people as such than with
mental attitudes. Pedants, bigots, cranks, parvenus, virtuosi, enthusiasts, rapacious and
incompetent professional men of all kinds, are handled in terms of their occupational
approach to life as distinct from their social behavior. ( 1957, 229, 309) 14

Dystopia's vague generic boundaries are nowhere murkier than in the relationship between
dystopian fiction and science fiction--a genre that has proved itself even more problematic in
terms of definition. Science fiction critics

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keep trying to define the literature they study, despite the fact that it resists definition. Any
definition of science fiction wide enough to encompass all possible works of science fiction
finds itself including works of fantasy, alternate history, utopia and anti-utopia, fairy tales,
märchen, and mythology, among others. At the same time, limiting the range of literature by
narrowing the definition of science fiction inevitably leaves out works that clamor, with some
justification, to be included. While a universally acceptable definition of science fiction still
eludes critics, the process of wrestling with conflicting definitions has been part of a growing
critical interest in the genre since the mid-1960s. Despite this growing interest, science fiction
continues to be dismissed as popular literature, junk literature, and even subliterature. 15

Tzvetan Todorov The Fantastic (trans. 1973) applies structuralist techniques to the study of
fantastic literature, broadly considered. For Todorov, fantastic literature exists in the zone of
uncertainty created when "there occurs an event which cannot be explained by the laws of this
same familiar world"(25). If we determine that the event is an illusion, then the laws of reality
are not violated and we have experienced the "uncanny"; alternatively, if the event is real,
then "this reality is controlled by laws unknown to us," and we have experienced the
"marvelous" (25). "The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose
one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for . . . the uncanny or the marvelous. The
fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature,
confronting an apparently supernatural event" (25). Darko Suvin's arguments are somewhat
narrower in focus, dealing almost exclusively with science fiction. Yet Suvin, like Todorov,
resists denominating any one element (science, technology, future setting, etc.) as the key
ingredient for science fiction. Suvin also declares that formal considerations are more helpful
than thematic ones, since the thematic field open to science fiction is almost limitless:

[Science fiction] should be defined as a fictional tale determined by the hegemonic literary
device of a locus and/or dramatis personae that (1) are radically or at least significantly
different from the empirical times, places, and characters of "mimetic" or "naturalist" fiction,
but (2) are nonetheless--to the extent that [science fiction] differs from other "fantastic"
genres, that is, ensembles of fictional tales without empirical validation--simultaneously
perceived as not impossible within the cognitive (cosmological and anthropological) norms of
the author's epoch. Basically, [science fiction] is a developed oxymoron, a realistic irreality,
with humanized nonhumans, this-worldly Other Worlds, and so forth. Which means that it is--
potentially--the space of a potent estrangement, validated by the pathos and prestige of the
basic cognitive forms of our times. ( 1979, viii )

By arguing for science fiction as the literature of "cognitive estrangement" ( 1979, 4 ), Suvin
advances an understanding of such fiction as creating sets of given norms that differ from
those the reader brings to the text--substantially the same disjunction that Todorov (trans.
1973) calls "uncertainty." 16 Philip K. Dick seems to agree when he insists that the essence of
science fiction is "the conceptual dislocation within the society so that as a result a new
society is generated in the author's mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a
convulsive shock in the reader's mind, the shock of dysrecognition" ( 1987, xv). Bluntly, in all
these models, readers compare their objective realities with those contained in works of
fiction. Science fiction renders the real unreal and creates an atmosphere of unfamiliarity in
which the reader may be brought to consider

-8-

issues in a fictive context that the same reader would not notice, or would ignore, if presented
in a nonfictive manner. Dystopia not only shares this concern with estrangement, but
foregrounds it: a dystopian work fails if it does not move its reader to compare his or her "real
world" to the fictional society and consider how the latter could arise from the former.

Dystopia and science fiction share formal similarities. Both genres generally set their stories
in the writer's future; both depend on extrapolations of human behavior and social structures;
both have been accused of sacrificing characterization in favor of creating plausible fictive
societies; and both make extensive use of technological developments, whether actual or
imagined. Both forms came into their own as recognizably independent genres during the
nineteenth century. Most critics cite Mary Shelley Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus
( 1818) as the first clear example of science fiction. Identifying the specific work with which
dystopia begins is more difficult. Kumar asserts that "it may indeed be only a slight
overstatement to say that [ Bellamy] Looking Backward [ 1888] created the anti-utopia.
Certainly it started that chain of challenge and response that largely makes up the history of
utopia and anti-utopia from the 1880s to the 1950s" ( 1987, 128 ). While Kumar's point about
Looking Backward as the first anti-utopia is debatable--if for no other reason than that it
directly contradicts his previous assignment of primacy to Joseph Hall Mundus Alter et Idem (
1605) on page 105 of the same work ( 1987)--his assertions about Looking Backward's effect
in beginning a "chain of challenge and response" between utopia and dystopia are beyond
question. The wild popularity of Bellamy's socialistic utopia incited a number of anti-utopian
counterattacks, including Richard C. Michaelis Looking Further Forward ( 1890) and Konrad
Wilbrandt Mr. East's Experiences in Mr. Bellamy's World ( 1891) ( Negley in Negley and
Patrick 1952, 33). One of the best of these is Ignatius Donnelly Cæsar's Column ( 1890),
which depicts an extremely repressive totalitarian capitalist oligarchy ruthlessly crushing an
attempted revolution by the desperate proletariat ( Kumar 1987, 128). Jack London portrays
essentially the same situation as Donnelly in The Iron Heel ( 1907), while making the
techniques of totalitarian repression much more plain. Indeed, London's title provided Orwell
with one of the most terrifying images in Nineteen Eighty-four: O'Brien's vision of the future
as "a boot stamping on a human face--forever" ( 1982, 178). 17

Clearly, H. G. Wells has been the central figure in the development of both science fiction
and dystopian fiction as separate genres. Like Bellamy, Wells has served as a focal point for
numerous writers who disagree, often violently, with his visions of the future--although,
unlike Bellamy, Wells also produced some dystopian fiction of his own. "Overwhelmingly,
the most important influences of this period in creating the modern anti-utopias were the
scientific romances, utopias, and future histories of H. G. Wells, which, even when
occasionally written after World War I, are still the unique product of this period. . . .
Altogether, it is doubtful that without Wells the anti-utopian phenomenon would ever have
taken the shape it has" ( Hillegas 1967, 4-5). Wells's influence on later writers, especially
Aldous Huxley, Eugene Zamiatin, and George Orwell, is more important than the anti-utopias
he actually wrote. Ironically, Wells makes his mark on the field of dystopian fiction by
creating some of the most complex and carefully conceived utopias in modern fiction: When
the Sleeper Wakes ( 1899; revised and reprinted as The Sleeper Awakes, 1911), MenLike
Gods

-9-

Like Gods ( 1923), and most especially, A Modern Utopia ( 1905). It is primarily in attacking
Wells's visions of utopia that the great twentieth-century dystopians break new ground,
although they occasionally crib from his anti-utopian novels: The Time Machine ( 1895), The
First Men in the Moon ( 1901), The War in the Air ( 1908), Tono-Bungay ( 1909), and The
Shape of Things to Come ( 1933). Kumar notes that " Huxley and Orwell . . . made no secret
of the fact that their anti-utopias were directed largely against Wells, as the representative
modern utopian. But what is interesting, and very evident, is the extent of their borrowing
from the earlier anti-utopian Wells in their attacks on the later utopian Wells" ( 1987, 129).
The Selenite culture in Wells The First Men in the Moon is reflected in the social structure of
Huxley Brave New World, and Orwell's Oceanic government in Nineteen Eighty-four owes
much of its affective power to Wells When the Sleeper Wakes, in which the dictator Ostrog
rules over a socialistic state ( Kumar 1987, 225). Nor have modern writers hesitated to
acknowledge Wells as the catalyst for their dystopian fiction. "In an interview with a
representative from the Paris Review, Aldous Huxley once commented that he began Brave
New World as a parody of H. G. Wells Men Like Gods ( Matter 1983, 94). 18 E. M. Forster
described his dystopic story, "The Machine Stops" ( 1909) as "a reaction to one of the earlier
heavens of H. G. Wells" ( 1976, 6).

While Bellamy and Wells share the distinction of inspiring numerous antiutopian "replies" to
their utopian works, the kind and degree of resistance that their writings generated is
fundamentally different. Bellamy's one utopian novel sparked several rebuttals, the majority
of which are simply direct assaults on Looking Backward. Wells's influence as a utopian
writer is much more pervasive, partly because he wrote several utopian novels and partly due
to the fact that most of his utopian fictions were written at a time when the utopian vision in
Western society was rapidly (and visibly) failing. The dream of inevitable human progress
through technological advancement perished during World War I, and hopes of recreating
society along better lines faded with the Great Depression and the rise of nationalistic
totalitarianism. 19 Wells's portrayals of social justice and a better world realized through
scientific advancement began to seem not only absurd, but misguided. Writers wishing to
attack Wells could not fully express the depth of their revulsion merely by parodying his
utopian novels. Instead, writers like Zamiatin and Huxley began constructing horrific
societies that stand alone as meaningful fiction. Since Wells, the utopian novel has been
almost completely eclipsed by the dystopian. "Why has the utopian vision faded? I can think
of two reasons. One is that utopia has failed" in that the twentieth century has not lived up to
the expectations of the nineteenth. "The other is that utopia has succeeded" in that ideas once
thought of as utopian have come to pass, "but the result is not utopian" ( Walsh 1962, 117).
Twentieth-century history provides an embarrassment of riches with which dystopian writers
construct fictions that are as plausible as they are bleak.

Yet dystopia is fundamentally a genre concerned with improving human existence and
directing attention toward the twentieth century's problems. For one thing, compared to
utopian writers, dystopian writers take a more realistic view of human nature. The Samurai of
Wells A Modern Utopia become the Inner Party of Orwell Nineteen Eighty-four, because
Orwell does not trust humans to remain uncorrupted while carrying such incredible burdens
of power

-10-

as Wells blithely puts on the shoulders of his characters. The dystopian writer is, perhaps, the
most disillusioned reader within the utopian tradition. 20 These writers, "dystopists," desire a
better world, but view utopian schemes as distracting at best, and often misguided. This is
stretching things a bit, as Kumar ( 1987) admits. Still, the dystopian writer disdains the
utopist's rosy scenario as hopelessly removed from real existence. Instead of ignoring the
realities of human experience, dystopian writers rub their reader's noses in them "by taking us
on a journey through hell, in all its vivid particulars. It makes us live utopia, as an experience
so painful and nightmarish that we lose all desire for it" ( Kumar 1987, 103).

The dystopian polemic punctures utopian fiction's escapism. I use "escapism" in the same
sense that Gary Saul Morson does: "utopias describe an escape from history," whereas "anti-
utopias describe an attempted escape to history, which is to say, the world of contingency,
conflict, and uncertainty" ( 1981, 128). 21 Elliott argues that this is one reason why the utopia
has provoked substantial resistance: "The attempt of utopian writers to freeze history--the
fight of utopia against history--has prompted severe criticism of the whole utopian enterprise;
but the attempt has been merely one way in which man has tried to arrive imaginatively at the
condition of paradise on earth" ( 1970, 10). Dystopia, by contrast, embraces history, affirms
it, proclaims it, arguing that the same horrors that have gone before can, and will, come again
unless we learn to understand and prevent them. If dystopia could be said to have a motto, it
would be George Santayana's warning writ large--"Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it." In some sense, all dystopian fiction aims at reminding us of the past
to ensure that we do not make the same mistakes again.
Dystopias arouse comparison between the reader's world and the fictive society, so that "in
assuming an entirely negative position, they leave the act of reconstruction up to the reader"
( Ruppert 1986, 103-4). The dystopian writer galvanizes the reader to this act of comparison
by explicitly depicting how the horrors of the extrapolated future have developed from their
beginnings in the reader's culture. The successful dystopia cannot pose problems that readers
will perceive as beyond their ability to change: the mission is to motivate the reader, not
merely to horrify. The more immediate and personal these problems may appear, the better
for the dystopist's didactic purpose. For the fiction to succeed as a didactic warning, readers
must be able both to identify the contemporary source of the extrapolated horrors and to feel
capable of preventing them. Therefore, it behooves dystopian writers to base their hellish
societies on concepts that will make most readers simultaneously feel personally threatened
and empowered to resist. Few concepts meet this dual requirement better than language's
presumed ability to control thought and its presumed susceptibility to manipulation.

The central importance of language in fantastic literature has been the subject of several
studies. 22 Similarly, many critics of dystopian texts have pointed to concerns with language
embedded in the novels. But with rare exceptions, scholars have tended to examine concerns
with language in dystopian fiction as minor interests, points that enrich affective dystopian
societies but do not play a central role in creating them. 23 Issues of controlling language
inform nearly all dystopian fictions. Furthermore, issues of language are so closely
intertwined with questions of power and freedom in dystopian literature that any criticism
ignoring these concerns will inevitably produce less-than-comprehensive readings

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of the texts. Some novels overtly explore language concerns as such, often through artificially
constructed languages, while other dystopias embed these questions within narrative
structures. Although specific constructions of language and control vary from novel to novel,
the overall insistence on the centrality of language as the key to both repression and rebellion
remains a constant in twentieth-century English and American dystopias.

One theme found in all the novels herein discussed is a wholehearted acceptance of the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis, also called the "linguistic relativity principle." As advanced by Benjamin
Lee Whorf in 1940, this theory holds that language gives shape and structure to human
perceptions; as Whorf stated most succinctly, "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our
native language" ( 1956, 213). In Whorf's conception, a person cannot understand any concept
that he or she cannot frame in words. Edward Sapir's honing of Whorf's theory broadens the
relationship between thought and language into a two-way exchange in which language and
thought can influence one another, as opposed to Whorf's one-way idea. 24 "In all fairness to
Whorf, the 'Whorfian hypothesis' reflects only part of his thinking[;] . . . even so, he did not
call [the] deeper processes [of consciousness, upon which language is a surface wash]
'thought'; this he regarded as dependent on language" ( Traugott and Pratt 1980, 107). While
Whorf's theory is by no means universally accepted among linguists, it serves as a foundation
for many of the language-based concerns articulated in the dystopian novels considered here.
Furthermore, readers unfamiliar with Whorf's hypothesis have no trouble accepting dystopian
language constructions based on it. Paradoxically, language is popularly conceived of as
monolithic, something that is prescribed (thus accounting for the frequent misunderstanding
that dictionaries record usages, rather than legislate them) and simultaneously as something
delicate and vulnerable to deliberate manipulation and control. For example, most readers find
the Newspeak of Orwell Nineteen Eighty-four a plausible and terrifying instrument of
totalitarian thought control, which "could work"-despite the fact that many of Orwell's
assumptions about language that inform Newspeak are fallacious.

Threatening conceptions about language offers the writer a supremely effective means of
quickly and deeply involving a reader in a work of fiction, a fact that dystopian writers have
seized on more strongly than writers in any other fictive genre. English language use among
readers takes place within a matrix of widely shared, but rarely examined, assumptions, for
example, that certain regional or ethnic dialects and generational slangs are "bad English" or
"incorrect usage" and that language use is a clear indicator of intellectual capability and moral
behavior. Language can be a supremely powerful rallying point for national and cultural
groups who wish to emphasize both their heritage and their autonomy, especially when they
feel threatened--witness impassioned attempts to legislate English as the "official language"
of various states and eventually of the United States, or the continuing evolution of the terms
by which various racial and cultural groups identify themselves. It is common for words to
become the flash points for conflict between opposing groups' differing political viewpoints
(consider the debate over the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice," which crystallize complex
arguments into simple, if volatile, labels). Given the universality of the pride we take in our
language, and the immediacy of our reaction when we believe it to be under attack, it is no
surprise that dystopian

-12-

writers put language at the center of their fictions for didactic as well as emotional purposes.

Dystopian fiction cuts off retreat. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice's "rebellion
against the presumed legal authority of the King and the Queen and the nonsensical practices
of the court" requires nothing more than her refusal to remain silent. "She commits herself to
the fight and establishes the rule of her own sense-making process over the figures around her
by declaring: 'You're nothing but a pack of cards!'" ( Gasson 1978, 99). The process of
liberation is the same in Through the Looking Glass: Alice shouts "I can't stand this any
longer!" and seizes both the tablecloth and her own individual autonomy (209). But the ease
with which Alice escapes is rarely available to the serious reader--and never to the dystopian
characters. Dystopia forces us to wrestle for our own autonomy and control over language:
not merely with the language itself, as Humpty Dumpty suggests, but with those forces that
will, if left unchallenged, seize control of language (and through language, power) for their
own repressive ends. Dystopian novels sound that challenge, each in a different key. While
the resulting word-music is never serene, and only occasionally beautiful, neither is it
unremittingly harsh--and it is always stirring and powerful, impossible to ignore.

NOTES
1 Utopia was first published in 1516, in Louvain, Belgium; three more editions followed
within the next two years, all in More's original Latin ( Todd and Wheeler 1978, 29).
Robynson's translation appeared sixteen years after More's execution.
2 Krishan Kumar gives an excellent survey of the utopian ideal from classical times
through nineteenth-century America on 2-98 of Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times
( 1987). Todd and Wheeler's survey ( 1978), though less detailed, is quite readable and
very well illustrated. See also David Bleich ( 1984), Robert C. Elliott ( 1970), George
Kateb ( 1972), Frank E. Manuel ( 1966) (particularly Northrop Frye's "Varieties of
Literary Utopias," pp. 25-49), Tom Moylan ( 1986), Ruby Rohrlich and Elaine Hoffman
 Baruch ( 1984), and Peter Ruppert ( 1986).
3 Throughout this volume, I capitalize "Utopia" in referring to More's novel and the
country it depicts; "utopia" refers to the broader literary genre. The Utopians attribute the
name of their state to their founder, King Utopos, a philosopher-king very much in the
tradition of Plato's Republic. All references to More's Utopia are to the Norton Critical
Edition ( 1975).
4 Appropriately enough, Raphael Hythloday's name translates as "dispenser of nonsense"
( Vickers 1968, 250). Robert Adams notes that "a fantastic trilingual pun could make the
whole name mean 'God heals [Heb., Raphael] through the nonsense [Gr., huthlos] of God
[Lat., dei]'" ( More 1975, 6 n. 9).
5 Most utopian writers find it more convenient to send their "normal" representative
characters to visit the utopian societies in person. The means used to get these characters
to their destinations vary widely, ranging from digging down to them, such as Bulwer-
Lytton The Coming Race ( 1874) to time travel, such as Bellamy Looking Backward
( 1888). Once there, however, the interminable conversation begins and follows
essentially the same pattern as More's.
6 Pelagius's ideal--that human beings have the capacity to become perfect through
exercising free will, literally following Jesus's teaching in Matthew 5:48-was declared
heretical by the Council of Carthage in 418 A.D., but this ideal has continued to fuel
utopian sentiments among writers and theorists determined to map out better societies.
7 Knox 1962, 11; Woodcock 1956, 83.

-13-

8 The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences ( Foucault 1970, xviii.

9 "The Mundus Alter et Idem [by Joseph Hall, published in 1605] is utopia in the sense of
nowhere; but it is the opposite of eutopia, the ideal society: it is a dystopia, if it is
permissible to coin a word" ( Negley and Patrick 1952, 298). Kumar asserts that Bishop
Hall's work "has good claim to be considered the first formal anti-utopia" ( 1987, 105).
10 "As MP for Westminster, Mill in a speech in the House of Commons in 1868 mocked his
opponents: 'It is, perhaps, too complimentary 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.'
Hansard Commons, 12 March/1517/1 ( 1868)" ( Kumar 1987, 447 n. 2).
11 On the reference to Bentham, see Kumar 1987, 447 n. 2.
12 Hillegas suggests that this type of literature is "a phenomenon of our contemporary
world, no older than perhaps the governments of Hitler, Stalin, or Roosevelt" ( 1967, 4).
13 Aldridge takes this rise in technology as the foundation for all dystopias, arguing that
technological progress in turn spurs the evolution of dystopia "as a form specifically
concentrating on the alienating effects of science and technology. Dystopia aims to
critique the scientific world view which stimulated its utopian predecessors and upon
which utopia, 'the dream of reason,' was built" ( 1984, 79).
14 Frye's term "Menippean satire" includes anti-utopia in general and dystopia in particular.
It derives from the Greek Cynic, Menippus, whose works are lost to us but whose
influence is represented in the satires of the classical writers Lucian, Varro, Petronius,
and Apuleius ( 1957, 309).
15 Critical dismissal of science fiction has often been justified by examining a few
egregiously bad works, which are taken as representatives of the genre. Darko Suvin
protests that "the genre has to be and can be evaluated proceeding from its heights down,
applying the standards gained by the analysis of its masterpieces. We find in SF, as we do
in most other genres of fiction, that 80 to 90 percent of the works in it are sheer
confectionary. However, contrary to subliterature, the criteria for the insufficiency of
most SF are to be found in the genre itself. This makes SF in principle, if not yet in
practice, equivalent to any other 'major' literary genre" ( 1979, 36). Suvin's assertion that
much of science fiction is "sheer confectionary" echoes Sturgeon's Law of Science
Fiction, so-called because it is popularly credited to Hugowinning writer Theodore
Sturgeon. Sturgeon counters the accusation that 90 percent of science fiction is crud by
asserting "90 percent of everything is crud. . . . [But t]he best science fiction is as good as
the best fiction in any field" ( Bainbridge 1986, 12). Scholes and Rabkin call this "the
most quoted dictum in science fiction" and remind us that "we must be grateful for a man
who breaks his own law so decidedly" ( 1977, 62).
16 Suvin notes that the term "cognitive estrangement comes from the Russian ostranenie,
which he credits to Viktor Shklovsky ( 1979, 6).
17 Another of London's dystopian visions, The Scarlet Plague ( 1915), finds modern echoes
in Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker ( 1982). See Chapter 7.
18 Matter notes the origin of this quotation as Paris Review 1963, 198, prepared for
publication by George Plimpton.
19 In the United States, the optimism of the New Deal combined with isolationist
sentiments--followed by the industrial recovery of World War II and the national pride
that accompanied victory--effectively blunted the widespread social malaise felt so
keenly in Europe. The dystopian mood evident in England beginning in the late 1920s did
not reach America until the mid-1960s, at a time when questions about American
involvement in Vietnam deeply divided the nation. This accounts for the

-14-

relatively disproportionate number of twentieth-century dystopias in English having been

written by British authors until well into the 1970s.
20 Kumar asserts that dystopian writers have

at least as much of the utopian as the anti-utopian temperament in their make-up. . . .

[T]he anti-utopia is largely the creation of men for whom it represented the dark obverse
of their own profound and passionate utopian temperament. Their antiutopias are born of
a sense of frustrated and thwarted utopianism. Neither in their individual life [sic] nor in
the world at large do they see any prospect of the utopia they so desperately wish for. The
anti-utopia for them is a kind of angry revenge against their own foolish hopes, a back-
handed compliment to the noble but deluded purposes of utopia. The intimate connection
 of utopia and anti-utopia here most clearly reveals itself as the anguished cry of a single
divided self. ( Kumar 1987, 104)
21 "Thus, for Morson, dystopia constitutes the "rebirth of the novel" on the formal level,
since it reintroduces the possibility of conflict, doubt, anxiety, and tragedy in its fictive
projection" ( Ruppert 1986, 102).
22 See the works of Myra Barnes ( 1975), Christine Brooke-Rose ( 1981), Samuel Delany
( 1977, 1984), W. R. Irwin ( 1976), Walter Meyers ( 1980), Ruth Noel ( 1980), and Marc
Okrand ( 1985). Of particular interest are Delany's multivolume studies, as he is himself a
respected science fiction writer. Ruth Noel analyzes the eleven separate languages that J.
R. R. Tolkien created for his Middle-earth, especially as they appear in The Lord of the
Rings ( 1954) and The Silmarillion ( 1977). It is interesting to note that Tolkien's
fictions--arguably the greatest fantasy novels of the twentieth century--were originally
written to provide a framework capable of supporting his imaginary languages, instead of
the languages being created to enrich the fiction. Marc Okrand's imaginary Klingon
language has taken on a life beyond its use in various Star Trek motion pictures and
television series; one can hear it spoken fluently by fans of all ages at science fiction
conventions and even in casual conversation.
23 Roger Fowler ( 1995) absorbing study of Orwell's language is easily the most outstanding
exception.
24 See Whorf essay "Science and Linguistics,"207-19 in Language, Thought and Reality
( 1956); see also Edward Sapir Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech ( 1921),
12-17.

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2
"Plus 'Parfaite' et Moins Libre"
Brave New World ( 1932) reacts against what Aldous Huxley saw as the utopian tradition's
dangerously short-sighted assumptions, particularly those that inform much of the fiction of
H. G. Wells. As with George Orwell and Anthony Burgess--modern writers who have
considered themselves neither dystopian novelists nor science fiction writers--Huxley wrote
more than one dystopia, as well as a straightforward utopia, Island ( 1962). 1 Of Huxley's far-
ranging œuvre, Brave New World is the novel that most readers associate with his name and
that commands the largest modern audience. 2 Brave New World is not the first great dystopia
of the twentieth century, however. That honor belongs to Eugene Zamiatin's We, which was
completed in 1921 but never published in his native Russia. Zamiatin's novel circulated
around Europe for years, first in manuscript and later in published English, Czech, and French
translations. 3 Zamiatin draws a stunning dystopic portrait of a far-future society where a
dictator referred to as "The Benefactor" rules absolutely. All citizens are referred to by
number; the protagonist and first-person narrator is called D-503. Orwell was acquainted with
Zamiatin's novel, and elements of We can be found in Nineteen Eighty-four. Furthermore,
"some critics have suggested that [ Huxley] also owes a great deal to Zamiatin's We. Huxley,
though, denied having read We. There is no evidence, other than perhaps coincidental
similarities between the two novels, to indicate Huxley borrowed from Zamiatin" ( Matter
1983, 106). Firchow notes that Zamiatin himself inquired into whether Huxley had read We,
and discovered that he had not ( 1984, 121-22).

-17-

Despite the fact that We was written twelve years before Huxley published Brave New World,
most scholars point to Huxley's novel as the seminal dystopia of the twentieth century. Much
of the difference between these novels' receptions lies in the disparity of their authors'
contemporary reputations. Zamiatin was not widely known outside a small circle of admirers
in Europe: when he died in France in 1937, he left behind a small corpus of short stories,
essays, a few plays, and one other novel ( Rudy 1975, v-vii). We is Zamiatin's longest and
most sustained work, and his modern reputation rests almost solely on it. However, the book
was little known for years after Zamiatin's death. By contrast, Brave New World was Huxley
fifth novel, written at the peak of his literary powers. At the time of its publication, Huxley
was the preeminent figure in the vanguard of English intellectual and literary culture. His
name alone conveyed a mood of ironic social and literary criticism, reflecting his talent for
propounding shocking new ideas while attacking works and theories he considered hopelessly
outdated. The prolific Huxley published eleven novels, numerous essays and short stories,
plays, poetry, a biography, travel sketches, and a large collection of letters. Finally, while We
was smuggled about and surreptitiously published in small editions--Orwell laments the
difficulties he faced in borrowing a French translation after an English edition proved
impossible to acquire ( Howe 1982, 259)--Huxley's novel was immediately popular in Britain
and the United States. 4

In addition, there are more fundamental thematic and formal distinctions to be drawn between
We and Brave New World. While the dystopian novel in English has flourished, We is the sole
Russian dystopia of this century to enjoy an international audience. Furthermore, despite the
fact that he describes a radically altered society, Huxley's prose is straightforward enough.
Zamiatin, however, experiments, not only with ideas of social structures, but stylistically as
well:

[ Zamiatin] attempted to carry out his conviction that form should keep up with ideas, that
only a heretical form could adequately dramatize heretical ideas. . . . The novel uses the
notebook format. . . . As the narrator's emotional state changes, his perception moves between
the extreme limits of objectivity and subjectivity. There is a dramatic running duel between
the rational and irrational forces within him, a shifting between his conscious and unconscious
powers of perception, and a constant association of ideas that forms elaborate networks.
Accompanying this psychological method is a laconic language that frequently lapses into the
provocatively elliptical and imparts a sensation of breathlessness. Compressed and startlingly
strange similes and metaphors . . . not only serve the conventional purpose of intensifying the
description of a person or object, but they also sharply characterize the narrator and his
environment; they are frequently linked to an individual through so much repetition that they
attain an impressionistic force. ( Rudy 1975, x)

The novel's style is best described as surrealistic, especially given the abundance of
unconnected images that D-503 passes on to the reader--frequently without context or
apparent relationship to the rest of his story. E. J. Brown describes the situation in this way:
We is very different from its descendants not only in structure and style, but particularly in its
quality of ironic humor. Huxley's novel is heavy-handed and obvious by comparison, and
Orwell's pictures of the new world do not amuse us, as Zamiatin's do for the most part, but
rather terrify and warn us. The difference is

-18-

simply that Orwell was afraid of his enemy, exaggerated his power, and tried to communicate
to the reader his own apprehension. Zamiatin's mood is one of ironic contempt for
collectivists and cosmists. ( 1988, 223-24)

Brown overstates the case in favor of We. Despite its brilliance, We's subtlety lessens its
impact as social criticism. Furthermore, it is nearly impossible to follow Brown and ignore
Huxley's "ironic contempt," although his targets are not collectivists but rather those who
believe that science alone can solve humanity's problems. Despite We's richness and its
chronological primacy, Brave New World was more widely known to its contemporary
audience, and remains so today. Brave New World was the first widely read dystopia in
English. Accordingly, its influence has been enormous" ( Matter 1983, 107). Huxley's novel
serves as an ideal starting point for this study, since questions of language play a role in
creating the nightmarish Brave New World State.

Huxley begins reworking the utopian form right away; indeed, on the first page, readers find
themselves touring the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, "a squat grey
building of only thirty-four stories." 5 Huxley eschews the conventional exposition of a
confident utopian patiently answering at length the questions of a bewildered visitor; instead,
he plunges the reader straight into the world of London, circa the year A.F. (After Ford) 632,
tagging along after "a troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow" ( 1947,
2). As if fulfilling Suvin's ( 1979) criterion of estrangement in its structure as well as in
content,

the novel opens in medias res and showers the reader with a series of unexplained details. So
much of the appeal of any utopian work depends on its initial sense of mystery and the
reader's correspondent demand for an explanation. . . . Huxley suddenly introduces the reader
into a new world, and it is not until the momentum with which puzzling details are presented
slows down that one becomes an informed visitor and is ready for an explanation of how the
society one lives in has become the society one is reading about ( Meckier 1969, 184) 6

The shock of the new culture owes much of its effectiveness to the narrative structure Huxley
creates in the opening chapters. Rather than using a single narrator, Huxley allows the reader
to eavesdrop on several conversations. The content of these conversational snippets, as well
as their contexts, indicates which characters are speaking. We move quickly from one
conversation to another in a series of jump cuts: at first we "hear" entire paragraphs
expressing complete thoughts, but as the chapter progresses we hear shorter and shorter bits
of each conversation before jumping to the next. As the chapter concludes, the pace has
quickened to the point that we hear mostly phrases and only occasionally a complete sentence
from each speaker. In general, those facts that we discover about the World State are
indirectly expressed. Firchow refers to this eavesdropping technique as "counterpoint," since
Huxley
had used it most fully before in Point Counter Point ( 1929), though there are intimations of it
as early as Those Barren Leaves ( 1925). This technique involves a simultaneous
juxtaposition of different elements of the narrative, much as musical counterpoint means
sounding different notes simultaneously. . . . The result in music is--or should be--a complex
harmony; in Huxley's fiction the result is, usually, a complex dissonance, a subtle and often
brilliant cacophony of ironies. The third chapter of Brave New World is set up entirely in this
kind of counterpoint, gathering

-19-

together the various narrative strains of the first two chapters and juxtaposing them without
any editorial comment, slowly at first and then with gathering momentum, climaxing in a
crescendo that fuses snatches of Mond's lecture, Lenina's conversation with Fanny, Henry
Foster's with Benito Hoover [sic; the Assistant Predestinator], Bernard Marx's resentful
thoughts, and bits of hypnopædie wisdom. ( 1984, 15)

Huxley's opening chapters introduce most of the important characters while simultaneously
revealing the cornerstone on which the World State's stability rests. The State controls
reproduction: all births begin with in vitro fertilization using carefully screened sperm and
ova. Once fertilized, some eggs are permitted to develop normally into single fetuses. 7 Most
undergo Bokanovsky's Process, in which near-lethal doses of alcohol, radiation, and
refrigeration force the fertilized eggs to divide continually ( 1947, 3-5). The process yields
huge numbers of identical humans--"ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good
average" ( 1947, 5). The State manipulates the developing fetuses into five separate castes.
Alphas and Betas, who are destined for careers as managers, leaders, educators and scientists,
are given special treatment by being left alone, while the remaining three castes, Gammas,
Deltas, and Epsilons are progressively retarded so as to grow physically smaller and less
mentally capable than normal. During the gestation period, all fetuses are chemically and
environmentally conditioned to whatever ends the State deems necessary. Those destined to
work in the tropics are conditioned to prefer heat, while those fated to perform in-flight
repairs to high-altitude rocket planes are conditioned to prefer being upside-down (12-13).
Once "decanted" (the word born, as well as the biological process it describes, are considered
obscene) all children are already well on their way to fulfilling whatever destiny best serves
the exigencies of the State.

The conditioning process continues from infancy onward through the further methods of
hypnopædia ("sleep teaching," a term Huxley coined in this novel) and "neo-Pavlovian
conditioning" (essentially aversion therapy). Neo-Pavlovian conditioning links socially
undesirable traits to unpleasant experiences, as when toddlers enjoying picture books and
bowls of roses are subjected to terrifying loud noises and electric shocks. "A love of nature
for its own sake keeps no factories busy" ( 1947, 18), while books are even more dangerous
since "there [is] always the risk of . . . reading something which might undesirably de-
condition one of their reflexes" ( 1947, 17-18). Huxley's society fears the printed word as
perhaps the only force that can permanently subvert years of careful conditioning. This threat
is countered by a policy of appropriating words, stripping them of undesirable meaning, and
using them to further extend State conditioning. Since "wordless conditioning . . . cannot
bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behaviour[,] .
. . there must be words, but words without reason. In brief, hypnopædia" (23). While children
sleep in State nurseries, speakers beneath their pillows whisper lessons in orthodox morality:
one's own caste is best, group identity is superior to that of the individual, consumption is a
pleasant civic duty, and so forth. After subconsciously absorbing such lessons, each of which
is repeated thousands of times, "the sum of these suggestions is the child's mind. . . . The
adult's mind too--all his life long" (23). Individuals will never feel that the State is
encroaching on their liberties, since the State carefully molds their concept of liberty in the
first place. As the Director puts it, "that is the secret of

-20-

happiness and virtue--liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making
people like their unescapable social destiny" (12).

That destiny may at first appear idyllic. Earth in A.F. 632 is united in a World State, which
promises its citizens "Community, Identity, Stability" ( 1947, 1). Ten World Controllers
(including Mustapha Mond, the resident Controller for Western Europe) oversee society and
keep everything running smoothly. All citizens have jobs, which are assigned by the State, but
none finds their labor excessive or difficult since the workers have been created to perform
specific tasks. Despite the fact that each person works for only a few hours, "spare time" is an
obsolete concept--as is any idea having to do with individual choice or even time spent alone:
the World Citizens view solitude with horror. Every waking moment not spent on the job is
devoted to consuming State-produced entertainment, from equipment-intensive sports like
Obstacle Golf and Reimann-Surface Tennis to synthetic music, feeling pictures ("the
Feelies"), community sings, television, and travel. Promiscuity is the norm, and is actively
encouraged by the State--but not with the same partner for very long, since long-term
attachments threaten the social fabric. 8 The perfect drug, soma, is freely available to all
citizens; it has no unpleasant side effects and guarantees hours of pleasant sensations and
beautiful hallucinations. Handicaps, disease, and even obesity are unknown, and old age has
been eliminated--citizens remain vigorous and healthy until age sixty or so, at which time
they die quickly and painlessly. The State provides ceremonies that substitute for religion,
such as the Orgy-Porgy, in which worshippers fall into a drugged frenzy as they celebrate the
coming of an imaginary "Greater Being." 9 A knowledge of history no longer exists, having
been done away with by the State, and it never occurs to most citizens to think about a future
since the present euphoric state of affairs promises to continue forever. The only living
remnants of other cultures are aboriginal ones, which pose no threat to the World State: these
are forcibly enclosed within high-security areas known as Savage Reservations.

Not every citizen is happy, though. Bernard Marx works for the Psychology Bureau of the
Conditioning Centre as an expert on hypnopædia; Helmholtz Watson lectures at the College
of Emotional Engineering in the Department of Writing. Two more different men could
hardly be found in one caste of the Brave New World. Bernard is shorter and scrawnier than
his Alpha-Plus colleagues and is derided as a result, whereas Helmholtz is so physically
perfect and intellectually gifted that he stands out from his fellow Alpha-Plus brethren. "What
the two men [share is] the knowledge that they [are] individuals" ( 1947, 55). Brought
together by this one similarity--for they know of no others like themselves--Helmholtz and
Bernard spend hours discussing their strange feelings of individuality, trying to make sense of
their personal identities in a society where personal identity does not exist. Bernard cannot
escape into the mindless whirl of sex and soma he despises, although he wishes he could do
so. Helmholtz distances himself from this whirl in search of something that he cannot clearly
articulate but toward which he feels strong creative urges and wishing to find out what it
means to be alone. Both Helmholtz and Bernard are wordsmiths, keenly aware of the ends to
which their writing is put: for example, Bernard recognizes hypnopedic suggestions he has
written when speakers around him articulate what they believe to be original thoughts.

-21-

Huxley also wrote "Ape and Essence" ( 1948), a savage dystopia that nonetheless provides a
third option, which is only hinted at in Brave New World: the opportunity to flee the
repressive society and join a small group of likeminded rebels. Meckier calls this alternative
to assimilation or destruction "the all-important trap door of justifiable escape" ( 1969, 189).
Brave New World Revisited ( 1958) foregrounds Huxley's warning that precision in language
is the first line of defense against the development of repressive societies like the one in his
own Brave New World. Finally, Island ( 1962) finds Huxley turning his earlier dystopias
upside down to create a utopian community on the fictional island of Pala. Huxley's
problematical final novel (published a year before his death) responds almost point-by-point
to what he had written thirty years earlier in Brave New World--and language is at the heart of
it, as the visiting Will Farnaby finds, through "giving the [Palanese] children systematic and
carefully graduated training in perception and the proper use of language. . . . [T]hey're asked
to notice . . . how their language habits affect not only their feelings and desires but even their
sensations" ( 1962, 243).

Huxley's concern with language substantially informs Brave New World. Baker argues that
Huxley borrowed this concern from H. G. Wells When the Sleeper Wakes ( 1899): 10

One feature of Wells's novel is especially characteristic of the dystopian narrative-the

preoccupation with communications media and language. The [workers] are controlled by an
elaborate system of propaganda, including a network of Babble Machines designed to implant
"counter suggestions in the cause of law and order" [ Wells 1924, 392]. The oppressed
workers also speak a debased dialect. This motif of language will recur in the dystopias of
Zamiatin, Huxley, and Orwell, only in more complexly subtle forms. ( Baker 1990, 37)

Regardless of whether Huxley inherited his dystopic interest in the role of language from
Wells, he certainly expressed it more subtly. Brave New World does not reveal a government
forcing a thought-restricting language on its populace. Rather, Huxley shows us a society that
engineers its population from conception on and then fulfills all the desires that it has
conditioned in them. The citizens of the Brave New World State do not consider themselves
repressed. They do not long for things that the State has done away with. On the contrary,
some words for outdated concepts still exist but have been debased into vapidity (love),
smutty humor (marriage) or even obscenity (especially the term mother). As far as the vast
majority of citizens are concerned, complete happiness and social harmony have been brought
about at no cost to themselves. Except in a handful of malcontents like Helmholtz Watson and
authority figures like Mustapha Mond, there is no perception that social stability has been
bought at a high price.

That price includes the destruction of history and the deterioration of language. History is
bunk, and bunkum has all but replaced history. Only Mustapha Mond shows any awareness of
how the World State has evolved from the society that Huxley's contemporary readers would
recognize. The family, parent-child bonds, romance, monogamous marriage, and all other
relationships that create powerful emotions have been eliminated as detrimental to the State.
Doing away with history has meant, of course, destroying the historical records. By
expunging the written word of what has been, the World State can substitute its own version
of the past--or, as it chooses to do, a scenario that posits the

-22-

past's nonexistence. Huxley does not include specific details as to how this purging of books
has been accomplished other than to throw out a few hints that direct repression failed: "in the
end . . . the Controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but infinitely surer
methods of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning and hypnopædia" were coupled with a
campaign "against the Past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical
monuments (luckily most of them had already been destroyed during the Nine Years' War);
by the suppression of all books published before A.F. 150" ( 1947, 41-42). Another of Henry
Ford's maxims has been elevated to the level of social dogma: "I don't like to read
books[;] . . . they mess up my mind." 11 Suppressing books destroys, not only history, but also
philosophy, literature, poetry, drama--in sum, conveniently eliminating unorthodox thought
and its challenges to the State. How such destruction could be carried out successfully without
the use of force is never mentioned. However, Huxley's concern is not the suppression of the
past or of literature itself, but the social changes brought about by that suppression. It
remained for Orwell to examine directly how a repressive state could go about destroying
literature and accounts of the past that conflicted with its own version.

By the same process, religion has been disposed of except for an officially sanctioned faith
that gives restless citizens an outlet for their need to worship. "The once powerful theological
term 'predestination' now means little more than suiting people to an 'unescapable social
destiny' [ Huxley 1947, 121]" ( Meckier 19699, 182). Westminster Abbey has been turned
into a cabaret ( Huxley 1947, 62). Henry Ford has been deified into Our Ford--conflated with
Sigmund Freud when discussing human psychology (31)--and his assembly-line methods are
now applied, not only to manufacturing but, moreover, to maintaining the social fabric from
conception to cremation. All crosses have been lopped into Ts; where we expect to see
permutations of the word Lord, we instead find Ford (as in "your Fordship," "Fordy!"); and
historical events, if discussed at all, are spoken of as happening in relation to the year in
which "Our Ford's first TModel was put on the market" (20). Unknowingly echoing
Browning, the Director of Hatcheries expresses his satisfaction with the social order by
declaring that "Ford's in his flivver. . . . All's well with the world" (36).

"Worst of all, language has virtually lost its meaning and few speakers in this model world of
scientifically engineered precision realize how unscientific and imprecise their words really
are" ( Meckier 1969, 181). Doing away with literature has severely affected the use of
language. Other than insipid popular music--"There ain't no Bottle in all the world like that
dear little Bottle of mine" ( Huxley 1947, 62)--there are no models to guide usage and no
means available to expand vocabulary or experiment with structure. Human languages and
other cultural differences have been severely reduced by the World State, since stability
requires mutual understanding between different peoples. Some languages, like "Zuñi and
Spanish and Athapascan," are nearly extinct, surviving only in the Savage Reservations (85),
while others, including French, German, and Polish, are completely dead (18). Huxley has his
tongue firmly in cheek when he notes that "it was lucky that Bernard didn't understand Zuñi"
(149). The Savage need not speak Zuñi in order to keep secrets, his Shakespearean English
being sufficiently impenetrable to those around him--"for Ford's sake, John, talk sense. I can't
understand a word you say" cries Lenina, to whom his references to The Tempest are
nonsense ( Huxley 1947, 162).
 -23-

Brian Aldiss, who calls Brave New World "arguably the Western world's most famous science
fiction novel," asks "Isn't one of the delights of [ Huxley's dystopia], when all is said and
pontificated, that it is told with a perfect balance of wit and humour?" (in Aldiss and
Wingrove 1986, 184-85). Huxley repeatedly lightens the tone of his novel with the "agreeable
weapons" (185) of satiric witticisms, which amuse at first, until their full meaning becomes
clear. One of the synchronous narratives in Chapter 3 finds Lenina Crowne talking to Fanny
Crowne in the Hatchery's women's dressing rooms. The two are not related, "but as the [two
billion] inhabitants of the planet had only ten thousand names between them, the coincidence
was not particularly surprising" ( Huxley 1947, 29). The reader may smile when thinking of
the humorous situations that will inevitably occur given such a paucity of names, but a
moment's thought makes one wonder why there are so few names for so many people. The
answer, simply put, is that the World State removes another dangerous tendency toward
individual identity by making sure that not even one's name distinguishes one from other
citizens. Still, some names involve puns. For example, Henry Foster conducts ovarian
research in the Hatchery, with the aim of producing increasing numbers of new workers.
( Firchow suggests that Huxley may also be referring to Sir Michael Foster [ 1836-1907], a
British embryologist who had been, like H. G. Wells, an assistant to Huxley's grandfather T.
H. Huxley [46].) Similarly, Mustapha Mond is one of the ten World Controllers. 12 Huxley
further satirizes a number of contemporary and historical individuals in the names he gives his
characters:

As in the old allegorical fables, Huxley gives many of his characters names which symbolize
his particular bêtes noires. Together, they add up to a fairly comprehensive indictment of
western thought and achievement since the Enlightenment. . . . The Left gets a trouncing in
Polly Trotsky, Sarojini Engels, Herbert Bakunin, Lenina Crowne, and Bernard Marx. For
Huxley, Socialism and Marxism, as the latest variants of scientific rationalism, differed from
other varieties only in their greater arrogance and fanaticism, a judgment the Russian
Revolution and the new Soviet State had done nothing to shake. He naturally had no greater
faith in right-wing dictators or large capitalists, who are rebuffed in Benito Hoover and Primo
Mellon, the last also doubling for capitalists along with Morgana Rothschild. Technology gets
its due in George Edsel, Joanna Diesel, and Clara Deterding, and science its brickbat in
Darwin Bonaparte, Bernard Marx, and Helmholtz Watson. Watson is also Huxley's back-
handed tribute to the founder of behaviourism in psychology, and therefore a key influence in
the new society. ( Kumar 1987, 243)

Huxley lampoons capitalists in Morgana's name, suggesting J. P. Morgan, and one can hardly
overlook Benito Hoover as an ironic jab at Herbert Hoover, president of the United States at
the time of Brave New World's composition and already infamous for asserting that "the
business of America is business." 13 Darwin Bonaparte suggests another right-wing dictator of
note, as does Mustapha Mond (recalling the Turkish nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk
Mustapha). Social theorists and writers are criticized with names like Fifi Bradlaugh and
JeanJacques Habibullah (whose last name may recall Habibullah Khan) ( Firchow 1984, 83).
Upon his arrival from Malpais, John is christened "The Savage," harking back to Rousseau--
but John's nobility is matched by his fanatical inability to adapt to the society that he names
the Brave New World, echoing Shakespeare. 14 Huxley damns Henry Ford and Ivan Pavlov by
adopting their names directly, Ford as the World State's patron saint and Pavlov as the pioneer

-24-
of the behavioral conditioning so necessary to the State. In fact, the Central London Hatchery
contains an entire block of floors, the "Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Rooms," given over to
hypnopedic and aversion conditioning. Huxley pokes at H. G. Wells by having Fanny Crowne
refer to the "Dr. Wells" who advised her to undergo a Pregnancy Substitute ( 1947, 31).

Huxley reserves his harshest treatment for another famous Fabian Socialist, George Bernard
Shaw. To begin with, Bernard Marx is intellectually gifted but essentially a coward, unwilling
to stand up for what he believes. Furthermore, the Director of Hatcheries explains that the
first discovery of hypnopædia occurred when a radio left on overnight broadcast Shaw
declaiming on the subject of his own genius, an address that a young Polish boy wakes up
repeating, despite not understanding English (20). The ironic dig is clear. Shaw's words are
merely inconsequential babble, a judgment sealed by the fact that Shaw is "one of the very
few whose works have been permitted to come down to us," as the Director notes (20). As
Mond makes clear to the touring students, nearly all literature published before the year A.F.
150 has been suppressed (42); the fact that Shaw's works are not forbidden points to their
essential harmlessness and their inability to disrupt conditioning.

Jerome Meckier suggests that at least one name that Huxley used is more gently ironic, more
accusatory of society than of the individual to whom it belongs:

Helmholtz Watson's name, a curious amalgam of Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz ( 1821-
1894), the German scientist, and Sir William Watson ( 1858-1935), an English poet, seems to
imply that science and art are now united, but innocuously so, in the job of furnishing slogans
for the state. In fact, the famous names of these characters form a pointed contrast to a World
State that is simply one of Henry Ford's Detroit plants magnified many times. ( 1969, 181)

Matter further argues that sporting with characters' names is meant to "remind the reader of
similar linguistic witticisms in More's Utopia and Samuel Butler's Erewhon" ( 1983, 106).
Huxley toys with some place names and names of landmarks as well, to ironic effect. Since
all crosses have been cut in deference to Our Ford, London's Charing Cross has become
Charing T, and as Bernard arrives at the Fordson Community Singery, he hears Big Henry, its
clock-tower bell, toll the hour. Firchow concisely asserts Huxley's reason for making so much
of names, which is

not merely that from the perspective of distant time the concerns of the present fuse together
into a single whole. . . . Rather, what Huxley seems to be implying is that all of the dynamic
political forces of the twentieth century, no matter how divergent they appear on the surface,
are really tending in the same direction, that of the new world state. . . . All are fundamentally
materialist. . . . They all glorify machines and modern technology. They all . . . subordinate
the individual to the claims of a collective whole. . . . Moreover, aside from these general
resemblances, there seem to be quite specific links between each one of these political
systems of the twentieth century and the new world state: from fascism comes the caste
system; from communism, the emphasis on conditioning and propaganda; and from
democratic capitalism the economy oriented toward lavish and purposeless production and
consumption. ( 1984, 83-84)

-25-

Beneath the irony of Huxley's naming lies a society whose literature and language are almost
completely devoid of real meaning. Words still exist, but the concepts for which they stand
have been altered. Love no longer connotes an emotional bond, only sexual activity;
conventionality equals promiscuity; calling a woman pneumatic is a compliment rather than
an insult; and stability means a society in which infantilism is not only encouraged, but
enforced. Characters speak, but the import of what they say escapes them:

What happens to the meaning of normality when Mr. Foster explains he wants to give the
Epsilon embryo "the normality of dogs and cows"? . . . From chapter to chapter the
destruction of the meaning of words proceeds apace. Foster explains that childhood has been
abolished because the years between an Epsilon's birth and the time he is fit for work
constitute a "superfluous and wasted immaturity." Yet the Epsilon's so-called maturity is
scarcely that of a five-year-old. Surely this is no great improvement on the treatment of
children in nineteenth-century England. ( Meckier 1969, 181-82)

Huxley repeatedly refers to items that substitute for other things: "bloodsurrogate," "morocco-
surrogate," "Pregnancy Substitute," "oboe-surrogate," "Violent Passion Surrogate,"
"vitaminized beef-surrogate." New words refer to things that have been altered, ostensibly for
the better, with the originals no longer in evidence: "hyper-violin," "super-cornet," "pan-
glandular biscuits," "super-doves." Some things seem familiar enough but have been renamed,
and their strangeness makes us wonder if they are, in fact, the same. Is "boiling caffeine
solution" a cup of tea, coffee--or what? When an infant finishes sucking a pint of "pasteurized
external secretion," is it cows' milk, human milk, goats' milk--or is it milk at all? What is
"synthetic music," and how does it differ from normal music? Is a "synthetic-talking" Feely
("feeling picture") somehow different from a talking Feely? Since the characters take these
things for granted, the questions are not answered within the narrative. Language and
meaning diverge, as the artificial stability of the World State depends on arresting the
population's development. It is vital to maintain a changeless status quo, an eternal present
that admits of no past and expects no change in the future:

When Lenina describes her Malthusian belt, itself a preventive or substitution device, as "real
morocco-surrogate" [ Huxley 1947, 43], one realizes how confused the relation between
things and words has become. Can individuals who have not blood but "blood surrogate" in
their veins be termed human at all? The fact that women must take a "Pregnancy Substitute"
[31] to satisfy maternal urges underlines the extent to which Brave New World, in words and
objects, is a world of facsimiles behind which certain genuine human feelings faintly persist. (
Meckier 1969, 182)

Bernard returns from the Savage Reservation and brings John into this world, where language
has been devalued and literature is outlawed. His education has been a narrow one, despite his
aptitude for learning. After a few simple lessons from his mother, Linda, John essentially
teaches himself to read. Ostracized from Native American boys because of his mother's
promiscuity and his disheveled appearance, John seizes on his ability to read as a refuge from
their taunts: "'I can read,' he said to himself, 'and they can't. They don't even know what
reading is.' It was fairly easy, if he thought hard enough about the reading, to pretend that he
didn't mind when they made fun of him" ( Huxley 1947, 109). John knows only two books:
his mother's copy of The Chemical and Bacteriological

-26-

Conditioning of the Embryo: Practical Instructions for Beta Embryo-Store Workers and The
Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The latter, in the form of an ancient book, is
brought for him by Popé, one of Linda's lovers. The former work is virtually useless to John
except as an exercise in syllabification and simple reading skills. But while much of
Shakespeare's meaning is closed to him, John instantly finds Shakespearean English
fascinating. When he first picks up the book, it falls open to Hamlet III, iv as Hamlet
reproaches Gertrude for her marriage to Claudius:

The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like talking thunder; like the drums at
the summer dances, if the drums could have spoken; like the men singing the Corn Song,
beautiful, beautiful, so that you cried; like old Mitsima saying magic over his feathers and his
carved sticks and his bits of bone and stone--kiathla tsilu silokwe silokwe silokwe. Kiai silu
silu, tsithl--but better than Mitsima's magic, because it meant more, because it talked to him;
talked wonderfully and only halfunderstandingly, a terrible beautiful magic, about Linda;
about Linda lying there snoring, with the empty cup on the floor beside the bed; about Linda
and Popé, Linda and Popé ( 110 -11)

The "terrible beautiful magic" of Shakespeare's language, which John only half comprehends,
stands apart from the World State's cultural inanities. Upon first reading Hamlet, John is
profoundly moved, shaken by the power of the words themselves. To him, their precise
definitions are less important than the intense emotions they cause in him, and even the
strongest passion he already feels--jealousy over the affections of his mother, Linda--is
magnified by Shakespeare's language:

He hated Popé more and more. A man can smile and smile and be a villain. Remorseless,
treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain. What did the words exactly mean? He only half
knew. But their magic was strong and went on rumbling in his head, and somehow it was as
though he had never really hated Popé before; never really hated him because he had never
been able to say how much he hated him. But now he had these words . . . and the strange,
strange story out of which they were taken (he couldn't make head or tail of it, but it was
wonderful, wonderful all the same)--they gave him a reason for hating Popé; and they made
his hatred more real; they even made Popé himself more real. ( 111 )

Coming to him sometime around his twelfth birthday, the Shakespeare volume marks the end
of John's childhood and propels him into the beginning of his adult consciousness.

One of the most important meanings carried by Shakespeare's works in Brave New World lies
in the enormity of John's reaction to them. If we accept that "John does not learn to hate Popé
until Shakespeare gives him the necessary words" ( Matter 1983, 106), then it follows that it
is, in large part, the words that create the emotion he feels:

Long ago the World Controllers decided that society must cut itself off from its depressing
past when motherhood was in flower. One of the most inspired phrases of Ford is that "history
is bunk." The great writers and historians of the old world concerned themselves with man's
struggles, his cravings, his failures, and his successes. Such emotions would shake the
foundations of the new society. In a like manner, emotive language would injure the social
cell. The World Controllers appear to agree with [ Benjamin Lee] Whorf's theory of linguistic
relativity, which suggests

-27-
that people who have no words to express antisocial sentiments cannot think antisocially.
( Matter 1983, 105-6)

Bluntly, Huxley affirms the Controllers' concern with Whorf's theory (despite the fact that
Whorf did not publish this theory until 1940, eight years after the first publication of Brave
New World). Old books have been banned because the Controllers fear that a citizen's
conditioning might be upset by reading even a few pages--which is exactly what happens
when John reads several lines from Hamlet, despite the fact that he cannot make any sense of
the story. However, John's reading of Shakespeare does not disrupt his conditioning because
Shakespeareis his conditioning. Furthermore, John does not adopt Elizabethan values so much
as he accepts Shakespeare's language as a value in itself. He has very little understanding of
what the wonderful words actually mean, in context or out of it; when he spouts
Shakespearean dialogue, he expresses his mood without clearly articulating his state of mind.
John's adoption of Elizabethan language and the emotional attitudes of Shakespeare's
characters confirms what his unwitting father, the Director of Hatcheries, has already noted to
his students: hypnopædia is no use "as an instrument of intellectual education," but it is a
peerless tool for moral education, "which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational"
( Huxley 1947, 20-21). John has no experience with the technology of hypnopædia, but
Shakespeare's plays provide him with an abundance of words--and, as his father has pointed
out, to him they are quite literally "words without reason. In brief, hypnopædia" (23). 15 The
only difference is that John's sleep is not the physical slumber of the body, but the intellectual
drowsiness of a mind first awakening to a sense of something beyond itself.

The Savage, knowing only a smattering of art but wholeheartedly believing in its power,
enters a World State where most citizens know only a smattering of science but unhesitatingly
accept it as omnipotent. But Huxley does not prefer art over science. To embrace either one
without the other, especially when it is only superficially understood, leave's one's perspective
dangerously incomplete. Bernard, although an expert in hypnopædia, is ignorant of art's
creative solace, and he vacillates between abject self-loathing and overweening arrogance. On
the other hand, John, who is "encumbered by the language of Hamlet and Lear, swings
between the opposing extremes of fanatical idealism and vengeful violence. . . . If Bernard's
language is banal and simplistic, John's confused mingling of Shakespearean poetic diction
and normal speech is grotesquely abstruse" ( Baker 1990, 124). Although it is tempting to
read the Savage as the hero of Brave New World, he is as one-sided as the people he meets in
London. He differs from them only in the nature of his fragmentation (knowing something of
literature) and in his unhappiness at being alienated and isolated. The Savage's example
should make Helmholtz Watson pause from his quiet enthusiasm for exile in the Falklands.

The Savage repeatedly fails to reconcile his perceptions of the Brave New World with his
ideals of how a perfect society should function. Unquestionably, his religious convictions--
haphazardly combining elements of Christian and Native American myths into a fanatical
penitence--are deeply offended by the immorality of the World State. However, John's
wholesale absorption of Shakespearean language has even more rigidly fixed his conceptions
of moral behavior. Despite the vocabulary Shakespeare provides, John is incapable of using it
to better understand the society he has entered. The Savage does not see

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the patterns beneath individual actions: he holds individuals responsible for what he considers
aberrant behavior, even though such behavior is the norm for the society he has entered. His
definitions of promiscuity are lifted straight from Hamlet, an extreme example even among
Shakespeare's plays. "How meaningless the Savage's condemnation of the promiscuous
Lenina--'Whore!' he shouted. 'Whore! Impudent strumpet!' [ Huxley 1947, 165]--has become
in a society where chastity is non-existent as a word or a concept" ( Meckier 1969, 182).
Despite his initial enthusiasm, the Savage quickly becomes the selftormenting Caliban in this
Brave New World. 16

John exemplifies Whorf's theory taken to the extremity of its conclusions: essentially, the
Savage strives to fit the world he encounters into the language he has acquired, with
disastrous results. When the expectations his Shakespearean language creates are not fulfilled
by the World State, John proves incapable of modifying his ideals and ultimately kills
himself. Even though John is not the protagonist, a quick reading of Brave New World may
leave the impression that the Savage's alienation and death are tragic. This impression is false,
however, for the Savage is as incomplete a character as anyone he encounters in the World
State. His revulsion from the culture he finds is not that of a careful reader. The Savage is
disgusted at finding out that this society does not conform to the values he has picked up from
Shakespeare's plays, while the reader is repulsed at the content of the values that the State
actually possesses. Huxley sees a great deal more wrong with the World State than its
exclusion of Shakespeare. While the Savage exposes some of these problems to the reader's
attention, Huxley does not want us to adopt the Savage's opinions and reactions as our own.
The Brave New World is a collection of eccentrics, all of whom are spiritually incomplete--
including the Savage.

Meckier notes the resemblance between Huxley and Charles Dickens, both of whom attack
"one-sided egotists": "each caste is also convinced that its particular form of incompleteness,
its particular degree of intellectual development and job capability, is better than any
other. . . . The attitudes of a self-satisfied Delta, of many Dickens characters, and of Huxley's
eccentrics do not greatly differ" ( 1969, 18 ). He goes on to point out, however, that "the one-
sided egotists whom Dickens laughed at, Huxley finds extremely dangerous" (18). Huxley
was concerned with contemporary problems and the kinds of egotistical people who bring
them about, but unlike Dickens, he also worried about what future conditions would hold
should the present trends continue unchecked. In Brave New World the problem is not the
ascendancy of a few eccentric characters, as in such Dickens novels as Great Expectations;
Mustapha Mond is not as terrifying as the society that his leadership helps to uphold. Huxley
warns of the dangers that loom when eccentric policies become law, and thence are
transformed into social fabric. Eccentricity has become the norm in the World State of A.F.
632, and that distortion is nowhere clearer than in the novel's language. "There is an
overwhelming discrepancy between the reality of Brave New World and the picture it has
formed of itself by means of its language. So much of the language used in Brave New World
is not really stable, but is, like society and the formerly diverse individual, artificial, stagnant,
virtually dead" (182).

Helmholtz Watson discovers the stagnancy of the language available to him as a lecturer and
Emotional Engineer. Despite enjoying every advantage, Helmholtz begins to wonder if there
might be something more to writing than creating hypnopedic slogans. He knows that he
could write something much

-29-

greater than he has ever done if only he could find the words with which to do so:
I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something important to
say and the power to say it--only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of the
power. If there was some different way of writing . . . Or else something else to write about . .
." He was silent; then, "You see," he went on at last, "I'm pretty good at inventing phrases--
you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a
pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they're about something hypnopedically
obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you
make with them ought to be good too. ( Huxley 1947, 57)

Helmholtz has come to a rudimentary independent awareness of the power of unfettered

language. He has unknowingly discovered why literature is forbidden and why he can no
longer be satisfied at writing fluff:

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly--they'll go through anything. You read
and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students--how to write
piercingly. But what on earth's the good of being pierced by an article about a Community
Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really
piercing--you know, like the very hardest X-rays--when you're writing about that sort of
thing? Can you say something about nothing? ( Huxley 1947, 57-58)

While Helmholtz cannot answer his own question, a careful reader can. Helmholtz is groping
toward the realization that it is possible to say "something about nothing" only if the writer is
not conscious of him- or herself as a writer. Despite his conditioning and never having
encountered real literature or art, Helmholtz has discovered his own capacity to be moved by
language, and he now determines to create language to move others. His first efforts produce
some rhymes, as he calls them, on the abhorrent subject of being alone. Not content merely to
have created language, he shares it with others by reading these verses aloud to one of his
Advanced Emotional Engineering classes. While not very good poetry, Helmholtz's verses
prove supremely moving in a society without poetry--and several students, upon being
confronted with strong images of solitude that run counter to their anti-individualistic
conditioning, are deeply upset ( Huxley 1947, 153-54). This result delights Helmholtz: "'I feel
. . . as though I were just beginning to have something to write about. As though I were
beginning to be able to use that power I feel I've got inside me--that extra, latent power.
Something seems to be coming to me.' In spite of all his troubles, he seemed, Bernard
thought, profoundly happy" (154). The State's artificial culture cannot bear the X-ray scrutiny
of Helmholtz's newfound language, so Mond determines to banish him and prevent his
discoveries from becoming known. For Helmholtz, being banished is not punishment but
rather a reward, since exile offers an exciting opportunity to hone his craft. He deliberately
chooses to be sent to the Falkland Islands, believing that the fierce climate there will foster his
writing.

But why is the punishment exile? This seems the most glaring inconsistency in Huxley's
novel. Given that the World State's social fabric cannot withstand its citizens being
emotionally aroused, nearly all literature has been outlawed and destroyed--Mond refers to his
(presumably illegal) cache of books, which

-30-

includes the Bible, Shakespeare, William James, and Cardinal Newman, as "pornographic"
( Huxley 1947, 198). There are frequent references to the fragility of each citizen's
conditioning, which a few words could presumably reverse at any moment: Mond suppresses
a scientific paper because "it was the sort of idea that might easily de-condition the more
unsettled minds among the higher castes--make them lose their faith in happiness as the
Sovereign Good" (150). Helmholtz shows every indication of possessing genuine literary
talent, which he will be free to exercise on his island, just as, presumably, the other misfits
exiled to the world's islands are also free to do. Mond himself notes the apparent
inconsistency: "it's lucky . . . that there are such a lot of islands in the world. I don't know
what we should do without them. Put you all in the lethal chamber, I suppose" (196). But why
does the State permit misfits like Helmholtz to survive? Why does not the State destroy
creative individuals as ruthlessly as it has destroyed the artifacts of human history? A possible
answer lies in the social experiments that Mond relates concerning the island of Cyprus,
where the State once settled a population of Alphas and then left them alone to form their own
society. After a bloody civil war, the few survivors begged for relief and outside government
(191). 17 Clearly, the State believes that the misfits it exiles to the islands pose no threat to its
continued dominance. The apparent inconsistency in Huxley's novel actually illustrates the
degree of benign contempt in which the State holds writers and artists. The Controllers
believe that, as the most efficient way of preventing the circulation of disturbing materials
like graphic art or literature, it is sufficient to isolate creative minds away from the bulk of the
populace. Since most citizens are completely happy and do not feel the absence of such
materials, there is no need to destroy divergent thinkers. Cauterization is unnecessary when
quarantine will suffice.

"There are literally hundreds of utopias that are no longer readable, except as literary history,
because little of what they envisioned ever came to pass[;] . . . much of the horror in any
distopia [sic] stem[s] from the reader's conviction that he already lives in the initial stages of
the society the utopian author describes and that he may live to witness the complete
identification of fiction and reality" ( Meckier 1969, 185). Huxley Brave New World more
than meets Meckier's criteria for horrific readability. Many of Huxley's visions have become
reality: in vitro fertilization--the creation of "test-tube babies"--is a routine procedure;
consumerism has indeed become the driving force of Western European and American
culture; widespread drug use promises that a real-life soma would find a warm reception; and
much of the language with which we are bombarded (in the form of advertisements and
political slogans) is vapid, shallow and insignificant. Brave New World, in fact, looks far
more plausible to a modern reader than it must have appeared to Huxley's audience in the
1930s.

One of the most disturbing similarities between Brave New World and our contemporary
world is the substantial degree to which complex issues are reduced to brief, easily-
memorized slogans or jingles. Prenatal conditioning begins the process of mass-producing
human beings--but to mold these creatures into docile, happy, obedient citizens, they must be
filled with State-sponsored ideas that cannot be inculcated except through words. The State
admits the power of language, which it hastens to strip of all but the simplest and most
orthodox concepts. By conditioning its citizens from conception rather than forcibly
repressing them as adults, the State strengthens its position without the expense or
inconvenience of brutality. As Huxley noted in his 1946 Foreword, "If

-31-

persecution, liquidation and the other symptoms of social friction are to be avoided, the
positive sides of propaganda must be made as effective as the negative. The most important
Manhattan projects of the future will be vast government-sponsored inquiries into what the
politicians and the participating scientists will call 'the problem of happiness'--in other words,
the problem of making people love their servitude" (in 1947, xiv). The Controllers of the
World State have solved the problems of happiness and the power of language with one
circular solution: language becomes a tool for conditioning happiness, which in turn prevents
unhappiness from expressing itself in dissenting language.

For every aspect of orthodoxy that it needs to enforce, the State coins a mellifluous,
memorable slogan: "a gramme is better than a damn"; "every one belongs to every one else";
"when the individual feels, the community reels"; "ending is better than mending";
"everybody's happy now." (The State's slogans are one of the few features of society that are
equally available to all citizens, being simple enough to be understood by Epsilon Semi-
Morons as well as Alpha Double Pluses.) Having heard them repeated so many times, the
citizens have assimilated the slogans to the point that when they are uttered, each speaker
believes him- or herself to be speaking the most obvious (but still comforting) nugget of
wisdom imaginable. The beauty of such slogans is that their emptiness is intentional on the
part of the State and its hypnopedic engineers. The slogans do not carry the weight of
conditioning within themselves. Each jingle is sufficiently insipid to disintegrate immediately,
should a (hypothetical) disgruntled Beta or a moody Delta begin to pick one apart. In the
unlikely event that a citizen does explode one of these bits of propagandistic fluff, however,
the State has assured that the threat to social stability is minimal.

Brave New World's epigraph is a quotation from Nicolas Berdyaev Slavery and Freedom in
which Berdyaev, dismayed at the near-inevitability of utopia, hopes for a return to a society
"moins 'parfaite' et plus libre." It is a felicitous choice: Huxley's dystopia offers us a vision of
a society that has achieved a state of near-perfection at the cost of freedom. Brave New World
is one of the few dystopias to offer a vision of society founded on happiness rather than
power, a vision as terrifying in its way as the worst totalitarian nightmare could be. Huxley's
nightmare remains persuasive, appealing to our desires for the comfort of physical security
and instant gratification rather than the intangible pleasures of intellectual and spiritual
freedom. An incautious reader might not realize how much Huxley's society has given up.
Scientific advancement, even theoretical, has been halted; lives of perpetual healthy youth
have been purchased at the cost of maturity; history and art have been destroyed; religion has
become a lightning-rod for social frustrations rather than a personal source of spiritual
guidance. The World State has achieved the perfection of stagnation. 18

To be sure, there are minor problems. Jerome Meckier seizes on some of these in an attempt
to debunk the World State and expose its weaknesses:

What has escaped notice and what is possibly the surest way of discrediting the society of
Brave New World is the fact that, judged on its own terms, it is manifestly a failure [and,] . . .
despite the complicated mechanical processes at work. . . . human errors persist. These are not
only still made, but take infinitely longer to be discovered. Lenina, musing about the Savage,
who has only recently arrived from a reservation outside the brave new world, forgets to give
a bottle-baby its sleeping sickness injection and twenty-two years later an Alpha-Plus [sic:
actually, AlphaMinus] administrator becomes the first trypanosomiasis fatality in over half a

-32-
century [ Huxley 1947, 159]. . . . Similarly, Bernard Marx's eccentric love of solitude and his
fondness for walks in the Lake District are attributed to an overdose of "alcohol in his blood-
surrogate" [73]. ( Meckier 1969, 179)

Meckier is correct in the narrow sense that mistakes still occur. However, his argument is
untenable if applied more broadly to Huxley's novel. There can be no question that the World
State has arrested social development at the point most advantageous to itself--Mond freely
admits as much in his climactic discussion with the Savage in Chapters 16 and 17. If
anything, Huxley includes minor problems for use as contrasts, as well as to build plausibility.
For instance, while Lenina's vaccination mistake does result in a fatality due to sleeping
sickness, it is "the first case for over half a century" ( Huxley 1947, 159). Certainly, Bernard's
and Helmholtz's misfit social attitudes indicate flaws in the conditioning process. Yet Mond
makes it abundantly clear that such mistakes are not only expected, but have been prepared
for in the form of island research centers, which serve as places of exile for "the most
interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for
one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All
the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own.
Every one, in a word, who's any one" (194). If these sorts of mistakes are the most telling
examples of the flaws besetting the social structure of the Brave New World, then that society
seems destined to continue unchanged and unchallenged for a very long time indeed.

More persuasively, Meckier notes that "the new society's use of language is one long and
recurrent illustration of how life has not gained in meaning but become instead absolutely
meaningless" ( 1969, 179 ). Of all the futuristic visions Huxley presents in Brave New World,
it is his depiction of a language that has been almost completely stripped of real meaning that
is most terrifying. Huxley's emphasis fixes language issues as central for all subsequent
dystopias, even though comparatively few dystopian writers have concurred with his premise
of a society whose emphasis is on control through happiness. Nineteen Eighty-four, the next
major dystopian novel of the century, consciously broke with almost all Huxley's dystopian
visions--yet it continued to foreground the issues of language in a dystopian society, and even
more overtly so than Huxley did in Brave New World. Where Huxley portrays a society that
has impoverished language by suppressing meaning, George Orwell paints a grim picture of
one that suppresses language in order to destroy meaning. Brave New World posits islands on
which the misfits can express their individuality freely, in language and literature. But in
Nineteen Eighty-four's Oceania, there are no such isles of the blessed, even within the minds
of misfits and rebels--indeed, especially not there.

NOTES
1. Huxley's other dystopian writings include Ape and Essence ( 1948) and Brave New
World Revisited ( 1958). Some critics argue that Orwell Animal Farm ( 1945) is not a
political fable but rather a dystopia in its own right. Anthony Burgess The Wanting Seed (
1962) and 1985 ( 1978) both depict dystopian societies; the latter also discusses, both
directly and indirectly, the impact and meaning of Orwell Nineteen Eighty-four.

-33-

2. Huxley never disowned Brave New World, but his 1947 Foreword laments the substantial
revisions necessary to correct what he saw as glaring weaknesses in his novel. "Thus
altered, Brave New World would possess an artistic and (if it is permissible to use so large
 a word in connection with a work of fiction) a philosophical completeness, which in its
present form it evidently lacks" ( 1947, ixx). Burgess was not so forgiving of A
Clockwork Orange, as his 1986 Introduction makes clear: "I first published [it] in 1962,
which ought to be far enough in the past for it to be erased from the world's literary
memory. . . . I should myself be glad to disown it for various reasons, but this is not
permitted. . . . It seems likely to survive, while other works of mine that I value more bite
the dust" ( 1987a, v). As Nineteen Eighty-four was Orwell's last book, being published
just months before his death, we shall never know how highly he would have valued it
compared to his other works.
3. Orwell obtained a copy of the latter after years of effort, and praises both Zamiatin and
We in his 1946 essay "Freedom and Happiness" (reprinted in Howe 1982, 259-262).
4. The disparity has since narrowed. Huxley's reputation declined in the last ten years of his
life, although the process began in 1939 when David Daiches published The Novel and
the Modern World, in which he sharply criticized Huxley and his work (cited in Meckier
1969, 3); on the other hand, Zamiatin's literary reputation has risen since the mid- 1940s.
Orwell sparked this critical reevaluation of Zamiatin and We through his favorable review
of the book in his 1946 essay, "Freedom and Happiness" (in 1982, 259-62).
5. Brave New World ( 1947), 1. All subsequent references are to this edition.
6. Concerning the nature of the opening, Aldiss writes, "This is something none of his
predecessors had done; even Wells liked to begin his novels cautiously, in the present
day" (in Aldiss and Wingrove 1986, 185).
7. Mustapha Mond explains that "the optimum population is modeled on the iceberg--eight-
ninths below the water line, one-ninth above" ( Huxley 1947, 191). Presumably, this
means that only one-ninth of all fetuses are permitted to develop individually as Alphas
or Betas.
8. Overpopulation is not a consideration, since only 30 percent of all females are permitted
to become fertile (mainly to preserve a large supply of spare ova against unforeseen
catastrophe). Most women become "freemartins," being chemically sterilized in vitro
( Huxley 1947, 9-10). Those women who are allowed to develop normally are carefully
trained in "Malthusian drills" (completely effective contraceptive techniques).
9. In a letter to his son Matthew and daughter-in-law Ellen Huxley, dated September 30,
1956, Huxley mentions that he has been working on a musical comedy version of Brave
New World. At one point in the comedy, a chorus line of Epsilons sings a song about the
wonder of their new society, one stanza of which perfectly encapsulates the ethic of the
Brave New World State: "Dope for tea and dope for dinner, / Fun all night, and love and
laughter; / No remorse, no morning after. / Where's the sin, and who's the sinner? /
Everybody's happy now" (in Smith 1969, 757).
10. In his Preface to volume 2 of The Works of H. G. Wells, Wells notes that the novel was
first published in 1899 as When the Sleeper Wakes, and that in 1911, he "took the
opportunity afforded by its reprinting to make a number of excisions and alterations"
( 1924, ix-x). For the Atlantic Edition, in which his Preface appears, he changed the title
to The Sleeper Awakes.
11. Quoted in Firchow 1984, 139n.; from Bradford 1931, 133.
12. Kumar points out that "an especially important role is marked out for Mustapha Mond.
His name not only plays on the fact that he is one of the ten World Controllers, but also
takes a side-swipe at the nationalism symbolized by Attaturk [sic] and, more importantly,
refers to Alfred Mond (the later Lord Melchett), the

-34-

founder and dynamic chairman of the chemical firm I[mperial] C[hemical] I[ndustries].
Mond stands for the new giant conglomerates that were coming to dominate the industrial
world. He is a particularly good choice on Huxley's part, not simply as one of the new
breed of scientist-industrialist, but because both the left and the right were hailing the
conglomerates enthusiastically as the latest and most progressive organizational form in
the modern world: the right because they were a move towards 'rationalization,' the left
because they were a halfway-house to nationalization" ( 1987, 243).
13. Meckier calls Benito Hoover's name "an oxymoronic combination of capitalism and
Fascism" ( 1969, 181).
14. Huxley puns here with the French mal pays--"evil country," "bad place." It certainly
appears that way to Lenina. Yet despite their squalor, the Native Americans in Malpais
still live their own lives, independent from the World State. Could Huxley thus be
ironically undercutting the reader's preference for the true dystopia, the "bad place" of the
Brave New World?
15. Baker suggests that "John's autobiographical narrative deliberately echoes the Director of
Hatcheries' lecture on embryonic development and childhood training in the introductory
chapters" ( 1990, 117). Clearly, this is a case of like father, like son.
16. Edward Lobb 1984 essay, "The Subversion of Drama in Huxley's Brave New World",
explores the interrelationships between Brave New World as a whole (especially John's
outlook) and William Shakespeare's plays.
17. Another island experiment that Mond relates concerns the testing of a number of labor-
saving devices and processes in Ireland. All succeeded so well that the population had
only three or four hours of work to do each day, and the added spare time created
instability and unease until the experiment was abandoned ( Huxley 1947, 192).
18. Concerning the halting of the theoretical, as Mustapha Mond suppresses a paper on "A
New Theory of Biology", he muses over its central hypothesis: "the purpose of life [is]
not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of
consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which [is], the Controller reflect[s],
quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible" ( Huxley 1947,
150). The paper will not be published, and its author will be kept under surveillance and,
quite probably, exiled for having dared to ask such socially dangerous questions in the
first place. Concerning the loss of maturity as a result of the quest for perpetual youth,
Mond says, "at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen" ( Huxley
1947, 45). Later, the Director of Hatcheries dresses Bernard down for not behaving
appropriately: "Alphas are so conditioned that they do not have to be infantile in their
emotional behaviour. But that is all the more reason for-their making a special effort to
conform. It is their duty to be infantile, even against their inclination" ( 1947, 81).
 -35-

3
"It's a Beautiful Thing, the Destruction of
Words"
No other twentieth-century literary genre has been so closely identified with one work as the
dystopia has been with George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-four, published in 1949. Nineteen
Eighty-four typifies dystopian fiction to a large audience: readers who know of no other
dystopian work--indeed, readers unfamiliar with the word dystopia--will almost certainly
know (or know of) Orwell's proleptic nightmare. Many of Orwell's terms and images have
permanently entered Western political discourse of the late twentieth century. Fears of an
intrusive totalitarian government are terrifyingly personified in Big Brother; distorted
language intended to mislead through obfuscation finds embodiment as "doublespeak," and
"1984" has become a handy catchphrase for any government action deemed repressive. 1 Even
Eric Arthur Blair's pen name, George Orwell, has become a buzzword, as when a political
structure accused of abridging personal liberties (or a fictional depiction of such abridgment)
is labeled Orwellian. In the wake of the McCarthy witch-hunts, the Vietnam War, the
Watergate burglary, the Iran-contra affair and numerous other scandals, Orwell's portrait of a
government concerned only with staying in power has become the dominant paradigm,
effectively giving the lie to early criticisms that his conception of the ambition to achieve
power was unrealistic. Nineteen Eighty-four represents the most powerful dystopian view to
oppose the vapid happiness of Huxley Brave New World, and its influence on subsequent
dystopian fiction has been enormous. Dystopian writers since 1949 have been

-37-

forced to locate their works, more or less explicitly, on a spectrum between the archetypes
presented by Huxley and Orwell.

Orwell forcefully presents his concerns with language--especially with language used overtly
to aggrandize and hold power inequitably--in several essays published before he even began
composing Nineteen Eighty-four. Many of the ideas put forth in these essays later surface in
the novel, sometimes without significant alteration. Of course, Orwell's interests in
totalitarianism, dystopia, language, history, and politics inform nearly all his writing. For
example, "Wells, Hitler and the World State" ( 1941) explores the gulf separating H. G.
Wells's utopian ideals from the political realities of World War II-realities anticipated by early
twentieth-century dystopian fiction. Orwell argues that "a crude book like [Jack London's]
The Iron Heel, written nearly thirty years ago, is a truer prophecy of the future than either
Brave New World or The Shape of Things to Come" ( 1975, 166). 2 In "Freedom and
Happiness" ( 1946), Orwell praises Zamiatin's We (then nearly unknown in the West) as a
meaningful dystopia that is superior to Huxley Brave New World. Four of his essays most
clearly discuss Orwell's ideas about the relationships between language and political power
wielded for repressive ends: "The Prevention of Literature," "Politics vs. Literature," "Politics
and the English Language" (all published in 1946), and "Why I Write" ( 1947).

The latter essay contains Orwell's most direct statement of his motivations as a writer:
Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or
indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism. . . . [T]he more one is
conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without
sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity. What I have most wanted to do
throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is
always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. . . . I write [a book] because there is
some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial
concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book . . . if it were not
also an aesthetic experience. ( 1975, 440-41)

Orwell's firsthand experience of totalitarianism during the Spanish Civil War propelled him
into the forefront of a very small group of British writers, whose political persuasion was
generally leftist, but who fervently attacked the abuses in the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Orwell summed up the competing political and aesthetic demands of dystopian fiction by
stressing equally the political nature of his work and his commitment to the demands of his art
as art.

The three essays published in 1946 balance Orwell's political and aesthetic aims primarily in
terms of language, anticipating many of the concepts he was to develop further in Nineteen
Eighty-four. The first of these is the necessity for a totalitarian state to control the past, as
Orwell discusses in "The Prevention of Literature":

From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A
totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has
to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently
necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or
that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then, again, every major change in
policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revaluation of prominent historical
figures. . . .

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Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run
probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. . . . A totalitarian society
which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of
thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact
sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist. ( 1975,
330-31)

Orwell dismisses the suggestion that the writer can preserve at least the freedom to think: he
insists that all writing is political, and furthermore, that a writer's creative faculties are
effectively destroyed if he or she is prohibited from freely expressing subjective feeling
( 1975, 332). Certainly, print will continue to exist, since even totalitarian states must record
their own versions of events to disseminate as propaganda. However, Orwell envisions most
writing tasks being given over to machines and committees (whose products he views with
equal distaste). He does hold out a faint hope that some types of poetry might survive, partly
due to politicians' contempt for poetry (harking back to Huxley) and partly because of the
need for propagandistic songs and oratory ( 1975, 335-36). Still, under Orwell's assertion that
freedom to express thought is for the writer a fundamental need, not even the crippled
survival of poetry is possible for prose: "a [totalitarian] society, no matter how long it persists
can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either
the truthful recording of facts, or the emotional sincerity, that literary creation demands"
( 1975, 334). Orwell's bleak assessment follows as a matter of course: "in any totalitarian
society that survives for more than a couple of generations, it is probable that prose literature,
of the kind that has existed during the past four hundred years, must actually come to an end"
( 1975, 333). As Winston Smith's story begins, the death of prose literature is a fait accompli.
3

"Politics and the English Language" presents Orwell's more general thoughts on clarity and
concision in using English. While he focuses more on language strategies that inhibit
communication and understanding, Orwell's assertions nonetheless hold for fiction as well as
for political speech. Orwell notes that many writers adopt poor language strategies out of
intellectual laziness. Those who depend on worn-out metaphors, murky phrases, and
unnecessary euphemisms do so to conceal the fact that they have not clearly thought through
the ideas they wish to express ( 1975, 355). Political writers and speakers, he argues, go one
step further by deliberately misusing language to hide their motives or disguise their
intentions. "It is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and
economic causes. . . . [Furthermore,] it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing.
Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing
his private opinions and not a 'party line.' Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a
lifeless, imitative style ( 1975, 353, 362). The most striking image Orwell advances in this
essay is that of the political orator whose gross misuse of language dehumanizes him:

When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar
phrases . . . one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but
some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light
catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes
behind them. . . . A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance
towards turning himself into a machine. The

-39-

appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if
he were choosing his words for himself. ( 1975, 362-63)

Compare this image with that of a man Winston encounters in the canteen at the Ministry of
Truth:

Winston knew the man by sight, though he knew no more about him than that he held some
important post in the Fiction Department. . . . [B]ecause of the angle at which he was sitting,
his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. . . .
[Whatever the man was saying,] you could be certain that every word of it was pure
orthodoxy. . . . As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down,
Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy.
It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx. (37)

The blank disks reflect the absence of genuine thought within the mind of the speaker, which
acts like a mental vacuum and lends itself perfectly to parroting political ideals without truly
examining them: "this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate
favourable to political conformity," since "political speech and writing are largely the defence
of the indefensible" ( 1975, 363).

"Politics vs. Literature" expresses Orwell's musings on Jonathan Swift and Gulliver's Travels,
arguably the most important anti-utopian work of the eighteenth century. 4 Orwell admits that
while he cannot subscribe to many of Swift's political and philosophical positions, "yet
curiously enough he is one of the writers I admire with least reserve, and Gulliver's Travels,
in particular, is a book which it seems impossible for me to grow tired of" ( 1975, 410).
Orwell is especially interested in Books 3 and 4 of Gulliver. Book 4, "A Voyage to the
Country of the Houyhnhnms," portrays what Orwell considers a totalitarian state--one that has
evolved to such a high level of conformity as to no longer need police. The Houyhnhnms are
incapable of holding differing opinions, let alone unorthodox ones; consequently, both
freedom and development are impossible ( 1975, 405). 5 The only aim their society seems to
have is that of perpetuating itself without change ( 1975, 409). In Book 3, Orwell is
particularly interested in the Grand Academy of Lagado, in which all the Projectors of
Balnibarbi are at work on their ridiculous experiments. Orwell mentions many of these,
including the Projector engaged in discovering "people's secret thoughts by examining their
excrement" ( 1975, 402) and the kingdom of Tribnia ("Langdon" to its natives) wherein most
of the people spy on one another and denounce each other to the State. A particularly
insidious practice is to get hold of private letters and "discover," through anagrams and arcane
symbolism, nonexistent plots being hatched in fraudulent code ( 1975, 403). "Other professors
at the [Grand Academy] invent simplified languages, write books by machinery. . . . There is
something queerly familiar in the atmosphere of these chapters, because, mixed up with much
fooling, there is a perception that one of the aims of totalitarianism is not merely to make sure
that people will think the right thoughts, but actually to make them less conscious" ( 1975,
403). Here, Orwell maintains, Swift makes his

greatest contribution to political thought in the narrower sense of the words, [in] his attack,
especially in Part 3, on what would now be called totalitarianism. He has an extraordinarily
clear pre-vision of the spy-haunted "police State," with its endless

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heresy-hunts and treason trials, all really designed to neutralize popular discontent by
changing it into war hysteria. And one must remember that Swift is here inferring the whole
from a quite small part, for the feeble governments of his own day did not give him
illustrations ready-made. ( 1975, 402)

Nineteen Eighty-four crystallizes the ideas about language and totalitarianism that Orwell had
already articulated in these essays and then adds to them for further effect. Orwell's essays
clearly demonstrate his conception of the incompatibility between totalitarianism and the
freedom to use language clearly and creatively, both in speaking and in literature--which, for
Orwell, means being brief, clear, accurate, and, above all, honest. Roy Harris "summarizes
Orwell's theorizing about language" by quoting Ruskin on art: "the greatest thing a human
soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way" ( 1982,
17). 6 But while Orwell's essays argue these linguistic points with contemporary examples,
none of them possesses the same power to terrify as Nineteen Eighty-four. Some critics have
suggested that Orwell's vision is too bleak to actually happen--when the year 1984 passed
without Orwell's book coming literally true, other critics crowed that his "prophecies" had
"failed." 7 Once we get beyond such a blindly literalistic reading, we find that the principal
differences between actual totalitarian states mentioned in the essays and Nineteen Eighty-
four's Party are questions of dedication, conscious deliberation, and degree. Admittedly, all
three factors are far greater in the novel than in the totalitarian states with which Orwell had
direct experience. The key is that Orwell was not exaggerating, but extrapolating, and that he
did so for didactic purposes rather than polemical ones.

Orwell insisted that language is the tool through which a totalitarian state can most effectively
maintain its own power and stifle dissent. He embodied his concerns with language and
thought control in Newspeak, a manmade language (or antilanguage, to some critics) by
which the government of Oceania intends not only to silence opposing voices, but
furthermore, to render any unorthodox political ideas intellectually impossible. 8 No dystopian
fiction is more explicit concerning the role of language in controlling thought than Nineteen
Eightyfour. Although Orwell does employ some language constructions deliberately founded
on shaky, or even fallacious, linguistic grounds, Nineteen Eighty-four succeeds as a portrayal
of a nightmarish society in which not even the language of thought is free.

Nineteen Eighty-four owes much of its notoriety to critics and commentators who have
disserved the novel by viewing the text solely in historical and political contexts, without
considering its literary nature. For instance, the novel has been widely (if contradictorily)
critiqued both as a scathing denunciation of Stalinist Russia and an attack on Britain's Labour
Party ( Zwerdling 1971, 99). Unquestionably Nineteen Eighty-four raises and discusses
serious political issues--as Orwell himself notes in "The Prevention of Literature," "there is no
such thing as genuinely non-political literature, and least of all in an age like our own, when
fears, hatreds, and loyalties of a directly political kind are near to the surface of everyone's
consciousness" ( 1975, 332). But while Nineteen Eightyfour's meditation on the nature of
totalitarianism's relationship to language was deeply influenced by Orwell's contemporary
political situation, that meditation is cast in the form of a novel--a fictive construct
deliberately located in the writer's future. Although partially rooted in the events of Orwell's
last years, Nineteen Eighty-four is by no means merely a grim allegory about Stalinism,

-41-

nor merely a depiction of the weary and dirty world of post- World War II Britain. 9
Considering Orwell's novel without regard to its nature as literature may be politically
expedient, but such readings ignore Orwell's most important points. As Alex Zwerdling warns
us:

An artist with a strong political commitment and a didactic bent is often treated simply as a
thinker. His ideas are analyzed and put in order; his essays and letters are scrutinized for
direct statements of political belief; and his imaginative works are treated as though they were
a repository of useful quotations and had no individual integrity. This may be a legitimate
way to approach a politically conscious writer who has no serious aesthetic commitment, but
it is useless as a way of understanding anything which can also be called a work of art. In
analyzing such works, the problem is to see how (and how successfully) the writer manages to
negotiate between his didactic purpose and the aesthetic demands of his form. ( Zwerdling
1971, 88)

Thankfully, Orwell's concerns with language have been "adopted and repeated by many who
could agree on little else." He is therefore "a favourite linguistic authority for politically
conservative writers like Lincoln Barnett, who cited Nineteen Eighty-four and quoted the
'Politics' essay [ "Politics and the English Language"] with approval. At the same time he has
the support of a political liberal like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., for whom 'the control of language
is a necessary step toward the control of minds, as Orwell made so brilliantly clear'"
( Schlesinger 1974, quoted in Bolton 1984a, 16-17). The controlling of language also bridges
the that gap Zwerdling identifies, since the interpolated texts of Emmanuel Goldstein Theory
and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism and the Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak
most clearly show how Orwell "negotiates between his didactic purpose and the aesthetic
demands of his form" ( Zwerdling 1971, 88).

From the first line, the reader clearly senses that Orwell's world is strangely and
uncomfortably different from our own: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were
striking thirteen." 10 The novel's third-person narrative centers on Winston Smith, a near-
future Everyman who is the only fully named character in the novel. Both halves of his name
suggest quintessentially English characteristics: Winston recalls the tenacious determination
of Winston Churchill, the epitome of British courage in the face of despair, while Smith
conjures up the common decency of the stereotypical Englishman. 11 As the story opens,
Winston is returning to his flat through dingy streets and cold lobbies whose walls are hidden
behind huge posters proclaiming "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." Winston lives in
London, the largest city in Airstrip One and one of the major cities of the intercontinental
state of Oceania. Ingsoc ("English Socialism") is both the political theory and the grim reality
that informs the Party, the group that rules Oceania. Winston moves carefully around his
uncomfortable flat to avoid the audiovisual surveillance of the telescreen, a device that
constantly spews government propaganda while also allowing the eternally vigilant Thought
Police to spy on the inhabitants. He produces a blank ledger and a pen from a hiding place
and opens a diary--a very dangerous act, since "if detected it was reasonably certain that it
would be punished by death, or at least twenty-five years in a forced-labor camp" ( Orwell
1982, 6). Fortified with revolting synthetic "Victory Gin," Winston begins to pour out his
disgust with the totalitarian society of Oceania onto the unmarked pages. His is a society in
which history has been eradicated so ruthlessly and efficiently that as

-42-

Winston dates his first entry, he does "not know with any certainty that this was 1984[;] . . . it
was never possible to pin down any date within a year or two" (7).

Winston takes the extraordinary step of keeping a diary in an effort to grapple with his
growing sense of dissociated horror at the world around him. Winston begins to ponder the
dynamics of the Oceanic culture (which he loathes), trying to determine how his situation
came about and whether anyone else notices the vast gulf between the image of reality that
the ruling Party projects and the grim existence that Oceanians actually lead. Oceanic society
is a totalitarian oligarchy, which controls its citizens through an incredible battery of
surveillance techniques, propaganda, and terrorism. There is no government, only the Party;
moreover, there are no laws, only the Party's dictates. Behavior is codified as either orthodoxy
or treason--and no action is too insignificant to be a sign of the latter. A carelessly candid
facial expression or slightly skewed posture are sufficient infractions to summon the dreaded
Thought Police. Winston mentally examines the terrifying institutions and beliefs that form
the structure of existence under the regime of Big Brother, the Party's mythical leader.
Although he has resigned himself to certain destruction when--not if--his diary is discovered,
he keeps it nonetheless in hopes that it will lead him to understand how and why such a
frightening society developed.
Newspeak is the Party's ultimate weapon in the fight against unorthodoxy. It is an artificial
language, based explicitly on English grammar and vocabulary. Implicitly, Newspeak
depends on Benjamin Whorf's theory that thought depends upon language (see, e.g., 1956).
Therefore, the Party is developing a language with a severely restricted vocabulary, a version
of English that has been reduced to fragments. The resulting language, the Party hopes, will
enable people to discuss nonpolitical practicalities and spread Party orthodoxy without
leaving the possibility of dissenting thought. The Party is not satisfied with procuring the
appearance of submission and zeal among its followers, it insists on complete unconscious
adherence to its creeds. However, despite the telescreens, spies, and Thought Police, the Party
cannot know for certain what is happening within someone's mind. Such uncertainty will
vanish when Newspeak is the sole language, since it will effectively prevent unorthodoxy
from so much as taking shape in unspoken words. As Winston begins his diary, Newspeak is
still two generations away from full implementation, which is targeted for the year 2050.
Newspeak words are being introduced into ordinary English (which is already being called
"Oldspeak"); some Party dogmas are couched in Newspeak terminology, and "the leading
articles in the Times were written in it, but this was a tour de force which could only be
carried out by a specialist" ( Orwell 1982, 198).

The clearest statements of the Party's goals are embedded within the rules of Newspeak.
Newspeak is only peripherally described (and nowhere completely used) within the portion of
Nineteen Eighty-four devoted to Winston Smith's story, but the language is thoroughly
explained in the Appendix to the novel. Newspeak is Oceania's official language--with
English kept on as its "chief lingua franca"--and its status is also the sole centralized ideal to
be shared throughout the intercontinental "superstate" of Oceania ( Orwell 1982, 139). During
the period of April 1984 through sometime in the late autumn of that year (the time covered
by Winston's story), Oldspeak (Standard English) still serves as the common language of both
the Party and the proles. However, Party

-43-

members lace their conversations with Newspeak words and phrases, and although the only
complete use of Newspeak is in the leading articles in the Times, the Party is confident that
Newspeak will have completely replaced Standard English by "about the year 2050" (198).
Orwell is certain that without the language with which to discuss them, ideals like freedom,
democracy, honesty, and compassion cannot survive--hence, the Party's dedication to
Newspeak. "In Newspeak it was seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than the
perception that it was heretical; beyond that point the necessary words were nonexistent"
( Orwell 1982, 202).

Structurally, Newspeak is a simplified form of English, which supplies some of Newspeak's

grammar and all of its vocabulary. Newspeak is comprised of three distinct classes of words,
all governed by one set of rules. The Appendix refers to these classes as the A, B and C
vocabularies. Each vocabulary consists of a small group of words intended to cover only the
most indispensable concepts peculiar to its particular field. The A vocabulary

consisted of the words needed for the business of everyday life--for such things as eating,
drinking, working, putting on one's clothes . . . and the like. It was composed almost entirely
of words that we already possess . . . but in comparison with the present-day English
vocabulary, their number was extremely small, while their meanings were far more rigidly
defined. All ambiguities and shades of meaning had been purged out of them. So far as it
could be achieved, a Newspeak word of this class was simply a staccato sound expressing one
clearly understood concept. ( Orwell 1982, 199)

The A vocabulary is completely unsuited to any sort of philosophical, metaphysical, or

political discussion, and it could not begin to function for literary endeavors. "It [is] intended
only to express simple, purposive thoughts, usually involving concrete objects or physical
actions" ( Orwell 1982, 199).

The B vocabulary forms the heart of Newspeak's main function: it consists solely of words
constructed to enumerate, define and advance the principles of Ingsoc. The word Ingsoc itself
comes straight from the B vocabulary, and like all the words belonging to this class, it is a
compound. Constructed from existing words, B words are the most dense of Newspeak's three
vocabularies. Each B word is packed with political and ideological meaning, much of it quite
subtle. The B vocabulary serves no other purpose beyond imposing the Party's political
viewpoint on both the speaker and the listener, and it is useless without a full understanding
of the principles and ideals of Ingsoc. Translations from the B vocabulary into Standard
English lose most of their meaning in the process, since such translations are only long
paraphrases, which cannot fully and effectively convey even the most basic concepts of
Ingsoc. The B vocabulary permits only one attitude on the part of the speaker: an enthusiastic
agreement and wholehearted spirit of cooperation with the Party. By effectively eliminating
the words necessary to express disagreement and advance different opinions, this political
vocabulary silences all possible opposition. As Orwell makes clear,

everything that had or might have political significance of any kind was fitted into the B
vocabulary. [Every name] was invariably cut down into . . . a single easily pronounced word
with the smallest number of syllables that would preserve the original derivation. . . . It was
perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by
cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it. . . . [Furthermore,] no
word in the B vocabulary was

-44-

ideologically neutral. A great many were euphemisms. Such words, for instance, as joycamp
(forced-labor camp) or Minipax (Ministry of Peace, i.e., Ministry of War) meant almost the
exact opposite of what they appeared to mean. Some words, on the other hand, displayed a
frank and contemptuous understanding of the real nature of Oceanic society. An example was
prolefeed, meaning the rubbishy entertainment and spurious news which the party handed out
to the masses. . . . [T]here were great numbers of words which at first sight appeared to be
mere abbreviations and which derived their ideological color not from their meaning but from
their structure. ( Orwell 1982, 202)

Buried in the B vocabulary is the concept of doublethink, the idea by which it is possible to
entertain two mutually exclusive ideas (totally irreconcilable opposites), accepting and
believing equally in both simultaneously. Doublethink is synonymous with "reality control"
( Orwell 1982, 142), and is closely tied to the mutability of the past. This concept results in
several words that hold a positive meaning when used in connection with the Party or its
ideals and a second, negative meaning when applied to the Party's opponents. For example,
the word duckspeak (literally, "to quack like a duck") means either that the person referred to
babbles the worst sort of meaningless gibberish (if the speaker is articulating ideas other than
those promulgated by the Party) or that the person is ardently and eloquently extolling the
orthodox Party opinions ( Orwell 1982, 203).

The C vocabulary is perhaps the least important of the three Newspeak classifications. This
group of words contains only scientific and technical terms, which are based on roots from
Standard English but purged of any meanings other than those sanctioned by the Party. The C
vocabulary is further fragmented by the fact that every technical field possesses its own
specific terminology. Naturally, some overflow exists of words common to all technical jobs,
but for the most part, workers know only a very few terms from any field of specialization
other than their own ( Orwell 1982, 203). Indeed, the "function of Science as a habit of mind,
or a method of thought, irrespective of its particular branches" is completely impossible, as no
words remain in the language to empower such thought; the very word science has been
eliminated ( Orwell 1982, 203). 12 In "The Prevention of Literature" Orwell noted that

for the moment the totalitarian state tolerates the scientist because it needs him. . . . At this
stage of history, even the most autocratic ruler is forced to take account of physical reality,
partly because of the lingering-on of liberal habits of thought, partly because of the need to
prepare for war. So long as physical reality cannot be altogether ignored, so long as two and
two have to make four when you are, for example, drawing the blueprint of an aeroplane, the
scientist has his function, and can even be allowed a measure of liberty. His awakening will
come later, when the totalitarian state is firmly established. ( 1975, 339-40)

By the time of Winston's story, the Party no longer needs to "take account of physical reality,"
as O'Brien proves to Winston by making two plus two equal five. In Orwell's fictive 1984, the
scientist is nearly as repressed as the writer and the artist. As set forth in the book's Appendix,
once Newspeak is fully in place, scientists will be no different from any other group in
Oceania.

All three of the preceding vocabularies function according to a single set of grammatical
rules. The grammar of Newspeak is based on that of Standard

-45-

English but is vastly more simple. For example, the parts of speech in Newspeak are virtually
interchangeable:

Any word in the language . . . could be used either as verb, noun, adjective, or adverb.
Between the verb and the noun form, when they were of the same root, there was never any
variation. . . . [T]he word thought, for example, did not exist in Newspeak. Its place was taken
by think, which did duty for both noun and verb. No etymological principle was followed
here; in some cases it was the original noun that was chosen for retention, in other cases the
verb. Even where a noun and verb of kindred meaning were not etymologically connected,
one or the other of them was frequently suppressed. ( Orwell 1982, 199)

Newspeak forms adverbs by adding the suffix -wise to any given noun-verb, and adjectives
are created by adding the suffix -ful. Only a very small number of standard adjectives are
retained, including adjectives of color, texture, and moral judgment (although the latter words
are redefined by the Party--for example, the range of meanings covered by the word good has
been severely circumscribed) ( Orwell 1982, 199). Old adverbs that do not end in -wise and
cannot be made to do so are discarded. "The word well, for example, was replaced by
goodwise" ( Orwell 1982, 199).

Negation and emphasis are accomplished solely by the use of prefixes. Any word can be
negated by adding un-, and all words can be intensified simply by adding the prefix plus-, or,
if great emphasis is desired, doubleplus-. Modifiers such as post-, ante-, and down- can be
used to change the meanings of any word. Synonyms and antonyms are thus disposed of in
one stroke: once the word good exists, there is no need for such forms as better and best, since
plusgood and doubleplusgood fill these roles. Ungood (suitably intensified, if necessary, to
plusungood or even doubleplusungood) replaces bad ( Orwell 1982, 199), and irregular verbs
are dispensed with as well. All Newspeak words are made plural using the suffixes -s and -es
(e.g., deers, childs, foots, boxes). The comparison of adjectives depends solely on the suffixes
-er and -est. Past tense is always indicated by the suffix -ed, and the past participle is identical
to the form for the simple past. With the exception of whom, all pronouns, relative pronouns,
demonstrative adjectives, and auxiliary verbs are inflected as in Standard English. Will and
would have superseded shall and should in all instances ( Orwell 1982, 200).

Euphony is the most important principal in Newspeak, coming second only to the aims of the
language itself and "exactitude of meaning" ( Orwell 1982, 202). Ease and rapidity of speech
are critically important in Newspeak, since speaking rapidly, especially when using words
with only one meaning, requires little or no thought on the part of the speaker. "And this was
exactly what was aimed at. The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any
subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness" ( Orwell
1982, 203). To this end,

a word which was difficult to utter, or was liable to be incorrectly heard, was held to be ipso
facto a bad word; occasionally therefore, for the sake of euphony, extra letters were inserted
into a word or an archaic formation was retained. . . . [T]his need made itself felt chiefly in
connection with the B vocabulary. . . . [F]or example, the adjectival forms of Minitrue,
Minipax, and Miniluv were, respectively, Minitruthful, Minipeaceful, and Minilovely, simply
because -trueful, -paxful, and -loveful were slightly awkward to pronounce. ( Orwell 1982,
200-1)

-46-

Words that had, at one time, contained meanings inimical to the Party's ends are retained, but
always with their unorthodox meanings excised. For instance, the word free exists in
Newspeak, but "it could only be used in such statements as 'This dog is free from lice' or 'This
field is free from weeds'" ( Orwell 1982, 198). Free cannot be made to express ideas of
political, intellectual, or religious freedom, since such freedoms do not exist in Oceania even
as concepts, and so remain nameless ( Orwell 1982, 198).

While Newspeak contains far fewer words than Standard English, in some instances it is
capable of expressing exacting subtleties. These subtleties are generally limited to words in
the B vocabulary. Some B words subsume many other words into themselves and, by
swallowing these other words, render them obsolete. "All words grouping themselves round
the concepts of liberty and equality, for instance, were contained in the single word
crimethink, while all words grouping themselves round the concepts of objectivity and
rationalism were contained in the single word oldthink" ( Orwell 1982, 201). As Orwell points
out, "greater precision was dangerous" ( Orwell 1982, 201), and the Party protected itself by
destroying great numbers of the words that were necessary to express discontent or
disagreement with its policies.

"Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was
regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive.
Newspeak was designated not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose
was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum" ( Orwell 1982,
198). The culling process is best described by Winston's acquaintance Syme, a professional
philologist who is hard at work on the definitive Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak
Dictionary. When Winston questions him about the dictionary's progress--the best way to turn
aside Syme's uncomfortably probing questions about Winston's orthodoxy--Syme grows
animated and talks excitedly about the job of throwing out "unneeded" and "dangerous"
words. Despite his being a philologist, Syme is more concerned with destroying words than
with preserving them. "You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But
not a bit of it! We're destroying words--scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're
cutting the language down to the bone" (35). Ironically, he waxes eloquent about the
evisceration of literature, of the extremely narrow patterns of thought that will be left when
Newspeak is the only language possible. "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,"
declares Syme. "The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is
Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak" (35-36).

"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-
view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of
thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all
and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that is, a thought diverging from the principles of
Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words"
( Orwell 1982, 198; emphasis added). This is Orwell's most fundamental statement of
Newspeak's function, which he uses to throw a sop to his critics. Apparently, he believes
wholeheartedly in something very similar to Whorf's hypothesis of language. Orwell
describes Newspeak, not as a language that will make unorthodox thought difficult, but one
that will make unorthodox thought

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impossible. Newspeak is "an essentialist doctrine of language," in which words and the
concepts they express are inseparable ( Atkinson17).

Several critics and linguists have questioned the assumptions upon which Newspeak is
founded. For example, Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Mary Louise Pratt argue that Newspeak

overlooks the creative nature of language that makes the uttering of new sentences in new
contexts possible and thereby opens up the possibility of new ranges of meaning. It denies any
notion of semantic features that can be reused in different groupings of sound-meaning
correlations. It denies the possibility of saying one thing and meaning another, as in puns and
ironic statements. . . . And it begs the question of how languages get to be as complex in
vocabulary as they do. In reality, people are always having new thoughts and seeking out new
words to express them. In short, Orwell's discussion presents an incomplete view of what
human language is, and to the extent that this is so, Newspeak is not a real possibility. ( 1980,
109)
W. F. Bolton objects to the efficacy of the prescriptive method by which the Party will
enforce Newspeak. The Party seem to think that upon the introduction of the Eleventh Edition
of the Newspeak dictionary, Oldspeak will wither away. However, "the diminution of a
dictionary does not restrict speakers to a smaller vocabulary" ( 1984a, 35). Bolton points to
the development of English, the language on which Newspeak is founded: the growth of
English vocabulary exploded in the fifteenth century, and despite the fact that no English
dictionary appeared until the early 1600s, the "very small size [of the language] in no way
halted or reversed the continuing growth of the vocabulary" ( 1984a, 35). Bolton reminds us
that dictionaries do not prescribe a language, they merely describe it: "most language-users
today employ the dictionary for a restricted range of purposes (chiefly spelling and
pronunciation) if at all, and rarely so as to increase their vocabulary--never to reduce it. Daily
we hear and use words not in our dictionaries" (35). Bolton questions the Party's blithe
oversight, given the otherwise ruthlessly efficient Oceanic totalitarianism. In a state "where
political and even sexual conduct" are constantly "under the closest possible scrutiny,
[ Orwell] made no provision for linguistic enforcement" ( 1984a, 108). Bolton also takes issue
with the "theoretical limitation of thought by language. Would the disappearance of a word
from the vocabulary, whether by its exclusion from the dictionary or otherwise, really leave
the corresponding thought unthinkable? No, because language and thought do not have a 1:1
relationship. . . . People can long for justice without knowing the word for it" (36).

Norman Berdichevsky disparages Newspeak, not for any failure of its own structure or even
its intent, but because he sees it as an attack on C. K. Ogden's Basic English and L. L.
Zamenhof's Esperanto. Indeed, Orwell constructs Newspeak out of elements from both
languages, especially Ogden's Basic English. Berdichevsky argues: " Orwell's biting satire
[Newspeak] lent ammunition to critics of all devised languages. This is unfortunate since the
ability freely to communicate across national, linguistic and political barriers would make the
ugly totalitarian society pictured in Nineteen Eighty-four impossible" ( 1988, 28). 13 It is
possible that in Newspeak, Orwell satirizes, to some degree, the artificial international
language movement that grew strong between the world wars. Esperanto in particular
commanded a large and very vocal following in Britain before World War II ( Large 1985,
106). Orwell was well acquainted with such invented languages as Esperanto, Basic English,
and

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Interglossa--in fact, he reviewed Lancelot Hogben book, Interglossa, in the Manchester

Evening News of December 23, 1943 ( Bolton 1984a, 117-18). 14 Orwell points, with some
derision, to the controversies and heated arguments that flew between adherents of various
proposed international languages ( Orwell 1975, 85-86). Even though he considered a single
international tongue a good idea, Orwell could not resist lampooning the often-ridiculous
debates over artificial languages and the crackpots that these debates tended to attract.

Steven Blakemore points out a logical contradiction within the text that would prevent
Newspeak from functioning as the Party hopes. "The Party's ideology ensures that there will
never be a definitive edition of newspeak [sic]. Instead, each 'definitive' edition will become
obsolete as the Party seeks to further narrow the range of human thought. Current newspeak
words will soon become 'oldspeak' words, as the Party spins 'out a present that' has 'no future'
[ Orwell 1982, 101], an 'endless present' [ Orwell 1982, 103] where the past and future do not
linguistically exist" ( Blakemore 1984, 354). Finally, Anthony Burgess puts his tongue firmly
into his cheek and reminds us that
Even the processes of linguistic change are an aspect of nature, taking place unconsciously
and, it appears, autonomously. There is no guarantee that the State's creation of Newspeak
could flourish impervious to gradual semantic distortion, vowel mutation, the influence of the
richer Oldspeak of the proles. If doubleplusungood or, with a Macbeth flavouring,
doubledoubleplusungood, is applied to an ill-cooked egg, we shall need something stronger to
describe a sick headache. Unbigbrotherwise uningsocful doubledoubledoubleplusungood, for
instance. Bigbrotherwise, as an intensifier, can be as neutral as bloody. Big Brother, being the
only deity, can be invoked when we hit a thumb with a hammer or get caught in the rain. This
is bound to diminish him. ( Burgess 1978, 51)

These are all valid criticisms as long as the discussion centers on Newspeak as a workable
language intended to actually eliminate unorthodox thought. But Nineteen Eighty-four is
neither a literal prophecy of, nor a blueprint for, a real totalitarian state--and Newspeak is no
more real than the Party that promulgates it. The totalitarian society depicted in his last novel
epitomizes everything that Orwell hated about his contemporary world and about the broad
movements of repressive political culture that he feared might arise from it. No sane writer
offers explicit blueprints for creating the society he or she loathes most greatly. As for
prophecy, Orwell said, "I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will
arrive, but I believe (allowing of course for the fact that the book is a satire) that something
resembling it could arrive" ( 1982, 287). 15 Orwell himself makes the most sensible argument
here against misreading the book as prediction or prescription by reminding us that it is a
satire--to which we should add, it is a dystopia, which is all too easily misread as prediction
because of its near-future setting. 16

It is possible for readers who know nothing of satire or dystopia to read Nineteen Eighty-four
solely as a work of fiction and to derive intellectual pleasure from doing so. For this kind of
readership, the only meaningful requirement that Newspeak must satisfy is that of plausibility
as a self-contained fictive construct. Bluntly, Newspeak has to appear as if it could do what
the Party intends it to do--eliminate unorthodox thought, the last bastion of freedom left in
Oceania. 17 Read on this level, Newspeak succeeds as another terrifying aspect of the Party's
crusade to wipe out dissent. Popular conceptions

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of language endure despite their linguistic inaccuracy. The example that comes immediately
to mind (especially given Orwell's construction of Newspeak and the "definitive" Eleventh
Edition) is the widely-held, but erroneous, notion that dictionaries somehow legislate
language, when in fact their only purpose is to record and describe usage. Orwell, after all,
was a journalist and writer, not a professional linguist. His ideas about language and its
relationships to thought are not necessarily informed by the linguistic scholarship that had
been done before he wrote Nineteen Eighty-four. While Orwell was certainly

alert to linguistic diversity in space and time[,] . . . his background in such specialist matters
was not very thorough--not, for example, anything like what he would have learned reading
English at a British university in the early 1920s, much less what he would learn doing so
now. Even the celebrated "Appendix" on Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-four, though it uses
some technical terms of linguistic description, uses none that the intended non-specialist
reader would fail to grasp; and, after all, Newspeak is an imaginary language. Orwell knew no
more about language . . . than the average Briton of his time and class might have known, and
perhaps a trifle less. . . . He did not boast about his linguistic knowledge, yet he appears to
have been quite confident in his linguistic opinions; and that, too, was about average for a
person of his age and background. ( Bolton 1984a, 21-22) 18

Orwell seems to have been aware of his limitations as a linguist, as Newspeak is the only one
of the Party's repressive techniques not fully represented in the story. The ever-present
scrutiny of the telescreen is brought home to us as Winston's calisthenics instructor sharply
rebukes his efforts ( 1982, 26). When Syme vanishes (98), "vaporization" and "unperson"
become far more terrifying terms. Mr. Charrington's duplicity reinforces everything Winston
fears about the Thought Police (149-50). We see the hapless Parsons betrayed by his children,
a likelihood on which Winston has mused (18, 15455). Finally, we witness the horrors
inflicted in the Ministry of Love's cellars and observe Winston broken down into little more
than a shell. But at no time does Orwell present full-fledged Newspeak or show it actually in
the process of limiting a speaker's ability to think.

To be sure, we frequently find Newspeak words interpolated into the English text. For
example, Winston's writing assignments come to him phrased like this one: "times 3.12.83
reporting bb dayorder doubleplusun good refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling"
( 1982, 31). 19 Strange though such an instruction may appear, it is merely couched in "the
abbreviated jargon--not actually Newspeak, but consisting largely of Newspeak words--which
was used in the Ministry for internal purposes" (27). During the Two Minutes Hate, Goldstein
cries his treason against the Party "in rapid polysyllabic speech which was a sort of parody of
the habitual style of the orators of the Party, and even contained Newspeak words: more
Newspeak words, indeed, than any Party member would normally use in real life" (10).
Winston notices of Julia "that she never used Newspeak words, except the ones that had
passed into everyday use" (87). Even O'Brien, who personifies the sadistic zeal of the Inner
Party, uses "the hybrid jargon of the Ministries" rather than pure Newspeak: for example,
"Items one comma five comma seven approved fullwise stop suggestion contained item six
doubleplus ridiculous verging crimethink cancel stop unproceed constructionwise antegetting
plusful estimates machinery overheads stop end message" (112). The one occurrence of pure
Newspeak referred to in the novel is the Times leading articles, of which none are even
quoted.

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As an actual language, then, Newspeak cannot function--certainly not to the ends for which
the Party has designed it. As a fictional construct, however, Newspeak remains effective and
terrifying to the nonlinguist reader. Dystopian writers must horrify their readers without
eliminating the hope that such grim futures may be averted through present-day action. In
order to counteract the utopian vision, which is composed of the "products of people's most
fervent hopes and dreams," the "only effective remedy" open to dystopian writers is "to
appeal to equally deep feelings: their fears and nightmares" ( Kumar 1987, 344). Orwell
follows Kumar's assertion by playing directly on some of the irrational beliefs concerning
language that most readers hold strongly. 20 Such mistaken, but widespread, beliefs include
the concept of dictionaries as ultimate linguistic authorities; the idea that individual language
is a direct extension of individual personality; and the susceptibility of language to legislation
and control by political entities. Absent these beliefs, Newspeak loses its horrific plausibility.
Clearly, Orwell understands the linguistic prejudices of his readership: "witness the book's
continuing popularity. Whether or not people believe that they themselves are living in it, the
world of Airstrip One is a believable world, a possible world, all the more so for the sudden
startling touches of homespun familiarity" ( Kumar 1987, 345). Roy Harris agrees:
The Newspeak parable is a parable which strikes home to any audience whose native
language is English. For there is a sense in which the very variety and flexibility of English as
a language seems to guarantee to its users their individual right to think and speak as they
please. It is no accident of history that England has never had a body equivalent to the
Académie Française. The notion of a language subject to the dictatorial control of experts is
as repugnant to most [English-speaking] people as the idea of censorship. ( 1984, 17)

Newspeak is frequently alluded to in Nineteen Eighty-four, and we occasionally find a few

Newspeak words. The only extended discussion of Newspeak and its structure, however,
occurs after the end of Winston Smith story, in "Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak". In
the Appendix, an unnamed speaker sets forth Newspeak's grammar, its three vocabularies,
and its theoretical basis. This Appendix constitutes the shortest of the three discrete texts that
combine to make up Nineteen Eighty-four as a whole, along with Winston Smith's story and
Goldstein Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. 21 The Appendix's brevity is no
indicator of its apparent dystopic grimness: indeed, "that final horrendous vision at the end of
the novel, where we are told the details of the programme by which Newspeak will eventually
replace Oldspeak entirely . . . remains one of the most chillingly powerful in the whole of
English literature" ( Harris17). Unlike Goldstein's book--which, presumably, we are reading
through Winston's eyes, or over his shoulder, if you like--the Appendix does not appear to be
part of Winston's story. Arguably, though, the Appendix plays a part in the story by revealing
the Party's ultimate downfall. The point has been made before, but so infrequently that each
critic who does so feels compelled to take others to task for not giving the Appendix its due.
W. F. Bolton, for instance, argues:

The famous Appendix was written in the past tense. . . . The verbs are in the past tense, the
words of Standard English "were due to be suppressed later;" but the speaker and his assumed
audience ("we") are both speakers of Standard English. Though the novel is "futuristic," its
events are viewed from an even more distant future when

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Ingsoc and Newspeak have given way to a society and a language more like our own.
Newspeak did not, it seems, ever succeed in extirpating Oldspeak and its vocabulary of
political morality. ( 1984a, 36-37)

Margaret Atwood makes the same observation in conversation with Geoff Hancock during a
discussion of the Appendix that she placed in The Handmaid's Tale:

In fact, Orwell is much more optimistic than people give him credit for. He did the same thing
[as Atwood, i.e., included an Appendix that directly affects the preceding story]. He has a text
at the end of 1984. Most people think the book ends when Winston comes to love Big
Brother. But it doesn't. It ends with a note on Newspeak, which is written in the past tense, in
standard English--which means that, at the time of writing the note, Newspeak is a thing of
the past. ( Hancock 1990, 217)

Read this way, with attention to the tenses that Orwell used, the Appendix discusses
Newspeak as an interesting linguistic experiment that was attempted at some point in the past,
and ultimately failed. Perhaps the proles have overthrown the Party--Syme tells Winston that
they will not be expected to use Newspeak but that it makes no difference since the proles are,
in his estimation, little better than animals.
During one of his more hopeful moments, Winston writes in his journal that "if there is hope,
it lies in the proles" ( 1982, 47). Indeed, he misses some clues that the proles will prevail: for
example, while wandering through a proletarian section of London, Winston walks into a
missile attack. The proles sense the warhead's approach before he can even hear it, and one
yells to Winston to lie down for protection. Curiously, the man calls the incoming rocket a
"steamer" (57), a term that Party members are dimly aware of but never use. The proles are
creating language. Not only that, they are also preserving older bits of English: "It was nearly
twenty hours [eight o'clock P.M.], and the drinking shops which the proles frequented
("pubs," they called them), were choked with customers" (57). And again: "When I was a
young man [an old prole tells Winston], mild beer--wallop, we used to call it--was fourpence
a pint" (60). 22 In fact, the liveliest and most interesting language in Nineteen Eighty-four is
spoken by the proles. In particular, Winston's visit to a pub in order to try to learn more about
the past exposes him to an old man whose English is rich with Cockney dialect,
colloquialisms, and joy in using them. Party members, by contrast, speak listlessly and in dull
language, made worse by the fact that all they can talk about is Party orthodoxy or the
drudgery of everyday living. For example, Winston's neighbor Mrs. Parsons rarely finishes
her sentences (15-17).

Judging from the Appendix, which is written in English as if by a future scholar looking
backward, it can be inferred that a counterrevolution has taken place rather than a decisive
victory by the forces of Eurasia or Eastasia. But the Appendix's hints of the Party's downfall,
located in the distant future, do nothing to disempower the immediate horror of Winston
Smith's destruction, considering the novel's popular dystopic impact. Furthermore, those
critics who have dismissed or downplayed Orwell's vision have done so for reasons other than
the dislocation between the novel and the Appendix. There are some critics who have taken
the novel as a work of black comedy: notably, Anthony Burgess ( 1978, 20) and Krishan
Kumar, who states that "the Appendix on Newspeak is in fact one of the areas where the
comedy of Nineteen Eighty-four most comes out" ( 1987, 321). Kumar does not discuss
Nineteen Eighty-four as comedy, but

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hastens to add that "the fact of Newspeak's primarily satiric intent should not detract from the
fundamental seriousness of Orwell's concern" ( 1987, 321). Indeed, Newspeak does quite the
opposite. It strengthens Orwell's dystopic nightmare immeasurably by threatening the reader's
concept of personal freedom to whatever degree that concept of freedom is embodied in
language.

Newspeak forms the satiric heart of Orwell's novel. Furthermore, Newspeak and its
relationship to the text of Nineteen Eighty-four suggest several problems of formal structure,
difficulties that inhere in the genre of dystopian fiction. Orwell's handling of these problems,
especially by interpolating extranarrative texts, significantly shaped the course of the
dystopian novel in English. The extent of Orwell's influence will become clearer as more
dystopian texts are brought into the discussion in this volume. The central effect of Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-four is neither prophecy nor pessimism, but a didactic satire disguised as
narrative fiction. As Anthony Burgess remarks in his critical recasting of Orwell's novel,
"Ingsoc cannot come into being: it is the unrealizable ideal of totalitarianism which mere
human systems unhandily imitate. It is the metaphorical power that persists: the book
continues to be an apocalyptical codex of our worst fears" ( Burgess 1978, 51).
NOTES
1. William Lutz, of Rutgers University, edits the Quarterly Review of Doublespeak, a
journal whose avowed purpose is "to bring together in one publication both examples of
doublespeak and those materials which fight doublespeak" ( Lutz 1993, 3). A typical
issue attacks statements such as the biotechnology company Centocor's announcement of
a suspension of tests of its new drug, Centoxin, because "the test data reflected an excess
of mortality" among patients who took the drug ( Lutz1).
2. London published The Iron Heel in 1908.
3. "The hunting-down and destruction of books had been done with the same thoroughness
in the prole quarters as everywhere else. It was very unlikely that there existed anywhere
in Oceania a copy of a book printed earlier than 1960" ( Orwell 1982, 65-66).
4. Brian Vickers thoroughly explores the relationships between More's utopic paradigm and
Swift treatment of that ideal in his essay, "The Satiric Structure of Gulliver's Travels and
More's Utopia" ( 1986a). See also Milton Voigt essay, "Gulliver's Travels in a Utopias-
Dystopias Course" ( 1988).
5. Robert M. Philmus essay, "The Language of Utopia" ( 1973), discusses Orwell's debt to
Swift, especially in their similar views of language.
6. Harris calls this set of assumptions "the doctrine of plain representation" ( 1984, 17); I
explore the ramifications of Harris's ideas in Chapter 5 of this volume.
7. Isaac Deutscher "The Mysticism of Cruelty" ( 1969) is easily the most wellwritten
criticism of the former type. Deutscher raises three main arguments against Nineteen
Eighty-four: first, that Orwell was, for the most part, overtly copying Zamiatin We, at
times almost image for image. ( Mark R. Hillegas makes substantially the same
accusation, except that he would have us believe that Orwell cribbed his ideas from H. G.
Wells [ 1967, 131]. William Steinhoff argues that if Orwell draws on any dystopian text,
it is clearly Cyril Connolly Year Nine [ 1975, 14], conveniently reprinted on pp. 232-237
of Orwell 1982.) Secondly, Deutscher suggests that Orwell's real target was Stalinist
Russia, particularly after the purges of 1936- 1938; and finally, he also attacks as
impossible Orwell's vision of a totalitarian state that seeks to hold power simply for the
sake of holding power ( 1969). George Kateb also attacks Nineteen Eighty-four and
disallows it from

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consideration as an anti-utopia, primarily because the Party's sadism does not fit Kateb's
thesis that anti-utopias must represent "benevolent opposition to benevolent utopias"
( 1972, 235). Kateb does include Brave New World, since it "is clearly an example of
benevolent opposition to a benevolent utopia" (235). See Kateb book, especially the
"Appendix: A Note on George Orwell and 1984" (23536).
8. On antilanguage, see Roy Harris cogent essay "The Misunderstanding of Newspeak"
( 1984) and the "Antilanguages" chapter of M. A.K. Halliday Language as Social
Semiotic ( 1978).
9. Deutscher 1984--The Mysticism of Cruelty" remains the most profound critique of
Nineteen Eighty-four as an attack on Stalinism. First published in 1954, Deutscher's essay
 asserts that "the novel has served as a sort of an ideological superweapon in the cold war.
As in no other book or document, the convulsive fear of communism, which has swept
the West since the end of the Second World War, has been reflected and focused in 1984
( Orwell 1982, 333; the essay is also collected in Deutscher Heretics and Renegades
( 1969). Mark Schorer, writing in 1949, admires Orwell's novel but fears that "its
greatness is only immediate, its power for us alone, now, in this generation, this decade,
this year" and furthermore calls it "the most contemporary novel of this year" (reprinted
in Orwell 1982, 295).
10. George Orwell [ Eric Arthur Blair], Nineteen Eighty-four ( 2nd ed., 1982), 3. All
subsequent references are to this edition. Anthony Burgess argues that the opening
sentence is the first proof that Orwell's novel is essentially a comic one: My bookshelves
are disorganized. Wishing to reread Nineteen Eighty-four, I could find at first only the
Italian edition. This, for the moment, would have to do. But there was something wrong
with that first sentence. "Era una bella e fredda mattina d'aprile e gli orogli batterono
l'una." It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks struck one. It ought to be
"battevano tredici colpi": they were striking thirteen. Latin logic, you see. The translator
couldn't believe that clocks would strike thirteen, even in 1984, since no reasonable ear
could ever take in more than twelve. So Italian readers were forced to miss a signal of the
comic. ( 1978, 20).
11. "The three central characters in Orwell's novel form an interesting group, and the ways
Orwell names them reflect their status in the novel. Julia has only a first name; she is an
insignificant female, and Orwell in this respect follows his society's convention of
considering a woman's last name a disposable, because changeable, element in an
uncertain social identity. O'Brien, at the opposite pole, has only a last name, in typical
masculine style. And Winston Smith, halfway between the powerless personal feminine
and the powerful impersonal masculine, has a complete name, albeit an ironic one in that
it combines the legendary with the commonplace." ( Patai 1984, 244). Also see Theo
D'haen speculations on Winston's name ( 1983), noted in Chapter 5 of the present
volume.
12. Ironically, Jonathon Green Newspeak: A Dictionary of Jargon is, perhaps unintentionally,
nothing less than the C vocabulary brought to life: he has collected "a selection of allied
jargons--the slangs and specific vocabularies of a number of trades, professions,
occupations and interests" ( 1984, ix). Green suggests that the modern "jargon explosion"
provides a polarized reflection of Orwell's "verbal holocaust:" "rather than shorten the
language, it is infinitely broadened; instead of curt monosyllables, there are mellifluous,
calming phrases, designed to allay suspicions, modify facts and divert one's attention
from difficulties. . . . [O]rders have been modified into persuasion. Ignorance . . . is made
to seem bliss" ( 1984, ix). however, Roy Harris lambastes Green by arguing that
"Newspeak is not Newspeak in virtue of being just new speak. Orwell was not so stupid
as to think that Shakespeare had already anticipated every lexical requirement of
computer-age English" ( 1984, 17).

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13. Berdichevsky also refers to Esperanto as a "living reality" ( 1988, 28), which should raise
a few critical eyebrows. Howard Fink goes even further and asserts that Orwell based
Newspeak mainly upon Basic English.
14. Orwell holds up, as an example of the decline of the English language, a sample of
Hogben's prose English in "Politics and the English Language" ( 1975, 354).
15. This statement is contained in a letter Orwell wrote to Francis A. Henson, an American
member of the United Auto Workers, on June 16, 1949. (The original document was lost,
but the Howe edition of Nineteen Eighty-four includes an "amalgam" of Orwell remarks,
which were later published in both Life and the New York Times Book Review. See
Orwell 1982, 286-87.) Six days later, on June 22, Orwell wrote to the journalist Vernon
Richards and noted that "I am afraid some of the U.S. Republican papers have tried to use
1984 as propaganda against the Labour Party, but I have issued a sort of démenti [giving
the lie] which I hope will be printed" ( 1982, 287).
16. Gorman Beauchamp has admirably argued this question: "If [ Nineteen Eightyfour is]
prophecy, it is clearly meant--like all dystopias--to be a self-defeating prophecy, whose
efficacy is to be gauged precisely by the degree to which it does not come true" ( 1984,
3).
17. See Walter Meyers "plausibility" theory (articulated in 1980, 123-30, and discussed at
length in Chapter 6 of this volume).
18. On the other hand, there are topics upon which " Orwell [is] not average[;] . . . he [is]
unusual for a practicing man of letters . . . in holding views on them at all. They are the
relation of speech to writing; the relation of expression to understanding (or reception);
the relation of utterance to thought; and the relation of linguistic thought to linguistic
meaning" ( Bolton 1984a, 23). Orwell examines some of these ideas in Nineteen Eighty-
four. Utterance--or the capability of utterance--controls thought in Newspeak; similarly,
in Nineteen Eighty-four, expression and understanding are almost identical. That which
cannot be expressed in Newspeak cannot be understood, or so the Party would have it.
Michael Radford ( 1984) film version of Orwell's novel reinforces this idea by having the
telescreen that looms over Winston's workstation display the command "THINK IN
NEWSPEAK" superimposed on Big Brother's face.
19. "In Oldspeak (or standard English) this might be rendered: 'The reporting of Big Brother's
Order for the Day in the Times of December 3 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and
makes references to nonexistent persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher
authority before filing'" ( Orwell 1982, 31).
20. " Orwell does not have any notion of disinterested scientific theory of language. Rather,
he seems to have had a notion of a politics of language, which would make beliefs about
language as well as action in language, matters of political behaviour" ( Chilton 1984,
130).
21. Textual analysis reveals that Winston's story takes up 85% of the novel, while Goldstein's
book accounts for 11% and the Appendix for the remaining 4%. In an eerie coincidence,
these percentages closely correspond with the proportions of Oceanic society: 85%
proles, 13% Outer Party, and 2% Inner Party ( Orwell 1982, 139).
22. The term fourpence is as archaic to Winston as wallop, since Oceanic currency has been
Americanized into dollars and cents.

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4
"Milk with Knives in It"
"What's it going to be then, eh?"-- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

This question opens A Clockwork Orange ( 1962), and it is echoed fourteen times in the
novel's twenty-one chapters. 1 It serves as a refrain, continually reminding the reader of the
central issue in Anthony Burgess's dystopia--moral choice. A Clockwork Orange asks whether
it is better for individuals to choose freely between good and evil or for the State to protect
itself by removing the capability of choice and enforcing only good through behavioral
conditioning. As the prison chaplain asks, "Does God want goodness or the choice of
goodness?" ( Burgess 1987a, 95). 2 But the chaplain's question, "while it affords the concision
necessary to a reviewer, is totally insufficient to the critic. For there is something at once
delightful and horrible, dogged and elusive in A Clockwork Orange that even so profound a
rhetorical question cannot contain it" ( Petix 1976, 42). This "something" is not at all
"elusive," but rather is clearly visible, beginning in the novel's second paragraph:

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 up our rassoodocks what to do with the
evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus
mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things
changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget. . . . They had no licence
for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which
they used to put in the old moloko,

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so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches
which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His
Holy Angels And Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. ( Burgess
1987a, 1)

Little Alex--the protagonist and first-person narrator, who is fifteen years old as the novel
opens--tells his story in Nadsat, a language peculiar to teenagers in his society. The word
nadsat is a suffix appended to the Russian numbers eleven through nineteen, roughly
equivalent to the English word teen--Alex refers to his generation and his language with the
same term ( Burgess 1972, 198). Most of the words in Alex's Nadsat vocabulary are based on
transliterated Russian, which is combined with a smattering of words from other languages to
create a mesmerizing patois. Stanley Edgar Hyman does not exaggerate when he suggests that
"perhaps the most fascinating thing about the book is its language" ( 1969, 302). 3

No thoughtful reader comes away from reading A Clockwork Orange without having been
intrigued by Nadsat. Some, however, find Alex's idiom perhaps a little too original: a reader
can lose sight of the novel's dystopic dilemma by becoming too deeply immersed. The strange
vocabulary gives up some of its meanings quickly through the context, but other words resist
clear definition, sometimes even after repeated occurrences. Robert K. Morris wonders
whether Burgess's linguistic fireworks obscure what would otherwise be a simple Manichaean
fable: " Burgess barters even tentative answers for impressive technique. I feel . . . that his
adroit shock tactics with plot and language, expertise with satire, and partiality to
apocalypse--all enviable attributes and potential pluses normally--come dangerously close
here to outflanking the substantive ideas" ( 1971, 58). Morris implies that it is possible to
separate A Clockwork Orange's "substantive ideas" from the novel's form. Although Burgess
is clearly proud of his ebullient slang, Nadsat is more than a linguistic jeu d'esprit. Nadsat is
the primary narrative structure through which we come to know Alex's personality and
understand Burgess's concerns about freedom and choice. Nadsat helps construct a near-future
society "so totally mechanized, controlled, and dehumanized that the only reality seems to be
that of coercion and power" ( Coale 1981a, 93). The language muffles the violence of the
story while endearing Alex to us, and it clarifies the competing interests of individual freedom
versus social stability. In short, Nadsat forms the work's dystopic backbone. 4

Burgess structures his novel into three sections of seven chapters each. The final chapter was
left out of all American editions beginning with its first publication in 1962, though British
editions and translations into other languages have remained whole. The truncated version of
A Clockwork Orange was filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1971: the film ends, as does the
twentychapter novel, with Alex fantasizing about new acts of violence and ominously
declaring, "I was cured all right" ( Burgess 1987a, 179). The first complete American edition,
published by Norton in 1987, prints the twenty-first chapter as well as new introductory
material by both Anthony Burgess and his publisher, Norton's Eric Swenson, who disagree
why the final chapter was originally excised. Burgess states his side of the case most
succinctly in his Introduction to the complete edition, asserting that the publisher "insisted on
cutting out the twenty-first" chapter:

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I could, of course, have demurred at this and taken my book elsewhere, but it was considered
that [ Swenson] was being charitable in accepting the work at all, and that all other New
York, or Boston, publishers would kick out the manuscript on its dogear. I needed money
back in 1961, even the pittance I was being offered as an advance, and if the condition of the
book's acceptance was also its truncation--well, so be it. (vi) 5

Not surprisingly, Swenson recalls the decision somewhat differently in a Publisher's Note:
"the author and his American publisher . . . differ in their memories as to whether or not the
dropping of the last chapter . . . was a condition of publishing or merely a suggestion made for
conceptual reasons" (xiii). Whatever the reasons for its removal may have been, the twenty-
first chapter profoundly changes the book, since it reveals Alex growing beyond the vicious
hoodlum he has been for the previous twenty chapters. Burgess frames the difference in terms
of fictive modes: "when a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that
human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and
into that of the fable or the allegory. The American or Kubrickian Orange is a fable; the
British or world one is a novel" (viii). The present discussion is based on the full, twentyone
chapter edition of A Clockwork Orange. 6

The near-future society depicted in A Clockwork Orange is unquestionably dystopic. Teenage

gangs terrorize the nights, while by day, all able-bodied adults must work at mindless jobs
assigned by the State ( Burgess 1987a, 36). Culture and the arts have degenerated into
saccharine pop music and vapid, worldwide television broadcasts ("worldcasts") (17). Official
police are drawn from the ranks of the same thugs who make the streets dangerous--the only
thing different about them in their new roles is their uniforms. As becomes clear through
Alex's narrative, the State seeks further control over its citizens, ostensibly to crack down on
crime. Despite his instability and political extremism, F. Alexander's commentary on the
situation is essentially accurate: "we've seen it all before . . . in other countries. The thin end
of the wedge. Before we know where we are we shall have the full apparatus of
totalitarianism" (160). Alex paints clear, if grim, pictures of his society (recalling Zamiatin's
D-503) as well as of his own adventures. But a novel can portray a horrible society quite
effectively without actually being a dystopia. Indeed, Robert O. Evans argues that A
Clockwork Orange does not "fit the dystopian convention Burgess inherited. He borrows
some of its devices, but . . . it is the statement about mankind, not the fictive structure in
which it is embedded, that matters" ( 1987, 262). Evans defines dystopia as any novel that
"inverts" present society and takes place in the near future (253). He takes pains to dissociate
Burgess's novel from the dystopian tradition, which he considers outmoded and
oversimplified; removing A Clockwork Orange from the dystopian genre, he asserts, might
render it "more worthy of serious critical attention" (254-55). Passing over Evans's contempt
for the dystopian tradition, there are indeed elements in the novel that are not clearly
dystopian, especially the apparently happy ending. However, a close reading of the final
chapter can effectively answer these concerns.

One would expect that a character as violent, vicious, and amoral as Alex would make a poor
first-person narrator, but in fact, his narrative is thoughtful and informative, even charming: a
dust-jacket blurb by William S. Burroughs laments that "the fact that this is . . . a very funny
book may pass unnoticed"

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( Burgess 1987a). The shocking nature of the brutalities Alex unapologetically recounts
overshadows the fact that he tells his story honestly, spicing it with ironic jibes directed at
himself as well as toward those around him. A reader who does not put A Clockwork Orange
down (out of revulsion or bafflement) after reading a few pages generally comes to
sympathize with Alex, despite feeling guilty for caring about such a vicious character.
Richard Fulkerson explains the attractions of Alex's narrative by asserting that our sympathy
for him arises out of admiration for his creativity: Alex, he maintains, is an artist "whose main
creative medium is violence" ( 1974, 9). Fulkerson discusses Alex's preference for the straight
razor over heavier, clumsier weapons like Dim's bicycle chain, which is especially evident in
the gang fight on pages 16-17 ( Burgess 1987a), and notes how Alex emphasizes "the finesse
involved in using his chosen weapon, the analogy he sees between knife fighting and dancing,
the artistic symmetry of the result (which he describes in a metaphor)" ( Fulkerson 1974, 9).
Clearly Alex takes a creative pride in his violent acts.

Samuel Coale suggests that Alex "enjoys not so much the mayhem but the ordered balletic
quality of it" ( Coale 1981a, 91). 7 Coale also points out that Alex's "artistic consciousness,"
which makes him a more sympathetic character, reaches its culmination, not in gang fighting,
but in "his love for classical music, especially for Beethoven" (91). 8 Two selfless incidents
show Alex defending, or attempting to defend, classical music (both real and fictitious)
against the insults of those who do not share his delight. Alex strikes Dim in the Korova, not
for blowing a raspberry at a singer, but for insulting the few bars of Gitterfenster's Das
Bettzeug she sings ( Burgess 1987a, 27-28). Moreover, while undergoing conditioning at the
Ludovico Centre, Alex screams that it is "a filthy unforgivable sin" for the scientists to
accompany violent film clips with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (113). To the reader, the sin
should be what the State is doing to Alex, while to the youth himself, despite the agony of his
"therapy," the most immoral aspect of the treatment is its degradation of the music he loves.

Robert K. Morris calls Alex "something of a poet, singing dithyrambs to violence, but
revealing through the terrifying beauty of his speech the naked beauty of an uninhibited
psyche" ( 1971, 69-70). John W. Tilton comes closest to bridging the gap between Alex's
artistic nature and his narration:

His disapproval of the greed of his droogs who want to go after the big money suggests that
the pleasure Alex takes in beautifully executed acts of violence is a manifestation of art for
art's sake, heedless as he is of both financial recompense and the opinion of the world. Self-
expression and self-assertion are his fundamental attitudes, sufficient unto themselves as long
as he is able to impose upon the flux and variety of human experience his own control and
order. His narration has the quality of a lyric poem that evokes profound emotional responses
to its imagery and impresses deeply upon the reader the personality of the poet. ( 1977, 29)

Alex deserves to be taken seriously as an artist, since his story reveals artistic violence,
creatively described. However, violence and language are not equals in his narration. As the
novel ends, we find Alex declaring (believably) that he is permanently finished with violence,
without shedding his skill as a creative storyteller. The final chapter makes clear what the
narrative has unselfconsciously hinted at all along--Alex's primary creative medium is not
violence, but language.

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Burgess gives his protagonist three of what the author calls exemplary human characteristics:
"he is aggressive, he loves beauty, he is a language-user" ( 1972, 198). Alex's aggressiveness
is beyond question, and his love of beauty is obvious, given his admiration for classical
music. (Of course, Alex also finds beauty in a well-choreographed gang fight and a
particularly well-executed armed robbery, acts that the reader is not expected to appreciate.)
But Alex's gifts as a language user are often overlooked, even though his Nadsat-laden
narration reveals them on every page. The horrible deeds he unflinchingly describes may
obscure the agility and grace of his descriptions themselves. It is an unfortunate loss, for the
techniques Alex uses to tell his story convey as much information about him, his society, and
Burgess's larger concerns as does the story itself.

The centrality of language in A Clockwork Orange begins with Alex, his age, and his
relationship to Nadsat. Alex's narrative shows such mastery of storytelling skills that we are
surprised to learn his age (fifteen) at the end of the seventh chapter, a third of the way into his
tale. As Alex begins to describe his activities, one wonders whether his vocabulary is purely
idiolectical (that is, unique to himself). While there are some narrative strategies that Alex
alone uses--for instance, his pronominalization--we eventually find that his odd language is
not solely Alex's, but belongs to his entire generation. Alex's gang members and other teens
speak Nadsat; presumably, most adults would find Nadsat incomprehensible, if they
considered it at all. This, according to Burgess, is as it should be, since "teen-agers
desperately try to hurl their own pale substitute for poetry--slang--in the face of the growing
corpus of abstract language. But slang is ephemeral and often vague. . . . [Still], if [teenage]
slang is ephemeral, at least it's healthier to discard words than to let them grow stale and
riddled with ambiguities" ( 1968, 54).
Adult characters take note of Alex's language only once. During a "treatment" session, Dr.
Brodsky finds Alex's cries of agony and outrage linguistically interesting: "'Quaint,' said Dr.
Brodsky, like smiling, 'the dialect of the tribe. Do you know anything of its provenance,
Branom?' 'Odd bits of old rhyming slang,' said Dr. Branom. . . . 'A bit of gypsy talk, too. But
most of the roots are Slav. Propaganda. Subliminal penetration'" ( Burgess 1987a, 114).
Brodsky cuts off the discussion, but Branom has unwittingly raised an important concern. The
psychiatrists' conversation misleads the reader in that, according to Robert Evans, there is no
gipsy talk in Nadsat--but "Russian words are . . . ubiquitous" ( 1971, 406). ( Evans is
incorrect, but only slightly. Shive is directly drawn from shiv, a gipsy word meaning "blade,"
whether of a knife or a razor.) We may read Alex's words as evidence that the society in
which he lives is filled with propaganda, much of it below the threshold of conscious thought.
Through repeated exposure to subliminal propaganda, the younger generation has absorbed
Eastern vocabulary and possibly other, more subtle, ideas. Such propaganda may be secretly
incorporated into the "worldcasts," perhaps, and certainly into teenaged popular music, as in
"Jonny Zhivago, a Russky koshka [cat]" ( Burgess 1987a, 27). In short, Alex and his
generation were brainwashed long before the Ludovico Technique was perfected. This idea is
disturbing enough; even more alarming is the realization that one reaches after finishing the
novel--as Burgess predicts:

at the end you should find yourself in possession of a minimal Russian vocabulary-without
effort, without surprise. This is the way brainwashing works. . . . But the lesson of the Orange
has nothing to do with the ideology or repressive techniques of

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Soviet Russia: it is wholly concerned with what can happen to any of us in the West, if we do
not keep on our guard. If Orange, like 1984 [sic], takes its place as one of the salutory literary
warnings . . . against . . . sloppy thinking and overmuch trust in the state, then it will have
done something of value. ( 1972, 199)

Read "dystopias" for "salutory literary warnings"-- Burgess reminds us that conditioning need
not be obvious. The image of Alex strapped into his chair with his eyes held open is certainly
an alarming one, but only because it shows us an unwilling viewer forced to watch. Alex has
already expressed his contempt for those who pay such attention voluntarily: "in the windows
of all of the flats you could viddy [see] like blue dancing light. This would be the telly.
Tonight was what they called a worldcast, meaning that the same programme was being
viddied by everybody in the world that wanted to, that being mostly the middleaged middle-
class lewdies [people]" ( Burgess 1987a, 17). At least one critic, Carol M. Dix, has not only
accepted Burgess's assertion, but seems to have absorbed his fictive explication of Nadsat as
truth. In her study of Burgess's works, Dix defines Nadsat as follows, without documentation:

The language experiment called "nadsat" [sic] is the derivative vernacular of Alex and his
gang of "droogs," which is derived in turn from Burgess's own interest in linguistics. . . . The
vernacular is cleverly based on odd bits of rhyming slang, it includes a little gypsy talk and its
basic roots are Russian. . . . The derivative language, spoken by the young, probably indicates
the effects of propaganda through subliminal penetration. ( 1971, 14; emphasis added)

Next the reader must grapple with the ambiguous nature of the protagonist's name. Since "a
lex" can be translated from Latin both as "without laws" and "without words," which meaning
is correct? Alex certainly behaves lawlessly. But he is never at a loss for words; as the first-
person narrator, he cannot afford to be. Is this second meaning therefore unintentional or
peripheral? Geoffrey Aggeler argues persuasively that it is neither:

[Alex] is articulate but "wordless" in that he apprehends life directly, without the mediation of
words. Unlike the characters who seek to control him and the rest of the society, he makes no
attempt to explain or justify his actions through abstract ideals or goals such as "liberty" or
"stability." Nor does he attempt to define any role for himself within a large social process.
Instead, he simply experiences life directly, sensuously, and, while he is free, joyously.
Indeed, his guiltless joy in violence of every kind . . . suggests, however incongruously,
innocence to the reader. ( 1983, 176-77)

Far from being wordless, Alex is a gifted storyteller whose use of Nadsat and other narrative
techniques not only builds sympathy but also presents Burgess's dystopic concerns very
effectively. From the opening pages of the novel, Alex consistently speaks to readers as "O
my brothers," thus uniting narrator and reader in resistance to the State. The reader is elevated
over the faceless bourgeois masses Alex despises, as if he or she were a rare equal whom
Alex judged worthy of hearing his story. 9 Alex refers to himself variously as "Your Humble
Narrator,""your handsome young Narrator," and even "YHN," reminding us that he is
conscious of his narrative duties. He frequently translates Nadsat words, sometimes
deliberately--"Pete had a rooker (a hand, that is)"--and sometimes offhandedly--"we had these
off-white cravats which looked like whipped-up kartoffel or spud" ( Burgess 1987a, 2).
Through such examples, Alex implies that

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his audience was once familiar with Nadsat but has not spoken it for some time and needs
occasional prompting. By extension, the implied audience is made up of people who have
been as violent as Alex at one time (hence earning Alex's respect as equals, or nearly so) and
have since grown beyond that kind of behavior, but who can still identify with his
viciousness. While it would be rare for an actual reader to fit this model of the implied
audience, Burgess argues persuasively that the sole difference between the two is that the
implied reader, like Alex, has acted violently, while the actual reader has only felt brutal
impulses. "We recognize in his deeds of aggression potentialities of our own-worked out for
the non-criminal citizen in war, sectional injustice, domestic unkindness, armchair dreams"
( Burgess 1972, 198). Since Alex speaks Nadsat mainly to his peers (whether they are his
droogs or an enemy gang, like Billyboy's), the reader is addressed as one of them.

Alex's addressing his implied audience as peers further suggests that as the story begins, he is
no longer the same person he was when he committed the crimes being related. There is a
suggestion that telling the story forces Alex to temporarily reassume a mantle of violent
amorality that he has already begun to shed. The clue to his changing outlook lies in his
frequent translation of problematical Nadsat words for his present audience as he tells his
story, which he never does for other characters within the past tense of the novel as he speaks
to them. A careful reading shows Alex striving to tell his story in Nadsat, while his frequent
juxtapositions of English and Nadsat indicate that he is on the verge of giving up his idiom as
he moves from late adolescence into early adulthood. Alex's old droog, Pete, whom he meets
in the last chapter, has clearly made such a transition, and he now speaks standard English
without a trace of Nadsat. When Alex greets him in Nadsat, Pete's wife, Georgina, is amused
at Alex's "funny" way of talking, and she asks her husband "did you used to talk like that
too?" Embarrassed, Pete stresses his age, as if to remind all three of them that he has
outgrown such childishness: "Well . . . I'm nearly twenty. Old enough to be hitched, and it's
been two months already" ( Burgess 1987a, 188). In this final chapter Pete is not quite two
years older than Alex, who has just turned eighteen. Yet the difference between them is great
and impresses Alex very deeply, especially Pete's new way of talking: "he was like grown up
now, with a grownup goloss [voice] and all" (188). 10

Pete has given up Nadsat because he considers it childish, and indeed, many of Nadsat's
features do show a childlike ebullience, a delight in playing with language's sounds, rhythms,
and meanings. Alex, after all, is still an adolescent during the first and second sections of the
novel, which often shows in his language. Words such as "teeheehee," "lubbilub," and
"boohoohoo" would be more expected in the speech of young children. Alex's chronological
youth and his all-too-adult vices clash head-on in several babytalk words that he is fond of
using, such as "baddiwad," "purplewurple," "steakiweak," "skolliwoll," and "malchickiwick."
Alex uses childish words as derogatory terms for objects that he considers unimportant (like
food) or contemptible (like school). Coming from other characters, these words would sound
cloying, but since Alex delivers them, one is not certain whether to laugh or to take them
seriously. Just as he would do with opponents in hand-to-hand combat, Alex deliberately
keeps his readers off-balance, knowing that his prattle softens his vicious deeds. When Alex
describes his breakfast after a night of ultraviolence, he mentions "crunching my lomticks
[pieces] of black toast dipped in jammiwam and eggiweg" ( ( Burgess

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1987a, 41). The reader has difficulty reconciling this handsome youth, who appears to be
enjoying a quiet meal over his newspaper, with the brutal rapist of the previous night. "It is
necessary for Burgess to achieve an empathic response to Alex, and these infantilisms within
Nadsat are reminiscent of Dickensian innocence--serving well as buffer zones . . . between the
'good' reader and the 'evil' protagonist" ( Petix 1976, 43-44).

Arguably, Nadsat's abundant babytalk and onomatopoeia contribute to the important narrative
function of distancing the reader from the brutal violence of Alex's story. Burgess strove for
this distancing function as he worked on the language, intending that "the strange new lingo
would act as a kind of mist halfhiding the mayhem and protecting the reader from his own
baser instincts" ( 1990, 38). 11 It might be objected that it would be much easier to avoid the
violence altogether rather than construct an artificial language to disguise it. Burgess demurs,
arguing that had he begun his story "with Alex in the dock, condemned for crimes generalised
into judicial rhetoric, even the gentlest spinster reader would rightly have complained about
evasion. Fiction deals with the concrete and the particular . . . and the sin of showing juvenile
brutality was, for me, behovely" (61). Alex has to be understood as a dangerous criminal if
the moral lesson of the story is to carry any weight at all. "Free will" rings sweetly but
vaguely in the Western humanist ear. It is vital for Burgess to depict the monstrous crimes
Alex freely commits in order to more accurately portray the consequences of the choice
between free will and conditioned response. It is equally critical to keep the reader's revulsion
at Alex's choices below the threshold at which he or she will stop reading (which, given the
violence of the first few chapters, would be impossible to do if the novel were written in
standard English). Nadsat balances these conflicting necessities perfectly "because it
automatically disconnects [the reader] from the world he is used to. . . . In short, when the
reader grapples directly with Burgess's language, he must also try to figure out what kind of a
world Burgess is writing about" ( Coale 1981a, 89).
However, although Burgess asserts that the language "protect[s] the reader from his own baser
instincts" ( 1990, 38), Nadsat does not sanitize A Clockwork Orange. Burgess wraps Alex's
atrocities in a gauzy veil of language not to frustrate understanding--he makes the veil far too
transparent and attractive for us to resist. Rather, Nadsat titillates our morbid curiosity and
coaxes us into multiple readings. When Alex "tolchocks a poogly starry veck about the
gulliver and viddies him swim in his own krovvy," we are sufficiently interested to reread the
sentence and decipher the unfamiliar words by their contexts. In short order, we mentally
translate the sentence and imagine Alex "beating a terrified old man about the head and
watching him swim in his own blood." No matter how expressed, violence is still violence,
and Alex's behavior is no less shocking once we discover what "fun" means to him. Despite
the surface camouflage Nadsat provides, the novel has been condemned for its violence,
perhaps most eloquently by Robert O. Evans: "[B]eyond the fire of the words, as a humanistic
document and a vision of the future to make us sit back and think how we can mend ourselves
to prevent its coming true--A Clockwork Orange is a failure, on artistic grounds probably and
surely on moral grounds" ( 1971, 410). Evans objects to the violence that fills the book and to
the apparently anarchistic ending that finds Alex free once again to do as he pleases--the
ending of the truncated American version, that is.

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Evans can be excused to some degree for judging the novel as, ultimately, a vision of
inescapable anarchy. Even with the addition of the final chapter, a foreboding of inevitable
violence remains, as Alex muses on the fact that his son will spend his youth just as violently
as Alex has done and that he is powerless to stop it ( Burgess 1987a, 191). But Evans misses
the point by dismissing the novel's failure to offer insight into what we must do to "mend
ourselves." Nadsat does not effectively hide the novel's violence unless the reader chooses not
to see it. Burgess's language gives the reader the option to remain substantially ignorant of
exactly what Alex is doing, but if one deciphers Nadsat, one pays the price of losing this
protective ignorance--as Burgess has warned, noting that Nadsat is "more corrupting to the
reader than to the writer" ( "University of Rochester Pays Tribute" 1972, 67). This makes it
even more appropriate that Alex addresses his implied readers as his peers, fellow criminals
who have likewise enjoyed violence. By penetrating Nadsat's smoke screen, the actual reader
shares vicariously in Alex's violent acts and directly in his gleeful viciousness:

The language does appear to keep one at a distance from the gruesome brutality of the action.
But rather than protect one from the violence, the "filmy curtain of an alien language" in
effect leaves one defenseless against it. . . . Readers are seduced by the alien language to
participate in the violence, to delight in the savagery of the scene, without being aware that
they are giving expression to their own savagery. Awareness comes upon reflection: to see
faintly through that filmy curtain has been, one realizes, to look into a mirror in which one
sees one's own worst self. ( Tilton 1977, 28)

Tilton goes on to argue that "the effect of [Alex's] style, immediately and cumulatively, is to
make readers respond intensely to its poetry, ego defenses neutralized by the delight one takes
in the language. One is not distanced from the violence, he is immersed in it. The reader
cannot escape to the comfort of being a mere observer" (28). The revulsion a reader would
experience at a bald description of one of Alex's crimes--a revulsion that Tilton calls the real
cushion between the reader and Alex's violence--is lost in admiration of Alex's rich narrative.
Tilton has good reason to call Alex's style poetic. 12 Despite the horror of many of the things
Alex describes in Nadsat, the language he uses is certainly delightful, even playful.
Nadsat echoes Lewis Carroll by pulling apart words and recombining the pieces differently to
form new, portmanteau terms. As one might expect, many Nadsat portmanteau words are
formed to give new descriptions of violence. Shive, meaning "to slice" (in the context of a
fight with knives and razors), originates in shave (what one properly does with a razor) plus
shiv (a gypsy word for "knife"). For some portmanteau neologisms, we can identify, not only
the contributing parts that make up the new word, but also both meanings, as with synthemesc
("synthetic mescaline")--the latter word reshapes a known drug into an eerie-sounding, more
mysterious substance. Words like undervecks (literally, "undermen"--subordinates) and
underveshches ("underthings") are compounded across a language barrier: the English under
is added to the Russian veshches and vecks to produce new constructions. And, of course,
Alex's contempt towards the vapid popular music of the day is summed up perfectly in his
denigration of such records as "popdiscs."

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Although Burgess is fond of portmanteau words, puns and metonyms lie even closer to his
heart. A. A. DeVitis suggests that the word Nadsat itself is a jesting anagram for "Satan'd"
( 1972, 56). More persuasive examples of punnery include charles and charlie as Alex's term
for the prison chaplain and cancers for cigarettes. People are called lewdies, which, even
though the word is drawn from a Russian root, still reflects on Alex's behavior as well as on
that of his supposed betters, such as P. R. Deltoid ( Burgess 1987a, 38). Burgess's puns are
often sharply pointed: the laboratory-turned-cinema wherein Alex undergoes the Ludovico
aversion therapy is appropriately labeled a sinny, since here the State perpetrates a sin against
him. Nadsat also contains several words clipped into shorter forms, including decreps ("old
people") from decrepit, and sarky from sarcastic.

Alex's narration does not depend solely on inventing new words. Some older forms, once in
common English usage but now obsolete, also crop up in Nadsat. A few examples include
rozz, from "rozzer," meaning a policeman ( Aggeler 1979, 172), and cutter, from the
nineteenth-century American slang term, "cut-money," which describes the practice of
making change by cutting up coins with an ax. Borrowing the word from Ulysses, Burgess, a
Joycean scholar, has Alex refer to darkness as darkmans at least once ( 1987a, 65). Regional
dialect from Manchester, England, Burgess's boyhood home, appears in such terms as sarky
and charlie, the latter term referring to someone who is naive and not very street-smart (as the
chaplain certainly is not), Alex's repeated question, "What's it going to be then, eh?" can be
heard today from busy Mancunian shopkeepers. The bulk of Nadsat's vocabulary is based on
Russian, but loan words from French, German, Latin, and Japanese spice it as well.

As compared with other foreign tongues, few American and English readers bring even a
smattering of Russian to a reading of Burgess's novel. But the Russian words do what French
or Arabic cannot accomplish by conveying an atmosphere of oppressiveness, a feeling of
curtailed freedom and the fear of a toopowerful State ( Evans 1971, 409). Some of the sounds
of the Russian language, which are unfamiliar to the English-speaker's ear, grate and rumble
with menace. Such Nadsat terms as grahzny (for "filthy"), nozh (for "knife"), oozashny (for
"awful"), and tolchock ("a blow") conjure a world of dirt, blood, and chaos without
specifically describing it. Although Burgess never specifically states where and when the
action of A Clockwork Orange is set, the reader is left with an image of a not-too-distant-
future England that has been saturated with Soviet, as well as "friendly," propaganda. 13 In
fact, Burgess models his young thugs partially on Russian stilyagi, teenage criminals that he
encountered wandering the streets of Leningrad in the 1960s ( Coale 1981a, 88-89; see also
Burgess 1990, 26-27, 45).

The polyglot Burgess constructs several puns on homophonous translations and

transliterations. An excellent example of one such homophone is Alex's adjective for those
things he finds supremely pleasurable, such as large breasts, violent combat, and fast
cars--"horrorshow." The critic Elizabeth Brophy traces this word to its Russian root, khoroshó
("good"), which is pronounced in almost the same way; further, she notes that "what Alex
considers a good time is to the reader literally a horror show" ( 1972, 4). Brophy's assertion is
borne out in the following dialogue, in which another character puns on Alex's ignorance of
his imminent therapy: "'This must be a real horrorshow film if you're so keen on my viddying
[watching] it' [said Alex]. And one of the white-coat vecks [men]

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said, smecking [laughing]: 'Horrorshow is right, friend. A real show of horrors'" ( Burgess
1987a, 101). Alex's puns sometimes derive from creative twistings of English words, as in his
hobby, "ultraviolence."

Alex is given to repetition, most obviously of words: "righty right," "kashl kashl kashl," "flash
flash flash," "red red krovvy." Significantly, he also repeats phrases: for example, "What's it
going to be then, eh?" recurs as a frequent reminder of the choices involved in this novel.
Alex makes many of those choices: whether to commit good acts or evil ones; whether to
undergo the Ludovico Treatment; whether to continue his old lifestyle after being
deconditioned and freed. The reader, too, has many opportunities to choose, including
whether to sympathize with Alex, whether to accept the twentieth chapter or the twenty-first
as the "proper" ending for the novel, and (of course) whether to keep reading when the nature
of the protagonist and first-person narrator becomes clear. But the novel's repetition is not
confined to words or phrases. Images and events recur as well, reinforcing Burgess's key
points. For example, in the first section Alex orders his droogs to hold F. Alexander "so he
can viddy all and not get away" ( Burgess 1987a, 22) as the gang take turns raping his wife;
the second part finds Alex in the same position, strapped down with his eyes held open, so
that he, too, must suffer through watching a parade of horrors (101). Alex's first full day out
of prison in the novel's third section repeats his nighttime encounters of the first, with the
same characters and in the same order--only now they are the ones mercilessly beating Alex,
while he plays the helpless victim. Before going to bed after the opening night of
ultraviolence, the highest pleasure Alex enjoys is listening to the last movement of
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The second section finds him crying out against the "sin" of
accompanying conditioning films with Beethoven, this time the last movement of the Fifth
Symphony. The third part finds Alex, in the penultimate chapter, lying alone in his hospital
bed and fantasizing new violence while listening once again to the Ninth Symphony:

Other actions and themes recur in the individual chapters in much the same way that the
symphonies, which Alex loves, repeat certain motifs. For instance, each first chapter in each
of the three parts begins with Alex's going somewhere. . . . There is a fight scene in each of
the second chapters. Loneliness is the motif of the third chapters. . . . Dreams and nightmares
haunt Alex in each of the fifth chapters. ( Coale 1981a, 88)

Broadest of all is the repeated structure of the novel itself, three parts of seven chapters each,
all numbered from one and all beginning with the same question. Morris reduces this structure
to a Danteesque trilogy of "Alex damned, Alex purged, Alex resurrected" and warns that it
"can be taken, depending on one's predilections at the start, as the falling-rising pattern of
comedy or the risingfalling pattern of tragedy" ( 1971, 57). Without the twenty-first chapter,
the novel concludes as a comedy for Alex and a tragedy for the other characters, as he is once
again free to wreak havoc. However, "comedy versus tragedy" is neither the most appropriate
nor the most helpful critical dichotomy that the complete text of A Clockwork Orange yields.
When we compare the truncated version with the complete text of twenty-one chapters, an
entirely different division suggests itself. In the truncated novel, Alex is either free to choose
(and chooses evil), or he is constrained from choosing at all. At no time does his nature
undergo any change: he simply experiences both pain and pleasure. As the novel ends, he is

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his old horrible self again, ready to embark on a new series of cheerfully vicious adventures.
In the truncated text, Alex is simply a rogue and his story, a picaresque novel without
character development. But with the complete novel, the addition of the final chapter
inevitably suggests the bildungsroman, since we find Alex asserting that he is growing up and
is now determined to lead a very different life from what has gone before. In that sense, the
structure of A Clockwork Orange as picaresque novel is a closed circle, ending as it began. A
Clockwork Orange as bildungsroman, however, concludes in the beginning of an upward
spiral, moving beyond what has gone before. Nadsat reflects the difference between these two
structures, a reflection that appears especially evident in Pete's character.

Of all the adults in the novel, only those who constantly deal with teenagers understand
Nadsat to any degree. For example, P. R. Deltoid is a juvenile corrections officer whose
caseload includes Alex and (presumably) other young offenders. His exposure to so many
Nadsat speakers has given Deltoid a good grasp of the argot, so that when Alex attempts to
duck his accusations, Deltoid shoots back with "Cut out this clever talk. . . . Just because the
police have not picked you up lately doesn't . . . mean you've not been up to some nastiness"
( Burgess 1987a, 38). Deltoid even uses some Nadsat terminology himself, perhaps
unintentionally or perhaps to impress forcibly on Alex the fact that his criminal diversions do
not pass unnoticed. Deltoid calls prison "the barry place" and "the stripy hole," and he tells
Alex point-blank that the law is not far behind him: "[T]here was a bit of a fight last night,
wasn't there? There was a bit of shuffling with nozhes and bike chains and the like. . . . [and]
your name was mentioned" (38). Once Alex has been imprisoned, the guards know enough
Nadsat to make perfectly sure that he understands them: "[F]or the present, little droog, get
your bleeding gulliver down on your straw-filled podooshka and let's have no more trouble
from anyone. Right right right?" (87). When Alex is recovering from his suicide attempt, the
ex-prison chaplain who visits him speaks nearly fluent Nadsat, better than either Deltoid or
the guards: "I could not in no wise subscribe to what those bratchnies are going to do to other
poor prestoopnicks. So I got out and am preaching sermons now about it all, my little beloved
son in J. C." (171). 14 It is possible that these adults speak Nadsat only in Alex's retrospective
telling--that is, since he still uses Nadsat at the time of his writing, Alex may simply be
putting Nadsat words into the mouths of adults who did not actually use them. If this were the
case, though, we would expect to find more adults speaking Nadsat. F. Alexander does not
speak it, nor do Alex's parents, Joe the lodger, or the Minister of the Interior. In context, since
the only adults who speak Nadsat are those working in the penal system, it seems more likely
that Alex is remembering their speech accurately and that these authority figures actually
spoke Nadsat in order to more effectively dominate and control their teenaged charges.
One linguistic characteristic that Alex shares with no other character is his archaic
pronominalization, through which readers can accurately gauge Alex's readings of the power
relationships between himself and other characters. Julie Carson points out the importance of
Alex's pronominalization and even maintains that "it is with the thou/you pronoun distinction,
and not the Nadsat vocabulary, that Burgess indicates the significant changes in the central
character in the novel" ( 1976, 200). Certainly, Alex's use of Nadsat changes very little, while
his pronominalization differs greatly depending on how Alex perceives the

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balance of power between himself and others. Whenever speaking to people he views as
either beneath contempt (such as his victims) or subordinates (like his droogs), Alex adopts
the archaic familiar form of address--"thou,""thee," and "thine"--once considered appropriate
for speech between intimates. As Alex knows, the familiar form connotes superiority when
used for speaking to inferiors such as children ("O my little brothers") and servants ("my little
droogies), and the latter use is insulting when used in other contexts. The familiar form strikes
the modern ear as stilted and affected, but Alex enjoys a number of apparently anachronistic
things, such as his straight razor and classical music. He finds archaic pronominalization
perfect for insulting anyone whom he finds contemptible.

A telling example is Alex's speech to the writer F. Alexander during the gang rape: "[I]f fear
thou hast in thy heart, O brother, pray banish it forthwith" ( Burgess 1987a, 21). Alex's
challenge to his rival gang leader, Billyboy, indicates an uncertainty of social position--Alex
loathes Billyboy personally but respects his opponent as a fighter and a rival. Consequently
Alex mixes outdated and normal pronouns (and a pun, using "poison" for "person") in
delivering his battle challenge: "Well, if it isn't fat stinking billygoat Billyboy in poison. How
art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles
[balls], if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou" (15). 15 Alex hurls as many insults as
he can think of toward the police who have apprehended him at the scene of a murder he has
committed--but he addresses the "millicents" exclusively with modern pronouns, even when
spat upon: "thank you, sir, thank you very much, sir, that was very kind of you, sir, thank
you" (71). Even in the midst of his enraged misery at being betrayed and arrested, Alex
recognizes that the tables have turned and that he is no longer in a position of power. After
being brainwashed by the Ludovico Technique, Alex is unable to fight back, and his feelings
of powerlessness are encoded in his pronominalization. Alex uses modern pronouns almost
exclusively from the time he is released from the Ludovico Centre until he is deconditioned in
the hospital, even when speaking to people he had previously addressed in the older form.
These previous inferiors include Billyboy, Dim, his parents, the old professor whom he had
assaulted, and even F. Alexander. The only incident in which Alex slips back into archaic
pronominalization during his short-lived conditioned life proves to be his undoing. By using
outmoded pronouns when speaking to F. Alexander and the writer's political friends, Alex
inadvertently reveals himself as the leader of the gang that raped Alexander's wife (163).
After his attempted suicide, Alex is returned to his normal vicious self, and his outdated and
patronizing pronominalization returns in full force.

Frequently Alex places "like" in a sentence, usually satirizing himself for using a hackneyed
expression. For example, when Alex decides against slipping Dim a narcotic, he defends his
action by saying that "it was usually like one for all and all for one. . . . [T]hat wouldn't really
have been like playing the game" ( Burgess 1987a, 2-3). Similarly, when Alex describes his
gang's masks, he calls them "faces of historical personalities: . . . they were a real like
disguise" (9). Interestingly, Alex's use of "like" exactly duplicates the use of the word that
was coming into vogue in the real world at the time of the novel's publication, one of the very
few such similarities between Nadsat and the author's contemporary usage.

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The absence of early 1960s expressions in Nadsat is not accidental. Most dystopian writers
place their fictions in the near future, and literalistic critics have been quick to discuss
dystopian fictions in terms of how "accurate" the writer's "predictions" have proved. The
clearest example of this has been the critical cacophony that engulfed Orwell's dystopia in
1984. In order for dystopian writers to create didactic works of lasting value while locating
them in the near future, it is essential to avoid actual contemporary slang, since such usages
might jar future readers. As Burgess notes, "[I]t was pointless to write the book in the slang of
the early sixties: it was ephemeral like all slang and might have a lavender smell by the time
the manuscript got to the printers" ( 1990, 27). Burgess also builds verisimilitude by reflecting
the evolving nature of language. Nadsat is not the only slang used in the novel. Briefly, as
Alex recounts his two years in Staja (State Jail) 84F, he mentions one of his older cellmates,
Zophar, "a very thin and brown veck [guy] who went on and on and on in his like cancery
goloss [voice], so that nobody bothered to slooshy [listen]" (83). 16 Alex gives us one example
of Zophar's babblings, couched in what our narrator calls "all this very old-time real criminal's
slang": "'And at that time you couldn't get hold of a poggy' (whatever that was, brothers), 'not
if you was to hand over ten million archibalds, so what do I do eh, I goes down to Turkey's
and says I've got this sproog on that morrow, see, and what can he do?'" ( Burgess 1987a, 83-
84). Alex's ear is good, although his skill with language does not extend to appreciating other
slangs, especially those belonging to other generations. Here, too, Burgess introduces a note
of genuine linguistic development. As with most generational slang, Nadsat is dying even
while it seems strong. When Alex encounters two young girls in a record store, he finds their
language affected and ridiculous--just as Drs. Branom and Brodsky later react toward Alex's
Nadsat speech. Alex is only five years older than these girls, but already the jargon has
changed: "[They] had their own like way of govoreeting [talking]. . . . [As Alex played their
records] they went oh oh oh and said, 'Swoony' and 'Hilly' and other weird slovos [words] that
were the heighth [sic] of fashion in that youth group" (43-45).

Evans finds this evolution exaggerated "beyond all reasonable bounds" ( 1971, 409).
However, slang changes very quickly, and speakers can adopt or drop entire vocabularies in a
very short time. When Alex meets Pete in the coffee shop, Pete has only recently put aside
childish things. Consequently he finds Nadsat funny, but not in the same way as Georgina,
who is amused at the strange sound of Alex's slang. To Pete, though, Nadsat has become a
thing to be looked down on benevolently from the rarefied heights of first adulthood, a
position in which he is still insecure. Nadsat is the mark of the teenager in this novel. For Pete
to admit that he recently used Nadsat would call into question his newfound "grownup"
status--but to smirk at the language and at Alex for speaking it serves to confirm Pete's image
as an adult, both to himself and to Alex. This is despite the fact that Pete was himself a fluent
Nadsat speaker not even two full years previously and has no difficulty understanding his old
gang leader.

The conversation with Pete makes it clear that Alex himself is on the verge of dropping
Nadsat. His entire narrative is written from the perspective of a young man who has gone
through all the events he describes, including the climactic meeting and the decision to
fundamentally change the direction of his own life. From his frequent translations of Nadsat
words and reminders of how things used to be--"things changing so skorry [quickly] these
days and

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everybody very quick to forget" ( Burgess 1987a, 1)--we know that Alex has not yet
forgotten, but that he must hurry and record his adventures before he does so. Alex is about to
trade blood and poetry for "wine-cup and word-games," as his old droog has done (189).
Furthermore, we can guess what business Alex will find for himself by the existence of his
narrative. He will essentially become F. Alexander, and we have read his first book, which
also emulates Alexander in its title, A Clockwork Orange. Note the page of manuscript Alex
reads when his gang breaks into Alexander's "HOME": "The attempt to impose upon man, a
creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips
of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation,
against this I raise my sword-pen--" (21-22). Alex has written a book about just this attempt,
save that it has been an account of how "conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation"
were briefly imposed on him by the State--a conditioning that Alex, significantly, does not
resent after it is removed. This is a crucial point. In recalling his old fighting days, he
reminisces about using his "cut-throat britva [razor] which, at that time, I could flash and
shine artistic" (16). He has now put down his britva and taken up the pen in its place, and he
uses the latter instrument as skillfully as he did the former. The skill Alex uses to tell his
narrative reveals him trading one form of creativity for another. Given the existence of this
text as Alex's written narrative, one of Richard Bailey's comments on the novel seems a bit
odd: "The idea that 'illiterates' would shape the future of English recurred in the imagined
English of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange" ( 1991, 229). 17

But the razor, despite its keen edge, makes for a poorer weapon than the sword: Alex does not
emulate F. Alexander as completely as he might. While Alex's language "flashes and shines
artistic," it does not thrust deep into the heart of his story's larger dystopian implications. The
ending of the complete novel seems a happy one for all concerned, contrary to what the reader
expects in a dystopia. The State has protected its image by buying Alex's silence; ordinary
citizens are safe from Alex, since he has given up his life of freewheeling mayhem; and Alex
himself finds attractive the prospect of a quiet married life, as both husband and father. At
first glance, the only disquieting feature appears to be Alex's certainty that his son will
inevitably follow his path of violence--out of which, it is to be hoped, the boy will grow as
Alex seems to have done. The most shocking element of the last chapter is made significantly
conspicuous by its absence. For the first and only time, Alex's silence is more meaningful
than what he says.

By the time Alex comes to his epiphany in the final chapter, we have seen him completely
immersed in evil, inflicted both by him and on him. Yet he closes his narrative by dismissing
his own atrocities as nothing more than an unavoidable consequence of youth. His metaphor
is that of a clockwork toy, which, once wound up and released, moves in a straight line and
"cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky [small]
machines" ( Burgess 1987a, 190). Of the State's crimes in manipulating his mind for its own
ends, Alex says nothing at all. Despite the demonstrated artistry of his linguistic skills, Alex
gives the issue of evil only the barest scrape before concluding his narrative. Tilton takes note
of Alex's uncharacteristic silence and argues that it "unwittingly reveals his true, unalterably
evil self" since he is "oblivious to the evil he will never outgrow" (30). Tilton's 1977 study
 -71-

(published before the 1987 complete American edition of A Clockwork Orange) suggests that

the final chapter also clarifies and confirms the impression made by the truncated version that
the "humble narrator," no matter how reliably accurate and concretely exact his story, is an
unreliable commentator: incapable of comprehending his own evil nature, he is therefore
capable only of offering platitudes and dimly perceived half-truths about the nature of evil.
For in the final chapter Alex reveals an inability to grasp the implications of the content of his
story as surely as he is unable to grasp the implications of his style of narration. The content I
refer to includes the two major subjects of his story, his own acts of violence . . . and the acts
of violence committed by others, largely adults in positions of responsibility and authority,
which as well must be characterized as manifestations of evil. ( 1977, 30-31)

Tilton's comments on Alex's narrative also place A Clockwork Orange squarely within the
dystopian tradition, a place from which some critics have tried to evict the novel. 18 Viewed in
the light of Tilton's argument, Burgess's novel ends as grimly as Orwell's--possibly more so,
since Nineteen Eighty-four ends with Winston Smith a broken husk of a man, soaking in
clove-flavored gin and waiting for the inevitable bullet, while Alex saunters out of A
Clockwork Orange blowing "profound shooms [noises] of lipmusic brrrrrr" ( Burgess 1987a,
191) on his way to living a normal life as a solid citizen.

As Tilton ( 1977) points out, the content of Alex's narrative breaks down into two types of
evil. First, Alex does not seem to understand the enormity of the crime that the State commits
by conditioning him against all violence. While the State might attempt to justify itself by
pointing out the social utility of preventing Alex from committing more crimes, there is no
social utility in conditioning him against classical music, self-defense, and consensual sex.
Furthermore, he does not comprehend why the government might deliberately overstep its
stated goal of simply reducing crime. The State serves its own interests by essentially
removing Alex's individuality, by robbing him of the capacity to choose in any situation that
involves conflict or strong emotions. The idea that conditioning can never serve the needs of
the individual, but only the exigencies of the State, is not a new one in the dystopian novel.
Burgess's contribution to the development of the dystopia lies partly in the horrible nature of
his protagonist: surely, an appalled reader might argue, because he always chooses evil over
good, Alex has so thoroughly broken the social contract as to deserve being forcibly rendered
harmless. Alex is unquestionably dangerous, and he certainly deserves to be imprisoned, both
as a means of protecting society from him and as a way to punish him for the crimes he has
committed. If the State did no more than imprison Alex, this novel would not be a dystopia.
Yet the State takes the step of attempting to alter Alex's thinking, to literally prevent him from
even contemplating undesirable action. There are sufficient foreshadowings in the novel
indicating that the State has plans for the Ludovico Technique far beyond controlling violent
youths: while touring Staja 84F, looking for a test subject, the IntInfMin notes that "soon we
may be needing all our prison space for political offenders" ( Burgess 1987a, 92).

Alex matters to the State only as a test subject for its new conditioning program. Although
Alex overhears enough for the reader to determine what the State plans, he fails to understand
that he and other violent criminals are not the State's primary concern. By conditioning
common criminals like Alex, the State

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intends to score a public relations coup while at the same time marshaling its resources to deal
with political opponents. Alex sees some further clues that reveal the State consolidating its
power, although he still does not recognize them. He never wonders why vicious young
hoodlums like Billyboy and Dim are being recruited into the official police forces. As Alex
begins the Ludovico treatment and watches the first few violent film clips, he is pleased with
the quality of the images:

It was a very good like professional piece of sinny [cinema], and there were none of these
flickers and blobs you get, say, when you viddy [watch] one of these dirty films in
somebody's house in a back street. All the time the music bumped out, very like sinister. . . .
It's funny how the colours of the like real world only seem really real when you viddy them
on the screen. . . . [A rape scene begins and appears] real, very real, though if you thought
about it properly you couldn't imagine lewdies [people] actually agreeing to have all this done
to them in a film, and if these films were made by the Good or the State you couldn't imagine
them being allowed to take these films without like interfering with what was going on. So it
must have been very clever what they call cutting or editing or some such veshch. For it was
very real. ( Burgess 1987a, 102-3)

It never enters Alex's mind that what he is seeing may not be staged: that the blood and
screams might be real and not special effects. As the treatment starts to work on him, he says,
"I knew it could not really be real, but that made no difference" (104). How does he know?
As Alex recovers from his suicide attempt, the Minister of the Interior tells him that F.
Alexander, whom the Minister describes as "a writer of subversive literature," has been
denouncing Alex as the one who beat him and raped his late wife. But the "Min" hastens to
assure Alex that "you're safe from him now. We put him away" (177). As Alex walks the
winter streets just before meeting Pete, he describes his sensations as "something happening
inside me, and I wondered if it was like some disease or if it was what they had done to me
that time upsetting my gulliver [head] and perhaps going to make me real bezoomny [insane]"
(186). Alex does not know what was done to him during the deep hypnopædia that took place
whil he was unconscious in the hospital--he assumes that the doctors have simply removed his
Ludovico conditioning. Perhaps the State finds hypnopædia a more effective method of
brainwashing its citizenry, à la Huxley Brave New World, or perhaps the Ludovico Technique
is merely being refined and retested out of the public eye, somewhat more carefully. One can
hardly believe that the State intends to abandon its conditioning program after one misstep.
Still, Alex notices nothing amiss.

Second, Alex attributes his evil past solely to his youth: "all it was was that I was young. But
now as I end this story, brothers, I am not young, not no longer, oh no. Alex like groweth up,
oh yes" ( Burgess 1987a, 191). As he realizes that he is growing up, Alex puts aside violence
with disturbing ease. He ponders his misdeeds only once and is fatalistically certain that his
son's crimes will mirror his own, even to killing an old woman surrounded by her cats (191).
As to the rest of the violence he has perpetrated, Alex is mute: it simply has no meaning for
him. He feels no guilt and accepts no responsibility for any particular act he has committed.
Tilton's second observation applies here. Alex tells us his entire story in the past tense,
recalling it for us after his epiphany. But in exchanging the violence of the boot and the razor
for the violence of Nadsat, Alex the artist has merely changed his medium. The result is still

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violence, and if we find it beautiful where we found his crimes revolting, we will become
even more deeply implicated in Alex's celebration of evil: "there is in the content of Alex's
story an extensive range and variety of violence, both individual and institutional, that
establishes it as typical adult behavior. The content conveys the theme that adult man is a
creature of violence" ( Tilton 1977, 31).

This marks the crux of Burgess's dystopia. Real goodness requires freedom to choose between
good and evil. Burgess presents this problem to us in stark terms, forcing us to understand that
choice, not goodness, is the essential quality of freedom. Burgess reminds us that freedom is a
terrifying ideal, which demands that individuals must be able to choose evil as readily as
good. His dystopia depicts a society on the brink of trading away its uncomfortable freedom
for the peace and security of State control, which will certainly proceed from curtailing crime
to stifling dissent. Echoing Huxley, Burgess forcibly asserts that freedom may sound like a
noble ideal, but it also involves immediate and dangerous consequences. When Alex finally
gives up violence, he does so under his own volition rather than from imposed or conditioned
necessity. The Ludovico Technique constrains Alex to act in socially acceptable ways, but it
never changes the violent impulses he feels. The appearance of growth under the technique is
a sham, which, though sufficient to meet the needs of the State and boost its public "law and
order" image, actually prevents Alex from morally and ethically evolving on his own. What
the State calls "goodness" is politically expedient behavior. Conditioning Alex is the most
cost-effective way to show that the government is pursuing a vigorous anticrime program
(Alex's treatment and the press conference called to display his newly conditioned behavior
take place only months before an election).

" Burgess has attempted to confront readers with their own worst selves, to force them to
agonize over their inevitable failure to be what they ought to be-good men--an inevitable
failure because men all have a capacity for evil" ( Tilton 1977, 33). When Alex was young, he
knew he was free to choose between good and evil--and despite the fact that he chose evil
over good, he was fully aware of the difference and of the implications of his choices at the
time: "All right, I do bad, what with crasting [robberies] and tolchocks [blows] and carves
with the britva [razor attacks] and the old in-out-in-out [rape]. . . . [Y]ou can't run a country
with every chelloveck [fellow] comporting himself in my manner of the night. . . . But what I
do I do because I like to do" (39-40). As he tells his story, Alex remembers that when he was
free to attack others--or, at least, to contemplate doing so--he could clearly distinguish good
from evil. For example, despite the agony he undergoes during the Ludovico Technique, Alex
is outraged far more by the "sin" of coupling violent images with Beethoven's music than by
his own suffering (113). Now free to choose once more, Alex soon picks the good, in a
decision that seems all the more permanent for his having made it without duress. Burgess's
novel suggests that unconstrained spiritual development ultimately proves the only real
method of effecting a permanent change in outlook.

This necessity for free choice is brilliantly conveyed in Burgess's strikingly metaphoric title.
The author explains his choice this way:

In 1945, back from the army, I heard an 80-year-old Cockney in a London pub say that
somebody was "as queer as a clockwork orange." The "queer" did not mean homosexual; it
meant mad. The phrase intrigued me with its unlikely fusion of

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demotic and surrealistic. . . . During [the next] . . . twenty years I heard it several times
more . . . but always from aged Cockneys, never from the young. . . . The opportunity to use it
[as a title] came when I conceived of writing a novel about brainwashing. Joyce's Stephen
Dedalus (in Ulysses) refers to the world as an "oblate orange"; man is a microcosm or little
world; he is a growth as organic as a fruit, capable of colour, fragrance and sweetness; to
meddle with him, condition him, is to turn him into a mechanical creation. ( 1972, 198)

Burgess twice refers to this idea within the novel, first as Alex reads a page of F. Alexander's
overblown manuscript ( 1987a, 21-22) and then as Alex ends his narrative, fearing that his
son will be as violent as he has been: "nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers.
And so it would itty on [continue] to like the end of the world, round and round and round,
like some bolshy [big] gigantic like chelloveck [fellow], like old Bog [God] Himself . . .
turning and turning and turning a vonny [stinking] grahzny [filthy] orange in his gigantic
rookers [hands]" (191). F. Alexander, with whom Burgess is far from sympathizing, is correct
in this regard. Replacing the natural contents of the human spirit with the artificial reactions
of behavioral conditioning is indeed like filling an orange with clockwork mechanisms.
Hyman goes so far as to argue that "Alex always was a clockwork orange, a machine for
mechanical violence far below the level of choice, and his dreary socialist England is a giant
clockwork orange" ( 1969, 302). Elizabeth Brophy pursues the Russian connections of the
title by translating it into Nadsat as "Klok-vor Or-ahngel". In Russian, Brophy asserts, this
phrase translates as "Ragthief or Angel", a title she finds particularly fitting ( 1972, 4).

Removing his State conditioning does not make Alex an angel by any means. Significantly,
however, once the Ludovico Technique's "clockwork" has been erased, Alex returns to his
vicious ways only for a short time. Tilton's ( 1977) second point, that Alex has merely
changed his medium of violence, begs an important question. Tilton ignores the fact that
violent impulse rendered into violent language--in this case, into Alex's narrative--provides a
socially acceptable outlet for Alex's violent creativity. Morris compares Alex to Winston
Smith and argues that

Alex . . . is made "good" only by killing in him what was already the good. Both Winston and
Alex "die" when they can no longer love. Yet, if Nineteen Eighty-four is grimly conclusive in
showing the death of a mind and heart at the hands of the state, A Clockwork Orange is
equally effective in questioning the finality of the death. Burgess brings in (not for shock
tactics alone) one of the original archetypes through which Alex finds salvation: the fall, or in
this case, the jump. . . . [H]aving plumbed the depths, [Alex] can only rise. . . . [H]is try at
"snuffing it" becomes the last desperate exertion of a murdered will and, paradoxically, the
means to its resurrection. ( 1971, 73)

Alex finds his resurrection in language, but not in Nadsat. As a relic of his youth, that
language is still dear to him, but only as a means of presenting his narrative more honestly
and powerfully. The language he finds is instead the language of art, of narrative fiction. By
giving up his cut-throat britva for the writer's pen, Alex turns the story of what has happened
to him into a didactic warning against State-sponsored conditioning. If Alex differs from the
reader, it is not in his "capacity for evil," which we all share ( Tilton 1977, 33), but in his
having acted on that capacity to a much greater degree than nearly all his readers.

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Youth being like a windup toy, it is now time for Alex to learn to wind himself and move
around solid objects when necessary. 19 One might even consider Alex's narrative as his
retrospective view of a youth that he no longer completely understands, and which he regrets
to some extent but with whom he still sympathizes. Given Burgess's love of Joyce, we may
read A Clockwork Orange as a portrait of an artist--Alex--as a young man.

NOTES
1 The question appears four times in the first chapter of Part 1; five times in the first
chapter of Part 2; three times in the first chapter of Part 3, and twice in the seventh (and
final) chapter of Part 3.
2. Anthony Burgess [John Anthony Burgess Wilson]. A Clockwork Orange (1st complete
American ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1987). All subsequent references
are to this edition.
3. Hyman was so taken by Nadsat that he "could not read the book without compiling a
glossary" ( 1969, 302). Many American paperback editions of A Clockwork Orange
append Hyman's somewhat squeamish glossary to the text. James Guetti retorts that most
readers "do not share the literary critic's occupational appetite or anxiety for meaning of
this sort; probably if no glossary had been appended here, we should not have made one"
( 1980, 58).
4. This point is perhaps best illustrated by Stanley Kubrick's 1971 motion picture adaptation
of A Clockwork Orange. Beyond a few scattered usages, Nadsat does not make the
transition from the page to the screen. Burgess laments, "[M]y language cannot, however
brilliant the director, find a cinematic analogue" ( 1975, 15). Richard Schickel points to
the same weakness: "[ Kubrick's] problem . . . is to make up for [Nadsat's] absence by
finding some visual equivalent. . . . This he entirely fails to do, and the loss is
profound. . . . Kubrick works hard, not to say desperately, to compensate for the absence
of Burgess's language, but it doesn't work" ( Schickel 1972, 14).
5. Burgess asserts that his "publisher believed [the] twenty-first chapter was a sellout. . . . It
was bland and it showed a Pelagian unwillingness to accept that a human being could be
a model of unregenerate evil. The Americans, he said in effect, were tougher than the
British and could face up to reality. . . . Such a book would be sensational, and so it is.
But I do not think it is a fair picture of human life." (Introduction to A Clockwork
Orange, 1987a, viii-ix).
6. A more extensive discussion of the controversy, or at least Burgess's version of it, is
found in the second volume of his autobiography, You've Had Your Time ( 1990), on 59-
60.
7. Unlike with Nadsat, Kubrick's 1971 film realizes this point brilliantly. The fight
sequences in Kubrick A Clockwork Orange are carefully choreographed, and beautiful in
themselves--morbidly so, once the viewer guiltily remembers what is actually occurring.
Furthermore, depending on one's point of view, it can be argued that Kubrick either
distances or intensifies the film's violence by investing it with balletic qualities. For
example, Kubrick films the fight in which Alex punishes his droogs' insubordination in
slow motion against a minimal background of concrete, sky, and water. The characters
move fluidly, almost langorously. However, the act is unmistakably a violent one;
ultimately, Kubrick's cinematic techniques cannot duplicate Nadsat's buffer between
violence and viewer, and Kubrick (like director Sam Peckinpah) seems to be celebrating,
 rather than condemning, this violence.
8. "It is hardly coincidental that Alex's favorite piece of music is Beethoven's Ninth, rich in
dissonances that only the professional ear can detect, but also filled with as many
untapped, infinite (so it seems) harmonies. In a way it is easy to understand why musical
conservatives of Beethoven's time could find the Ninth

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'ugly' by the then rigorous harmonic standards and why, as a matter of fact, more than one
critic fled from the concert hall at the beginning of the 'lovely last singing movement.'
Alex's language is, in its way, ugly, too; but place it alongside the bland and vapid
professional or everyday language of the doctors and warders and chaplains and hear how
hollow their language rings." ( Morris 1971, 68)
9. But is Alex truly speaking as if to his equals or subtly insulting the reader as he would
anyone he holds in contempt? The use of the archaic form "O" (as in "O my brothers" and
"O sir") almost always occurs in exchanges between Alex and his perceived inferiors--his
parents, for example ( Burgess 1987a, 49). Alex calls his gang members "brothers" (4), as
well as his victims (6, 21), the hated police (12), and authority figures like Deltoid (37).
Does Alex address the reader as a "droog" and an equal, or as an "under?"
10. Pete's adult way of talking includes grown-up vapidities: "[Y]ou must," said Pete, "come
and see us sometime" ( Burgess 1987a, 188).
11. Burgess is even more direct in his Introduction to the Norton Complete Edition: "Nadsat,
a Russified version of English, was meant to muffle the raw response we expect from
pornography" ( 1987a, x).
12. " Burgess consciously created for Alex a poetic language: from the Russian he invented
groodies, he has said, because the word better suggests fullness and roundness than does
the English breasts; and the word plott for body sounds like a body being hit. This
onomatopoetic quality of Alex's language, precisely because it does seductively invite
readers to respond to its sound, is the major reason for my assertion that rather than
protecting one from the violence, the style Burgess created for Alex immerses one in it." (
Tilton 1977, 27)
13. The only concrete reference point we have in dating Alex's narrative occurs when the
gang assaults an old man near a library. While rifling his pockets, they discover a few old
letters, "some of them dating right back to 1960" ( Burgess 1987a, 7). Given the age of
the victim, we cannot be far wrong in placing the story sometime in the 1990s or shortly
thereafter.
14. Alex, too, is preaching a sermon. His story can be read as a confession in the Augustinian
mode that concludes with his disavowal of his earlier violence and a commitment to
living a new life free from crime. This reading seems an appropriate one given that the
writer subtitled both volumes of his autobiography, The Confessions of Anthony Burgess
( 1987b, 1990).
15. Carson finds it significant that when approaching police sirens break up the fight before
one gang clearly wins, Alex uses standard pronouns in his parting shot to Billyboy: "Get
you soon, fear not," [Alex calls]. . . . "I'll have your yarbles off lovely" ( Burgess 1987a,
 17).
16. Might the name of the prison be a quasi-homophonous reference to Orwell Nineteen
Eighty-four?
17. Bailey goes on to praise Alex's "rich array of Russian-influenced colloquialisms," but
argues, The most sophisticated linguistic aspect of A Clockwork Orange, however, is the
stylistic range of Alex's English ( 1991, 22930), which makes more sense.
18. These critics include, most notably, Robert O. Evans, in "The Nouveau Roman, Russian
Dystopias, and Anthony Burgess" ( 1987), and William H. Pritchard, whose essay, "The
Novels of Anthony Burgess" ( 1986) is reprinted in Geoffrey Aggeler's Critical Essays
on Anthony Burgess. Evans disparages the dystopia and argues, in effect, that since
Burgess does not portray an overtly political struggle in A Clockwork Orange, the novel
is not a dystopia; Pritchard draws the same conclusion, although he does not dismiss the
entire dystopian tradition in doing so.
19. This is he very same theme Russell Hoban utilizes in his first novel, The Mouse and His
Child ( 1969). The protagonists' quest is to become "self-winding," rather than depending
on others to help them. It is fascinating to speculate whether

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Hoban had read A Clockwork Orange before writing The Mouse and His Child and, if so,
whether this image might have, in some way, contributed to the shape of his fiction.

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5
The Evolving Nature of Dystopian
Languages
Other than their national and generic links as English dystopias, Huxley Brave New World,
Orwell Nineteen Eighty-four, and Burgess A Clockwork Orange share few surface
similarities. A cursory comparison reveals numerous differences in style, narration, imagery,
tone, and structure. Yet all three works satirize contemporary concerns in such a way as to
preserve their dystopian warnings for later generations of readers. A substantial element of
these novels's timelessness comes from their shared concern with language and freedom,
issues whose relevance has not faded. It is this shared concern that unites these three, very
different, novels as dystopias to begin with. Furthermore, despite their differences, one may
perceive specific shared structures and plot devices within these novels, devices that have
become standard tools for dystopian writers. Many of these tools revolve around language--
the best example being the interpolation of other fictional texts that directly affect the main
narrative. Finally, the centrality of language and its relationship to individual freedom and
State control constitutes the most comprehensive distinction between dystopia and science
fiction proper--a genre whose claims on the novels by Huxley, Orwell and Burgess are
otherwise numerous.
As Krishan Kumar has dryly noted, the majority of literary utopias "are not very distinguished
for their aesthetic qualities as works of literature," with such rare exceptions as More Utopia
and Morris News from Nowhere ( 1987, ix).

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There is a basic incompatibility between the utopian ideal's social priorities and fiction's
aesthetic concerns. A writer who concentrates on explicitly addressing questions of utopian
social polity inevitably sacrifices the affective power of fiction, while a writer who appeals to
the reader's aesthetic sensibilities must downplay the technicalities of how a utopian society
could function. Practically speaking, such a balance is difficult to achieve because of the
compromises that must take place to make a work equally successful as utopia and fiction. A
dedicated utopist is rarely willing to sacrifice a comprehensive description of a theoretical
society simply to keep readers interested, while a committed writer is generally reluctant to
bog down a well-paced piece of fiction with distracting utopian details.

While dystopian writers must reconcile the same opposing concerns of didacticism and
aestheticism, their task is considerably easier than for utopian writers. Elliott encapsulates the
difference between utopian and dystopian readability by quoting the twentieth century's best-
known fantasy novelist: "As a knowledgeable authority of our day, J. R. R. Tolkien, says in
The Hobbit, 'It is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to
spend are soon told about and not much to listen to' [ Tolkien 1987, 61]" ( Elliott 1970, 117).
Elliott leaves off the second half of Tolkien's sentence, which is even more to the point:
"while things that are uncomfortable palpitating [sic], and even gruesome, may make a good
tale, and take a deal of telling anyway" ( Tolkien 1987, 61). Dystopian writers rely on a
didacticism of fear by playing on readers's apprehensions--including fears of political
repression, encroachments on personal liberties, and threats to physical security. It is much
more effective to capitalize on a reader's existing fears (rational or otherwise) than
intellectually to persuade that same reader of a utopian scheme's practicality. While both
utopian and dystopian fiction work toward a didactic purpose, dystopia's lessons are more
readily taught because they are more limited and more easily achieved. A successful utopia,
by definition, must offer answers for society's problems: a successful dystopia need only
identify those problems and extrapolate one of them to monstrous proportions. In this latter
sense, dystopia may succeed while addressing a much narrower scope. It is not surprising that
the dominant metaphor in distinguishing between utopia and dystopia remains that of utopia
as dream and dystopia as nightmare. 1

In purely literary terms, dystopia's aims are closer to those of fiction than are those of utopian
literature. Where utopia appeals to reason, dystopia works on emotions. Despite the fact that
dystopia is "uncomfortable[,] . . . even gruesome," it is also, according to Northrop Frye, more
enjoyable than utopia because it must include both "wit or humor founded on fantasy or a
sense of the grotesque or absurd," and an attack on something ( 1957, 224). Frye implicitly
contrasts utopian literature's "pervading smugness of tone" ( 1966, 26) with dystopia's biting
attacks by asserting that "invective is one of the most readable forms of literary art, just as the
panegyric is one of the dullest" ( 1957, 224). Dystopian fiction gains a further advantage over
utopian literature in the lesser degree of plausibility it requires to remain affective. In order to
convince readers of a utopia's feasibility, the utopian writer must lay out a fictive society in
such a way as to counter as many of its readers's anticipated objections as possible. This
necessity traps a utopian work in a Hobson's choice: a utopian society that is only sketchily
presented will alienate readers who demand an exhaustive blueprint, while a thoroughly
detailed utopian culture will bore readers who are

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interested in what life is like for the characters living in such a society, rather than about its
construction. In any case, neither the most painstakingly crafted utopia nor the most
persuasive fiction advocating such a society is likely to sway readers who disagree with its
fundamental principles.

By contrast, a dystopia need not offer a complete history of how its horrible society has come
into being, nor how its leaders maintain their power. It is not even necessary to explain the
values and political ideals on which a dystopia rests in order to remain credible (although
some do so, most notably Orwell Nineteen Eighty-four). Consider Huxley Brave New World.
Although we know something of the World State's present political structure--power is shared
by ten World Controllers, whose authority is divided into geographical regions--no
information is given as to what political entities developed the structures by which the State is
presently constituted. This is also the case with Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, in
which the avowedly fundamentalist Christian state of Gilead is shown to exist, but like the
narrator Offred, we are told almost nothing about its origins and initial leaders. Yet these gaps
in our knowledge of Gilead and the World State do not detract from the horrifying power of
the respective novels. Finally, Elliott suggests another reason why utopian literature is rarely
as absorbing as dystopian fiction: "except at the most primitive level we lack a language and
conventions for depicting man in a happy state" ( 1970, 120). 2

Robert Scholes frames the balance between aesthetic and didactic goals somewhat differently,
between the two aims of fiction, which he calls sublimation (the process by which fiction
"takes our worst fears and tames them by organizing them in a form charged with meaning
and value") and cognition (characterized as how "fiction helps us to know ourselves and our
existential situation") ( 1975, 5). Utopia dismisses our current situation as inferior to proposed
social organizations, and therefore avoids Scholes's criteria for cognition: by playing on our
dreams and desires, utopia earns Scholes's tonguein-cheek "dirty and degrading" label,
"escapism." Too often, utopian literature fails to meet either of Scholes's criteria and is held in
slight regard, since "a work which accomplishes neither must be a bad fiction or no fiction at
all" ( 1975, 5). Dystopia satisfies both terms of Scholes's fictive equation by extrapolating our
contemporary "existential situation" into fearful shapes that we can safely confront and seek
to understand.

I do not assert that dystopian fiction is in every way more readable than utopian literature:
both genres suffer from poor characterization. However brilliant Huxley's and Orwell's
dystopias, neither offers fully drawn and wellrounded characters. Northrop Frye argues that
this weakness inheres in the genre and that the lack is made up for in the complexity of issues
with which dystopia can most effectively grapple. 3 Elliott goes even further: "[W]riters in this
genre make no attempt to create naturalistic human beings; their characters are stylized,
mechanical, flat" ( 1970, 121). In fairness to Elliott, who published this contention in 1970,
his point is accurate concerning Huxley's and Orwell's dystopias, in which the characters are
less meaningful than the societies they inhabit and less important as individuals than as
exemplars of the general fate. However, the argument weakens when applied to Burgess's
Alex, and it collapses entirely when faced with the strong characterizations of Offred in
Atwood's dystopia and Riddley Walker in Hoban's work of the same name. Frye's observation
that the dystopia "differs from the novel in its

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characterization, which is stylized rather than naturalistic, and presents people as mouthpieces
of the ideas they represent" ( 1957, 309) no longer obtains. However, before abandoning Frye
definition, we should explore which ideas the stylized characters in Brave New World,
Nineteen Eighty-four, and A Clockwork Orange "serve as mouthpieces" to articulate.

In all three of the works studied thus far, the main characters emphasize issues of language
and freedom. Whether a dystopia has a clear protagonist ( A Clockwork Orange), a single
main character ( Nineteen Eighty-four), or multiple characters of roughly equal importance (
Brave New World), all share a clear concern with language as the rebel's best weapon. That
this concern is voiced in very different ways only proves that Frye's ( 1957) distinctions
between naturalistic/novelistic characters and stylized/satiric characters is not a value
judgment. Simply because dystopia depends less for its success upon its characterization than
does naturalistic fiction, it does not follow that dystopian characterization is necessarily
inferior--provided good characterization serves the writer's didactic purposes. 4

At first glance, the characterization of Winston Smith in Nineteen Eightyfour may make him a
much more sympathetic character than the vicious Alex in A Clockwork Orange--despite the
fact that Alex is our first-person narrator as well as the protagonist, thereby allowing him
greater scope for depth and development than Winston. Alex does grow. In the complete
edition of A Clockwork Orange, he puts aside violence in order to take up the responsibilities
of maturity. Winston, on the other hand, is hunted, tortured, and spiritually destroyed.
However, there are few fundamental differences between Alex's and Winston's characters.
Both resist totalitarian governments that take no notice of the self other than to repress
individuality. 5 Winston and Alex both deliberately choose courses of thought and action
diametrically opposed to the orthodoxies of their governments. Alex is a criminal in the eyes
of the government because he threatens its control: his crimes matter to the State only because
they attract negative publicity. While Winston commits no real crimes, he expresses a
willingness to do so if it would loosen the Party's grip. 6

Nadsat places Alex within a generation from which it is known that most street hoodlums
emerge. Nadsat's distinctive sounds identify Alex to his enemies, including his parole officer
Deltoid. When he stumbles into F. Alexander's HOME after being beaten by Billyboy and
Dim, Alex goes unrecognized--until he accidentally drops into his archaic pronominalization.
Winston's speech is not as distinctive as Alex's, but he much prefers Standard English to
Newspeak. At a time when most Oceanians are attempting to work Newspeak terms into their
conversations, Winston eschews them. He tries to piece together bits of old language, such as
the nursery rhyme about the bells of old London's great churches. One of Winston's crimes is
keeping a journal, writing in a normal English that at times approaches stream of
consciousness ( 1982, 8) and at others, noble rhetoric (20). For Alex, Nadsat is part of his
resistance against the adult world, including the government's authority. He is capable of
using excellent Standard English--and he does so on several occasions, both before and after
his conditioning--but Nadsat is part of his unorthodoxy. 7 Ironically, Winston's preference for
Standard English displays an equal contempt for orthodoxy and indicates his willful resistance
to the Party.
In both novels, officially sanctioned language is suspect. Leslie E. Sheldon states that "though
Nadsat and Newspeak differ radically as languages they

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provide touchstones for profound spiritual impoverishment" ( 1971, 7). Sheldon is half
correct: Newspeak, if it fulfills the Party's plans, will certainly herald the virtual destruction of
independent thought and free expression. But Nadsat contradicts Sheldon's statement by
proving that there can be rich, complex spirits with lofty ideals even in vicious juvenile
criminals. Andrew Large interjects an important point: "While an a priori language is
composed entirely of invented elements not to be found in any existing language, and is
usually based on a logical classification of ideas, an a posteriori language is based on
elements of grammar, vocabulary and syntax drawn from one or more natural languages"
( 1985, 51). Under Large's definition, both Nadsat and Newspeak can be categorized as a
posteriori languages. Nadsat draws on many languages (mainly English and Russian), while
Newspeak is constructed entirely from elements of standard English. 8 The crucial distinction
is that Alex finds his expressive and philosophical freedom in an artificial language, while
Winston preserves his individuality from the mind controls of an artificial language. 9

The rebels and their concerns with language are singular creatures in both A Clockwork
Orange and Nineteen Eighty-four. Of the three rebel characters in Huxley Brave New World,
it is no accident that the two most convincing ones are those to whom language and freedom
are most closely linked. Shakespeare's language empowers John Savage to resist the cultural
sterility of the World State. Likewise, Helmholtz Watson's dissent is rooted in his newfound
respect for the power of language, a respect the State shares (although its respect is fearful).
Bernard Marx is an envious outcast rather than a dissident, as his shortlived social
prominence reveals. Between the Savage and Helmholtz, however, it is Helmholtz who
constitutes the most direct threat to the World State since his discovery of the power of
language has already begun to erode his conditioning. Mond is perceptive enough to
distinguish between Helmholtz, whose discovery of this power threatens the conditioning of
other World citizens, and the Savage, who simply adheres to an alien conditioning that cannot
affect others. The breakdown of Helmholtz's conditioning proves that the State's efforts to
guard against dissent are flawed, while John's rebellion merely confirms the World State's
view of the Savage Reservations as places where barbarous ideas still hold sway.

Of Brave New World's dissidents, then, only Helmholtz is a true rebel. He is the only one
whose conditioning has actually been overcome. Through Helmholtz, Huxley suggests that
even the most comprehensive scheme for conditioning an obedient population is vulnerable to
the power of language. Mond understands Helmholtz's dilemma, having confronted a similar
choice himself. But Mond errs by misjudging the depth of Helmholtz's motivations. The
World State works to prevent its citizens from having time alone to think, since such time
"gives a mind the opportunity to reflect and develop, something [the State] cannot afford.
Perhaps this, more even than the stated intention to consume things, is why the population are
kept so busy and happy" ( Baker 1990, 99). Yet Mond exiles Helmholtz to an island whereon
the fledgling poet will find an abundance of time to reflect, as well as other like-minded
dissidents with whom to (conceivably) plot a counterrevolution. Exiling Helmholtz will not
change his mind, nor will it remove his capacity for using language in subversive ways. This
is the same exile that Mond reluctantly gave up when his scientific research came into conflict
with the exigencies of the State ( Huxley 1947, 194-95), and the same exile he considers for
the author of a brilliant, but
 -83-

socially destabilizing, biological treatise (150-51). Mond, by his own admission, is a scientist
who could find satisfaction in pursuing science for its own sake--"pure science" (194). In
exiling Helmholtz, Mond forgets that while pure science can be pursued without affecting
others (at least in theory), literature cannot. Mond's mistake can be read as the failure of a
scientist to understand the power of literature, despite his appreciation of the old books he has
carefully preserved. For Huxley's novel to satirize the utopian ideal of science as universal
panacea, even the most enlightened scientist in the novel--Mond--is shown to misunderstand
the relative power of literature versus science. 10

Unlike Mond, Orwell's Party clearly understands the power of language and acts ruthlessly to
control it. But the Party's actions bespeak no love for language itself. On the contrary, the
Party hates anything that threatens its complete domination over Oceania, and language poses
the most direct threat. The Party covets the power of language while despising the necessity to
use language at all. The most important weapon in its arsenal against dissent is Newspeak,
which is intended to completely supplant Standard English in the mouths and minds of all
Oceania's citizens. 11 Yet the vocabulary of that language is designed to become smaller and
smaller over time. The logical (if absurd) conclusion would find Newspeak eventually
shrinking away into nonexistence. Of course, the Party constructs most of its repressive tools
around logical contradictions-all its central orthodoxies are oxymorons. Doublethink involves
"holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them"
( Orwell 1982, 142-43); "blackwhite" is the process by which the Party's most outrageous
claims are held to be straightforward and truthful while any opposing viewpoints are termed
deliberate deceptions; "duckspeak" makes nonsense out of any spoken opposition to the
Party's rule but glorifies a speaker who extols Party orthodoxy. "Of course the Party's position
is an exaggerated one, but this is satire. The actuality need not be so severe for the warning to
remain valid" ( Atkinson 1984, 18).

The fragmentation of the text offers ample evidence of Orwell's satiric intent. He does not
simply present the narrative of Winston Smith's rebellion and downfall, but interpolates what
seems at first to be extraneous materials ( Goldstein book and the Appendix on Newspeak).
The departures from Winston's story are even more jarring when we consider how Orwell
thrusts

the reader into his world directly, without introduction. The fictive device of Wells's Time
Traveller or Sleeper as well as all the other methods which utopia writers have used to bridge
the gap between the present and the future . . . are ruthlessly abandoned. The whole world of
Nineteen Eighty-four is simply treated as a given from the opening sentence of the book, and
the unprepared reader is forced to make sense of it as he goes along. . . . The society of the
future is initially presented as an emotional reality in the consciousness of the book's major
character, who is a citizen of that society. The train of thought we are asked to follow is
small-scale and experiential rather than historical and theoretical. Both history and theory
are there as well, but they come later in the reader's appropriation of the book. ( Zwerdling
1971, 100101; emphasis added)

Zwerdling ignores the fact that in Brave New World, Huxley had already abandoned the
Traveller or Sleeper in favor of opening in medias res. He is, however, correct in pointing to
the importance of our immediate identification with Winston's "small-scale and experiential"
story. The substantial excerpts
 -84-

from Goldstein's book interrupt that identification, and the Appendix undercuts its horrible
end. Zwerdling argues that these essays constitute:

an attempt to solve one of the perennial problems of Orwell's fiction: his deliberate use of
central characters whose awareness is more limited than his own. The disparity between the
mind of the author and the consciousness of his major character is, in effect, distilled to form
the essays. Orwell gives up the attempt to make emotional and intellectual sense
simultaneously and relegates the two aspects of his book to separate sections. He was aware
of the price of such a split yet could find no more satisfactory solution to this inherent
problem of didactic fantasy. ( Zwerdling 1971, 99) 12

While the inclusion of the Appendix only hints at satire, "its very extravagance and mocking
tone--very different from the tone of Goldstein's book--bespeak its satiric intent" ( Kumar
1987, 321). Kumar bolsters his case by pointing to such bitter statements as: "Ultimately it
was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain
centers at all" ( Orwell 1982, 203) and "it was to be foreseen that with the passage of time the
distinguishing characteristics of Newspeak would become more and more pronounced--its
words growing fewer and fewer, their meanings more and more rigid, and the chance of
putting them to improper uses always diminishing" (204). Imagine an Oceania in which the
Party, having wiped out the last traces of unorthodoxy, ceases using language! However, this
absurdity has some basis in historical fact. Roy Harris compares Orwell to the Greek
philosopher Cratylus, "whose logophobia was so acute that eventually, we are told, he
renounced the use of words as a mode of expression altogether" ( 1984, 17). Harris hastens to
note that, while Orwell is by no means as logophobic as Cratylus is reputed to have been, he
"seems to have suffered from acute fits of it . . . [and his] distrust of words at times bordered
on the pathological. . . . Newspeak was the public fantasy which gave fictional form to
Orwell's private nightmare" (17).

Harris further quotes Anthony Burgess, who described Orwell as "a word-user who distrusted
words," but added that "so, to some extent are we all" ( 1984, 17). The proof of this last
assertion lies in the extraordinary popularity that Orwell's satire has enjoyed, based on the
zeal with which readers have embraced his erroneous assumptions about language. Burgess's
comment also raises the question of how the Appendix relates to the rest of the novel. The
Appendix resists a quick integration with the other two elements of the text: using Burgess's
term, it is the least "trustworthy" part of the novel. A reader usually accepts it at first as an in-
depth, scholarly discussion of Newspeak; it seems divorced from the novel, which has
(apparently) already ended with the complete destruction of Winston's resistance to Big
Brother. In this sense, the Appendix may seem irrelevant or uninteresting except to those who
want a more comprehensive look at Newspeak. On closer examination, the Appendix softens
the bleakness of Winston's individual defeat by suggesting that the Party ultimately fails in its
efforts. Margaret Atwood points to this second level of understanding in defending her
inclusion of a similar interpolation (the academic conference) in The Handmaid's Tale: "Most
people think the book ends when Winston comes to love Big Brother. But it doesn't. It ends
with a note on Newspeak, which is written in the past tense, in standard English--which
means that, at the time of writing the note, Newspeak is a thing of the past" (in

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Hancock 1990, 216). There is much evidence in the Appendix to support this reading, and
Frank Winter makes the clearest presentation of such an interpretation in "Was Orwell a
Secret Optimist? The Narrative Function of the 'Appendix' to Nineteen Eighty-four ( 1983).
Based on the Appendix's use of past tenses and phrasing that directly includes the reader,
Winter posits an unnamed narrator who is looking back on the Party's failure while explaining
the features of Newspeak as an obsolete historical artifact. This is a much less common
reading of the Appendix (as Winter notes), which manages to salvage some glimmer of hope
from a grim novel.

Paul Chilton probes some weaknesses in Winter's reading, penetrating to a third level of
meaning from which to evaluate the Appendix. Chilton argues for reading the entire novel--
and especially the Appendix--as the key to a theory of language. Chilton does not posit an
"Orwellian linguistics," and in fact he criticizes Hodge and Fowler's attempts to do so. 13
Instead, he suggests that Nineteen Eighty-four is a satire as much on linguists and
lexicographers as it is on totalitarianism: "what [ Orwell's] politico-linguistic vision does,
implicitly, is exaggerate, make explicit, and reject certain features of a Saussure-like
conception of language, while contradicting others" ( 1983, 103). Language in Orwell's theory
is not arrived at by convention or contract: it is imposed by those in power. In particular, the
Appendix "can be read as a satire on a certain kind of hypothetical language, and on the
theory or myth of language underlying it" (100). For example, Fowler and Hodge's model of
an Orwellian linguistics is based on the theory of transformational-generative grammar, which
assumes a homogeneous speech community. Chilton retorts that:

The only homogeneous speech community is one created by political and physical coercion.
And it is static only in the fantasies of the Newspeak language managers. What the novel
depicts is linguistic conflict, and the process of linguistic imposition. The linguistic
divergences are, moreover, presented not as variant dialects (or codes, or registers . . .), but as
different languages. The socio-linguistic situation portrayed is the following: a rigid codified
language which is the preserve of an elite, and an oral vernacular (Oldspeak) which is spoken
by the rest. It is a kind of diglossic bilingualism reminiscent of the relationship between
Official Latin and Vulgar Latin in the later Roman Empire. More pertinently, it is reminiscent
of the linguistic situation typical of parts of the British Empire well known to Orwell. (103)

Against the prevailing notion that Orwell articulates something very similar to Whorf's
hypothesis, Chilton responds that Orwell undercuts such a theory, whether or not he was
actually aware of Benjamin Whorf's studies. Instead, the one-to-one correspondence between
thought and language (whereby a deliberate reduction of the former limits the latter) is
satirized as something that linguists and political leaders alike might fervently wish for, but
that does not, and cannot, truly exist ( 1983, 104). For example, Chilton stresses the second
half of this frequently quoted sentence from the Appendix: "It was intended that when
Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that
is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least
so far as thought is dependent on words" (198; emphasis added). This innocuous phrase
"seems to presuppose that it is possible to think without words: that is, it is denying that
thought necessarily requires words in order to form concepts (or perhaps that thinking is
actually a form of silent talking)" (104). The range of language or vocabulary cannot be
limited at

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all, let alone function as a tool for gaining and holding political power, unless such a
limitation is backed up by more forceful means of coercion--such as the telescreen, the
Thought Police, or the dreaded Room 101 (107). Chilton concludes with this observation: "In
his essay ' The English Language' Orwell makes it clear that the problem is to make the most
of the indeterminacy of language--its creative potential--in the face of the contrary tendency
towards the rigidity of cliché and simplification. . . . What needs to be pointed out is that
Orwell constantly blurs any distinction between language as an autonomous system and
language as an activity interacting with other activities" (110).

Given this view of language as ultimately uncontrollable, it becomes possible to reconcile

Chilton's ( 1983) confidence in the Party's eventual downfall with Harris's ( 1984) view of
Orwell as a logophobe. Orwell argues that language cannot be forced into a mold that serves
only a totalitarian state, but neither can it actively withstand the attacks that such a state
would make on individual liberty. For him, therefore, language is a dangerous weapon that is
very easily used in the service of reprehensible ideals. Atwood seems to agree almost
completely with Orwell's view. As with Nineteen Eighty-four, The Handmaid's Tale embeds
significant meaning in a text appended after the end of the main narrative (in which a
repressive state draws on language to help bolster its power, even though it does not expect
that language alone will conquer dissent). In light of Harris's comments regarding Orwell's
distrust of language, this excerpt from a longer interview with Atwood reveals that the issue
remains a crucial one for dystopian writers:

Hancock: "[Y]our own prose draws attention to more than just the story, with a character and
a particular situation. The prose itself says there's a problem of communicating through
language. It implies a distrust of words, that there's a distrust of language, that language is a
distortion."

Atwood: "Language is a distortion."

Hancock: "Do you mean we can't trust language to get through to 'truth'?"

Atwood: "That's true. Although I've used language to express that, it's true. I think most
writers share this distrust of language--just as painters are always wishing there were more
colors, more dimensions. But language is one of the few tools we do have. So we have to use
it. We even have to trust it, though it's untrustworthy." ( Hancock 1990, 209)

Atwood's assertion is borne out when one considers the fates of those characters in Brave
New World, Nineteen Eighty-four, and A Clockwork Orange who, consciously or
unconsciously, place their trust in language. Huxley shows Helmholtz Watson being sent into
an exile that will enable him to pursue his newfound muse. Helmholtz's position is enviable,
but the Savage--who was weaned on Shakespeare in a world where the playwright no longer
exists-destroys himself. The trust he places in Shakespearean language proves incapable of
helping the Savage cope with a world stranger, as Hamlet said, than is "dreamt of in [his]
philosophy." 14

Nineteen Eighty-four shows us four characters who depend on language: the lexicographer,
Syme; the poet, Ampleforth; Winston Smith, and O'Brien. 15

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Syme vanishes, despite his vociferous orthodoxy and passionate commitment to Newspeak
( Orwell 1982, 98). Ampleforth is vaporized for retaining an original rhyme in a Rudyard
Kipling poem during its "translation" into a Party-approved edition (153-54). Winston's job at
Minitrue entails elements of journalism (he rewrites newspaper articles), librarianship, and
fiction writing. 16 Despite his understanding of the lies he promulgates, Winston is proud to
have created the heroic Comrade Ogilvy (30-33). 17 On his own time, he becomes both a
diarist and a collector of oral history and folklore. Theo D'haen suggests that Winston's
preoccupation with language is reflected in his name, and calls Winston a "wordSmith" who
forges history "in both senses of the word" ( 1983, 45). Winston is eventually broken and sits
in the Chestnut Tree Café, drunk and waiting for death. Only O'Brien triumphs. Despite the
horror of what he stands for, he is curiously compelling, both to the reader and to Winston.
During the interminable torture sessions in which Winston is systematically destroyed-more
through O'Brien's words than through physical pain--the latter man alludes to the striking
similarities between himself and Winston: "Do you remember writing in your diary,"
[ O'Brien] said, "that it did not matter whether I was a friend or an enemy, since I was at least
a person who understood you and could be talked to? You were right. I enjoy talking to you.
Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane"
( Orwell 1982, 172). Winston's "insanity" is his inability to conform his thoughts, his
memories, and the evidence of his senses to the Party's dictates. O'Brien, of course, has long
since mastered these techniques. When Winston maintains that the past exists in human
memories and written records, O'Brien responds "We, the Party, control all records, and we
control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?" (165). Winston's (conscious and
unconscious) trust in language is betrayed, since on its own, language cannot save him.

In direct contrast to Winston, Alex's unconscious trust in language saves him from
destruction. This is not to say that conscious trust in language is the key to salvation for all the
characters in Burgess's novel. F. Alexander argues for language as the primary tool for
resisting oppression in his manuscript entitled A Clockwork Orange: "The attempt to impose
upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness[,] . . . laws and conditions
appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen--" ( Burgess 1987a,
21-22). These are noble sentiments, and yet their author is imprisoned without trial after
failing to exact revenge on Alex for the murder of his wife. The alcoholic prison chaplain who
weakly protests Alex's aversion conditioning finds it in himself to change, but only to the
extent of quitting his job and going out on the street to preach against the Ludovico
Technique. The fate of those characters who depend on language is as mixed in Burgess's
novel as it is in the novels of Orwell and Huxley.

A very clear distinction can be drawn, however, between what Harris and Burgess call the
logophobia that informs Nineteen Eighty-four and the linguistic exuberance of A Clockwork
Orange--an exuberance for which logophilia is not too strong a term. While Nineteen Eighty-
four successfully plays on the reader's fear of what words can do, A Clockwork Orange
frequently delights the reader with a linguistic fireworks display that has led even such an
unsympathetic critic as Robert O. Evans grudgingly to admit that "if only for their language
and techniques [ A Clockwork Orange and The Wanting Seed] make [ Burgess] a great
novelist. . . . His force is language. . . . This is the light, then, in which I think

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his dystopian works should be read" ( 1987, 264-65). 18 Coupled with Alex's undeniable
charm as a narrator, Nadsat's fascinating word games recall another of Frye's points that is
relevant to the dystopian genre as a whole: "The Menippean satirist, dealing with intellectual
themes and attitudes, shows his exuberance in intellectual ways, by piling up an enormous
mass of erudition about his theme or in overwhelming his pedantic targets with an avalanche
of their own jargon" ( 1957, 311).

Burgess is not the first dystopian writer to link the aesthetic joy of language with the
subversion of repressive structures. As Nineteen Eighty-four opens, Orwell notes the pleasure
Winston takes in beginning his diary. Not even the clear knowledge that the "decisive act" of
writing condemns him to certain death prevents Winston from enjoying the sensuality of
writing on creamy paper with an archaic, hand-dipped pen. Later, just before he and Julia are
arrested by the Thought Police, Winston marvels at the prole laundress singing in the
courtyard below their rented room. Her song is drivel, possibly composed by a machine-and
yet her lusty singing gives Winston one of his strongest flashes of hope that someday the
proles will destroy the Party: "In the end their awakening would come" ( Orwell 1982, 147). 19

But Burgess is certainly the first writer to present a successful dystopia narrated in an original
artificial language, without appending critical or interpretive apparatus. Nadsat and the
narrative are inseparable, and neither Alex's character nor the aims of the novel can be
accurately weighed without examining the language in which they are presented. Before the
reader finishes the first page of A Clockwork Orange, it is obvious that Burgess sincerely
believes that

words . . . come first; the meaning later, [perhaps] even not at all. . . . The nonsensepoem, the
hey-nonny-no lyric, the pleasures of doubletalk, the delight in strange or invented words:
condemnation of these by no-nonsense, say-what-you-mean-sir Gradgrinds misses one very
important, though non-utilitarian, point about language. All art springs from delight in raw
material; to play with the raw material of literature is a natural pleasure linking us with a
remote era that had speech but no language, but was perhaps finding language through delight
in speech. ( Burgess 1965, 14)

Clearly Burgess delights in the "raw material" of words. Nadsat is enjoyable for its own sake
as well as for its conveyance of Alex's narrative. It is necessary to master Alex's argot in order
to grapple fully with some of the serious philosophical questions posed by A Clockwork
Orange. But equally important is the joy to be found in new words and expressions, savoring
their alien sounds while discovering their meanings--meanings beyond mere definitions,
including overtones, connotations, double-entendres, and puns. Orwell recognizes the joy of
words and turns that joy on its head through the device of Newspeak. The philologist Syme's
grim panegyric on the culling of vocabulary parodies the pleasure that Burgess outlines in the
quotation. The joy of creating alien words belongs first to Burgess in the act of writing A
Clockwork Orange, and then to readers, who vicariously experience a similar pleasure as they
decipher the meanings of Nadsat terms. In Orwell's novel, readers also share vicariously in his
created language, but the predominant emotion is horror at Newspeak's evisceration of
English.

Few dystopias can equal A Clockwork Orange in the creation of artificial languages
simultaneously critical to the novel and fascinating in themselves. Perhaps the best example
of a recent dystopian novel that does so is RussellHoban

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Hoban's Riddley Walker (examined in Chapter 7). The similarity between the two is
immediately apparent: a young man--Alex is fourteen; Riddley, barely twelve--begins a first-
person-singular narrative in a language that, while alien to the reader, is obviously natural and
comprehensible to the narrator. Hoban is the only author since Burgess to construct a dystopia
narrated entirely in a unique artificial language. Still, there are other dystopian fictions
featuring significant linguistic hijinks that directly affect the reader's understanding of the
works. For example, Thomas Berger Regiment of Women ( 1973) opens with this paragraph:

The dentist's drill of the alarm probed viciously into the diseased pulp of his dream, and
Georgie Cornell awakened. His baby-doll nightgown was up to his sternum, exposing both his
pudenda--he never wore the ruffled panties, which chafed--and his thrusting breasts. His
member would remain tumid until he tinkled. He staggered to the bathroom in his bunny
slippers and did his business. (9)

America in 2047 is economically depressed, severely polluted--and boasts a society almost

diametrically opposed to the gender relationships that obtained in the early 1970s. Women
dominate society, but rather than reshaping it they have simply adopted men's gender roles
and forced men into the roles traditionally held by women. Every aspect of gender identity is
switched, with men wearing skirts, having breast implants, and suffering sexist degradation
from women, who wear facial hair and take advantage of the power inequalities between the
sexes. Berger explores the ramifications of sexual rhetoric, especially when such rhetoric is
reversed: the novel has been attacked by some critics for satirizing the feminist movement of
the early 1970s, while other critics have suggested that the world Berger depicts is entirely in
keeping with feminist ideology--an ideology made inescapable by the simple expedient of
switching roles. Brooks Landon argues that Berger constructs

a grammatical fantasy, a world in which the fantastic can be traced back to the reversal of
gender pronouns. Yet, with its ostensible kinkiness, Regiment of Women insidiously seduces
the reader into gradually realizing that all of its sexual vagaries stem from the even more
profound vagaries of the relationship between word and object. The attempt to describe this
book's basic inversions forces one to turn to the rhetoric of sexual normalcy and then to
realize that this rhetoric is no less outrageously artificial than is Berger's. In fact, the success
of Berger's gender reversal trick demonstrates that the English language has no developed
rhetoric of sexual equality, a point much discussed by feminists. ( Landon 1986, 72)

There is no artificial language as such in Regiment of Women. But while Berger uses only
Standard English, his gender reversal reveals the essentially artificial nature of a real
language's sexual rhetoric. If the book fails to fully explore its linguistic premise, Landon
suggests, it is only because " Berger plays with the rhetoric of sexuality more out of his
fascination with the mechanics of language than out of any indignation at its political effects"
(72).

A more common approach in dystopian fiction is that taken by Walter M. Miller Jr. , in A
Canticle for Leibowitz, first published in 1959, in which the reader's understanding surpasses
that of the characters within the novel. Long after a nuclear holocaust, the survivors
occasionally find scraps of old language that did not perish in the war or in the antiscientific
book burnings that followed. A Catholic monastery on the edge of a great desert that was
once a

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major city collects whatever bits of old texts it can find and preserves them for future
scholars. These scraps are totally incomprehensible to the monks, which explains the ironic
displacement that occurs when Brother Francis Gerard of Utah discovers a relic of Saint
Leibowitz himself: a note in the blessed saint's handwriting that reads, "Pound pastrami, can
kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma" ( 1969, 33). Francis is overjoyed at unearthing a
relic, while the reader is merely amused at his discovery of a shopping list. Hoban includes
abundant uses of this same displacement in Riddley Walker. The linguistic fun here lies in the
reader understanding the meaning of what the characters find, while the characters themselves
do not. But while readers are in on the joke, so to speak, such fictions also offer an
opportunity to look at our language in new ways. In a broader sense, this is the same mission
as that of dystopian fiction: creating what Philip Dick calls "the shock of dysrecognition"
( 1987, xv), wherein we see something familiar presented it in a startlingly different context,
thereby forcing us to reevaluate the original idea and the context from which it has been
taken.

In this didactic sense, for a dystopian author to play with language, or to use the language of
play, may have repercussions beyond the aesthetic joys of wordplay for its own sake. Alex's
language reveals his creative intellect, as an artist whose media are language and violence--
and by the end of the novel, exclusively language. The dislocation between the vicious crimes
Alex narrates and the ebullient language with which he describes them prevents many readers
from taking either Alex or his novel seriously or perceiving him as a character for whom we
must sympathize in order for the horror of his conditioning to resonate. Nadsat is both fun for
the reader and harmless to other characters in the fiction, while Alex may be fun for the reader
but is extremely dangerous to the other characters. The game is too close to the surface for
some critics, which has prevented them from looking beyond the deadly playfulness to
examine Burgess's more serious concerns. 20

Of course, playfulness--whether in language, characterization, plot, or any other aspect of

dystopia--and games are not necessarily connected. Recent applications of game theory to
dystopian fiction have yielded new insights into dystopia as a genre as well as into specific
dystopian works. Daphne Patai notes a strain of androcentrism running through Orwell's
oeuvre, which she discusses at length in The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology
( 1984). 21 Of particular relevance to the present study is Chapter 8 of Patai's book,
"Gamesmanship and Androcentrism in Nineteen Eighty-four." Patai argues persuasively that
Nineteen Eighty-four, and especially the relationship between Winston Smith and O'Brien,
can be thought of as a game, albeit a grim one with no hint of playfulness. The key to how
game theory informs Orwell's novel lies in the Party's "apparent rejection of the moral
justification for the exercise of power while failing to provide any substitute rationale" (220)--
that is, in O'Brien's statement that the Party "seeks power entirely for its own sake" ( Orwell
1982, 175). And as O'Brien forces Winston to admit, power can best be asserted (and,
presumably, enjoyed) by making others suffer, since "obedience is not enough" (177). Orwell
has been repeatedly attacked for this premise behind the Party's repression. 22 Patai points out
that this very absence of rationale can be explained by noting the single most important aspect
of games, which is their "gratuitousness or immanence"; in fine, they are "ends in themselves"
( Patai 1984, 221). 23 Events that shape Winston and propel him down the road to rebellion--
the revelation of the photograph, finding the room over Mr.

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Charrington's shop, meeting O'Brien and joining the nonexistent Brotherhood, and, certainly,
reading "the book"--are all steps in "an elaborate entrapment through which O'Brien creates
for himself an opponent of a better quality than the run-of-the-mill arrests provide" ( Patai
1984, 227). A game that one cannot lose is no longer a game: the possibility of loss must
remain, and as that possibility increases, the thrill of victory increases as well. The proles,
although numerous, cannot provide suitable opponents for O'Brien, nor even the raw materials
from which enemies could be created. The Outer Party, however, is a different story. This
explains O'Brien's willingness to spend years preparing Winston to be his ( O'Brien's) worthy
adversary ( Patai 1984, 224-26).

In passing, Patai notes another reason why Newspeak cannot fulfill the function intended by
the Party. While other critics have pointed out actual linguistic reasons why Newspeak cannot
succeed (e.g., Traugott and Pratt, 1980), Patai asserts that Newspeak actually works against
the goals that the Inner Party has set for itself, within the game structure she has identified.
Just as the Inner Party's control of life diminishes the chance for real opposition to take place,
there is a

similar contradiction at the very heart of the Party's policies [that] relates to the development
of Newspeak. When the world of 1984 has evolved further, when Newspeak is
perfected[,] . . . thoughtcrime will literally be impossible and there will be no thought at all in
our sense of the word. When this comes about, will the Party feel its power? Or its
powerlessness? The latter is the more likely outcome, for power requires the contrast,
something pulling against it, an obstacle to be overcome. Since power over others is
inseparable from domination, conflict is its necessary arena. How will O'Brien or his future
counterpart feel powerful when there is no opposition at all, when no one can even conceive
of opposition? ( 1984, 225)

Although she does not pursue the point, Patai identifies the "catch-22" situation in which the
Party has placed itself. If we accept that Newspeak cannot work as it is meant to, then the
Inner Party can never completely control the thoughts of those it represses--and therefore,
counterrevolution is always possible. What if Newspeak does successfully limit thought?
Given Patai's concept of the Party being driven to create its own enemies once it has
exterminated its naturally occurring opponents, Newspeak will inevitably frustrate this
process by rendering even Outer Party members incapable of rebelling.

But while Patai's ( 1984) argument is specific to Orwell Nineteen Eightyfour, and then only
briefly with the language issues therein, R. E. Foust has applied game theory to the entire
dystopian genre and reached several conclusions that revolve around language: he suggests
that "the political fable" of a dystopia is "essentially a linguistic game" ( 1982, 82). Following
Roger Caillois ( 1961), Foust examines four kinds of play in dystopian fiction, two of which
are issues of language. 24 "Structural games" are, broadly speaking, the shape of any dystopian
fiction in which an individual comes to oppose the totalitarian State. O'Brien explicitly calls
this definition to mind when he tells Winston that "this drama I have played out with you
during seven years will be played out over and over again, generation after generation, always
in subtler forms" ( Orwell 1982, 178). Foust's second type of play is the "thematic game,"
which is actually played between characters within the fiction. In Huxley's dystopia, for
example, there is elementary erotic play for children, which gives way to more advanced sex
games like the "orgy-porgy" for adults--not to mention a wide variety of

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sporting events like Obstacle Golf, Reimann-Surface Tennis, and Escalator Squash. The State
uses games as a social ritual to control the population. In Atwood Handmaid's Tale, the
repressed Handmaids vent their near-hysteria in a "Particicution" by tearing a "traitor" to
pieces, while in Hoban Riddley Walker, the Eusa Show enables the Mincery officials to
confirm their authority while searching for technological knowledge. 25

Language enters Foust's discussion in the "logos game," the third type of play he identifies.
Foust points to the self-reflexive nature of this game, in which totalitarian states "play with"
history by rewriting or repressing it in order to manipulate and control their populations. This
is "the strategy whereby the author most subtly enfolds the reader into the fiction," by clearly
showing how such states hide the true nature of what they are doing ( 1982, 85). That is, the
reader can see how much effort a dystopian state expends to eliminate history and memory,
while the average citizen of that state has no such insight. Far more than any other target, this
logos game means the wholesale destruction (as in Brave New World) or "revision" (
Nineteen Eighty-four) of written records. "The dystopian text draws the reader's attention to
the importance of language to both fiction and social action" through emphasizing language
as a political tool (Newspeak), diary-keeping ( Nineteen Eighty-four and Zamiatin We), and
even book burnings (as in Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451, 1953) (85-86). "In addition, the
dystopian novel's central preoccupation with books, records, manuals, documents, dictionaries
and history keeps the reader's attention focused on the centrality of language in the enterprise
of social evolution" (86). Finally, Foust points to the "anagogic game," which subsumes the
previous three types of games. In this language-based game, the absent author and the present
reader "play against" each other. The writer's goal is to subtly direct the reader into
"discovering" the truths of political fiction, while the reader, instead of simply being led, also
participates in the composition by considering all aspects of the fictive reality and dismissing
those that do not seem persuasive or meaningful. Perhaps without meaning to do so, Foust
here defines a "successful" dystopia as one in which an alert and skeptical reader is never
bullied into acceptance, but rather is unknowingly guided into making the discoveries that the
author wishes to have made:

The purpose of this linguistic play is to allow the reader to rediscover what he subconsciously
knows but tends repeatedly to forget: that utopia is a mental place, a vision of perfection that
is ideal only in the imagination. . . . Dystopian fiction is a memento mori aimed at utopian
hubris. It reminds us, as few aesthetic forms do, that civilization arises in and unfolds as play,
and that humanity can never achieve more than "a limited perfection." (87)

Foust concludes by explicitly recalling the warning aspect of dystopian fiction. Not only is
utopia unrealizable except in fiction, but "the usual result of the utopian quest for social
perfection has been pogroms" (87). The warning is inextricably entwined with language, both
explicitly and implicitly. If utopia is possible only in fiction, Foust suggests, dystopia is all
too possible in reality should a society actively seek to pursue the utopian impulse beyond the
pages of books. Dystopia exists as fiction and as language in order to prevent utopia from
jumping off the page onto the social planner's agenda:

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Dystopia, then, is a "logos game," a fiction which takes language for its subject and which
reminds the reader of the consequences of mistaking desire for reality, fiction for fact. By
presenting itself as the antithesis of utopianism, it demonstrates that utopia is realizable in no
place except the human imagination. The text plays out as a complex network of verbal
strategies--challenges, bluffs, counter-challenges, guises, false clues--that the author devises,
but that the reader completes. The dystopian novel can indeed be thought of as a game, but it
is a serious one since the stakes . . . are nothing less than the reader's political sanity. ( 1982,
87)

Embedded within Foust's discussion of dystopia we find a further means of distinguishing

between dystopian fiction and science fiction. If, as Foust suggests, dystopia "reminds the
reader of the consequences of mistaking desire for reality, fiction for fact" ( 1982, 87), then it
is very different from science fiction, which constantly asks the reader to imagine new
realities and to conceive of contemporary fictions as future facts. Nonetheless, there are so
many surface similarities between science fiction and dystopia that it is often difficult to
classify a work as one or the other. 26 But while science fiction seems able to handle many of
the same problems and concepts that dystopia addresses, its ability and willingness to
centralize language concerns lag far behind. Richard Bailey notes that "given Orwellian
anxieties about the future of English, it is surprising that fantasy literature has not more
frequently given this topic a prominent place" ( 1991, 227-28). Walter Meyers is disappointed
rather than surprised: "in general the treatment of linguistic change in science fiction is like
the sky on a hazy night: a few bright spots seen through an obfuscating fog. When we look
more specifically at the treatment of the future development of English, the fog does not lift" (
1980, 18).

Of course, there are science fiction writers-- Meyers's ( 1980) "bright spots"-who work to
make language part of their fictions, often with great success. Ursula K. Le Guin does so in
nearly all her fiction, most notably The Dispossessed ( 1975), another work that has been
discussed both as science fiction and as a dystopia. Similarly, John Brunner's Total Eclipse
( 1974) revolves around a linguist who must solve a complex problem in communicating with
an alien. In fact, Meyers uses Brunner's work as an example of what science fiction can do
when a writer tackles language problems head-on. Some critics have suggested that the
strongest element in William Gibson's "cyberpunk" fiction is his vivid "techno-prose," which
creates an alien, but comprehensible, near-future Earth:

Ratz was tending bar, his prosthetic arm jerking monotonously as he filled a tray of glasses
with draft Kirin. He saw Case and smiled, his teeth a webwork of East European steel and
brown decay. . . . His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there
was something heraldic about his lack of it. The antique arm whined as he reached for another
mug. It was a Russian military prosthesis, a sevenfunction force-feedback manipulator, cased
in grubby pink plastic. ( 1984, 3-4)

Gibson is by no means unique in skillfully depicting a strange society with a few well-chosen
words. In Linguistics and Languages in Science FictionFantasy, Myra Barnes examines a
number of science fiction and fantasy novels and concludes:

Among approximately thirty selections . . . not one was found to contain meaningless
gibberish that was purported to be a language. Although authors did not

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always explain the rules upon which the imaginary languages were constructed, it was often
possible to analyze the grammatical structure of the language as it was illustrated in
conversation throughout the book. Several selections contained a surprisingly complex,
thorough, and speakable language system. ( 1975, ii)

For the most part, however, language in science fiction is used as little more than set
decoration. It may be effective set decoration, and may even follow actual linguistic patterns.
Still, whether or not it conforms to linguistic practice, language itself is rarely at issue in
science fiction.

Richard Bailey ( 1991) and Walter Meyers ( 1980) are both sympathetic to the difficulties
inherent in merely trying to construct a plausible future language, let alone putting this
language at the center of a fiction. Bailey notes the "problem of intelligibility. However
clearly the future of English may be imagined, a contemporary audience must still find it
readable, and short patches of the invented new English usually suffice to give its flavor"
( Bailey 1991, 227-28). Meyers argues that a science fiction writer may safely assume that a
reader has been given a basic education in the physical sciences--sufficient to comprehend
fictive extrapolation--"but the situation is much different with language. Can the writer
presume that his reader knows how the laws of analogy operate in the development of natural
languages? Will the reader know what the phonemic principle is, or what a recursive rule is?
Almost surely not" ( Meyers 1980, 5). Meyers's point is well taken, but a skillful writer need
not assume extensive knowledge on the reader's part. Far too many science fiction writers
insult their audience's intelligence with such linguistic clichés as the "universal translator"
device, alien races who speak flawless English ("we have been monitoring your planetary
entertainment broadcasts"), and future Earth cultures in which language remains unchanged.
The first two of these concerns are thoroughly debunked in Suzette Elgin Native Tongue
( 1985) and Native Tongue II: The Judas Rose ( 1987a), examined in Chapter 6. On the
whole, twentieth-century dystopias have been less susceptible to these shortcomings.

Despite its substantial overlap with science fiction, dystopia has managed to avoid
marginalization as "subliterature," the prevailing critical judgment on science fiction that has
only recently undergone serious reexamination. 27 While there are a number of reasons why
dystopia has escaped this critical dismissal, one of the most interesting is rarely discussed.
Defenders of science fiction as serious literature confront the widespread belief that a work of
science fiction cannot be judged as comparable to other great literary achievements.
Complementary to this belief is the tendency of most critics, when faced with a genuinely
outstanding work of science fiction, to argue that the work in question is not science fiction at
all. Bluntly, this paradox of twentieth-century literature holds that "if it's science fiction, it
can't be good--and if it's good, it can't be science fiction." To date, there are no science fiction
novels which are at once widely known, universally acknowledged as science fiction, and
inarguably "great" in the opinions of a majority of literary critics. In Brave New World and
Nineteen Eighty-four, the dystopia is privileged to claim, not one, but two such touchstone
novels.

However, there is a fundamental disagreement between Huxley and Orwell's dystopic

archetypes: they rest on diametrically opposed views of the oppressor's motives. Brave New
World presents a totalitarian government that is truly concerned for the welfare and happiness
of its citizens and that justifies its repressive measures on these grounds. On the other hand,
Nineteen Eighty-four

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shows a government whose greed for power is as forthright as it is frightening. The Party
wants power for its own sake--O'Brien is disappointed in Winston's failure to grasp such an
obvious point. 28 All subsequent dystopian works may be located on a spectrum of motive
between the World State's smug paternalism and the Party's ruthless drive for omnipotence.
Both Huxley and Orwell satirize the utopian ideal, but Huxley finds utopia's dedication to the
happiness of its citizens at the cost of freedom sufficiently terrifying in itself, while Orwell
gives his Party a darker motivation. Irony can serve as the litmus test to determine which
paradigm a given dystopia follows: as irony increases, so does the likelihood that the work in
question hews to Huxley's model. The less irony it contains, the more likely the work is to be
cast in Orwell's mold. Of the other works under review in this volume, Elgin Native Tongue
novels and Hoban Riddley Walker hew closely to Brave New World's pattern of benevolent
oppression ironically described. In The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood Gileadean culture closely
follows Orwell's more pessimistic model: although the society she creates bears the trappings
of being a fundamentalist Christian state, its architects' naked drive for power is never in
doubt.

A Clockwork Orange treads a middle ground between these extremes. More accurately, it
vacillates between episodes that seem to follow Orwell and others that seem indebted to
Huxley. It is not always clear whether the government in Burgess's dystopia merely pays lip
service to the law-and-order ideals it articulates, or whether these ideals actually represent
attempts at improving society. The confusion is heightened by the inclusion of a number of
authority figures, all of whom disagree, and some of whom change their outlooks during the
novel. The Prison Governor, for example, cites an Old Testament concept of justice: "An eye
for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the
State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say
no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly
unjust" ( 1987a, 93). During the grotesque "graduation" performance, Dr. Brodsky and the
Minister of the Interior promise the audience of experts that Alex has been rendered incapable
of violence, which they present as a boon to society. But once the experiment backfires and
brings embarrassing negative publicity, the Minister comes to Alex's bedside to beg for the
young man's cooperation. The Minister intends his statement (177) to refer to F. Alexander
and his cronies, but it could just as easily apply to his own government. The prison chaplain,
who seems to genuinely object to the Ludovico Technique, admits to being unwilling to
sacrifice his career in order to live up to his moral ideals (94-96), and yet he does exactly this
later in the novel (171). F. Alexander, who seems to sympathize with Alex, is already hinting
darkly of Alex's political usefulness as a "living witness" before he discovers his guest's
identity (160-63).

The difficulty in determining the government's motives lies in large part with a literary device
common to most dystopias, one which can serve as another touchstone to distinguish dystopia
from science fiction. In Fyodor Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov ( 1880), Ivan
Karamazov describes to his brother Alyosha a "poem" he has written, in which he imagines
Christ coming back to Earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Although everyone immediately
recognizes Jesus, the Grand Inquisitor has Him arrested and imprisoned. In an impassioned
speech, the old cardinal excoriates Christ for giving humanity freedom and the promise of
heaven when what humankind really needs is happiness and bread.

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These things, the Inquisitor rails, are mutually exclusive: the people cannot be happy if they
are free. God's blessing is therefore a curse, since humanity is far too weak to rise to the
challenge of choosing salvation over bread. The Inquisitor exults that "we have corrected Thy
work and have founded it upon miracle, mystery and authority. And men rejoiced that they
were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift that had brought them such suffering was,
at last, lifted from their hearts" ( 1948, 36). Here we find the model for the World State in
Brave New World:

Yes, we shall set them to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their life like a child's
game, with children's songs and innocent dance. O, we shall allow them even sin; they are
weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We shall
tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we allow them
to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves. . . .
And they will have no secrets from us. . . . And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures,
except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the mystery,
shall be unhappy. ( 39 - 40 )

Numerous critics have discussed the importance of this episode in Dostoevsky's novel as a
blueprint for similar confrontations in dystopian fiction. 29 Kumar argues:

The mere recital of Dostoyevsky's fable is almost enough to establish its importance for the
modern anti-utopia. Take almost any anti-utopia written after the end of the nineteenth
century and the strong chances are that it will bear the imprint of the "Legend of the Grand
Inquisitor." It is not too much to say that, while not itself an anti-utopia, it is probably the
single most important text for the genre. Again and again, the scene in the dungeon between
Christ and the Grand Inquisitor was to be reenacted. It is there in the dialogue between the
Benefactor and D-503 in Zamiatin We; between the Controller and the rebels in Huxley Brave
New World; between Gletkin and Rubashov in [Arthur] Koestler Darkness at Noon; and--with
a horrific twist--between O'Brien and Winston Smith in Orwell Nineteen Eighty-four. Not just
the general form and tone but even many of the images and details are repeated. No one
seems to have been able to resist, in particular, Dostoyevsky's memorable picture of a helpless
and childishly happy people playing under the strict but benevolent eye of their all-powerful
rulers. ( 1987, 122)

All the dystopias considered here echo Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor scene, with the
protagonist eventually confronting one of the dystopia's rulers. In addition to those Kumar
mentions, Alex's destiny is changed by his three meetings with the Minister (a pale reflection
of Winston's torture at O'Brien's hands); Elgin's novels find the oppressed women of
Chornyak Barren House repeatedly confronting the Head of their Household; Atwood shows
Offred confronting her Commander through games of Scrabble; and Hoban sets up a long
conversation between the captive Riddley and Abel Goodparley, the Pry Mincer of Inland.
Dostoevsky's archetype remains predominantly unchanged, with one major difference. Christ
never responds to the Inquisitor's harangue. His answer is simply to kiss the Inquisitor, an act
of forgiveness that moves him to release his prisoner--but not to change his mind: "the kiss
glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea" ( Dostoevsky 1948, 45). As this
pattern is repeated in dystopian literature, the Inquisitor's monologue becomes a dialogue
between oppressor and oppressed. Such episodes not only serve as the climactic points in the
plot, they also permit the author to provide information concerning the

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dystopia that could not otherwise be unobtrusively introduced. For example, throughout
Nineteen Eighty-four, Winston continually ponders why the Party works so hard to seize and
maintain power. At the end, he gets his answer straight from O'Brien.

Two paradigms concurrently work to shape the narratives in these dystopian novels:
Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor model and the spectrum of motive between Brave New World's
altruistic Controllers and Nineteen Eighty-four's totalitarian Inner Party. If we accept both
paradigms, we should, therefore, anticipate a degree of similarity in these dystopias, perhaps
bordering on homogeneity. Instead we discover a wide variety of narrative styles and thematic
structures in the dystopian novels under discussion. While both paradigms have significantly
shaped formal characteristics of later dystopias, their influence over stylistic elements has
been much narrower. The stylistic richness of post World War II dystopias (of which those in
this volume are representative, if better-thanaverage, examples) is nowhere more clear than in
the differing ways each uses language.

Considering the three novels discussed thus far, the themes and style in Burgess A Clockwork
Orange owe very little to either Huxley Brave New World or Orwell Nineteen Eighty-four.
Huxley's theme revolves around how easily humanity can be effectively repressed and
manipulated provided the oppressors replace freedom with the panem et circenses of
immediate and unlimited sensory gratification. Orwell takes the different view that humanity
may be just as effectively repressed by hysteria, suffering, and paranoia. This is the view that
has been most readily borne out in twentieth-century history, filled as it is with ruthless
dictators, genocide, violence, and terrorism. Yet it is Huxley's view that seems more
workable, at least in theory. Neil Postman's seminal essay, "Amusing Ourselves to Death,"
invokes the thematic gulf between Orwell and Huxley in this way:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there
would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. . . . As
Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, freedom lovers who are ever on the alert to
oppose tyranny have "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for
distractions." In Orwell's book, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In
Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell thought we
would be marched single-file and manacled into oblivion. Huxley thought we would dance
ourselves there, with an idiot smile on our face. ( Postman 1985, 14)

Postman finds Huxley's vision more terrifying because more persuasive and, in his view,
more likely to succeed. 30 Indeed, as Postman goes on to argue, television--which he calls "the
soma of Brave New World"--"is transforming all serious business into junk" (15). 31

Stylistically, Nineteen Eighty-four is the bleakest of these three dystopias, in part because
Orwell's language is highly concrete and descriptive. The narrative remains firmly anchored
in Winston Smith's sensations and emotions. Horrific elements slowly accumulate, and as
they do so the portrait of Oceanic culture becomes increasingly grim. Roy Harris suggests that
the "doctrine of plain representation" (pace Ruskin) is "a language which, for certain topics,
makes plain representation in the verbal mode impossible" ( 1984, 17). Yet Newspeak is fully
described only in the Appendix, juxtaposed against which is an entire

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narrative, which is clearly told "in a plain way" (17). The opposition between the clarity of the
narrative (however unpleasant) and the obfuscatory repression of Newspeak could hardly be
more direct. Huxley employs a similar disjunction between the ironic tone of Brave New
World's narrative and the unself-conscious dialogue between characters. Even Mustapha
Mond's urbanity never equals the world-weary mocking tone of the narrating voice:

Bernard left the room with a swagger, exulting, as he banged the door behind him, in the
thought that he stood alone, embattled against the order of things; elated by the intoxicating
consciousness of his individual significance and importance. Even the thought of persecution
left him undismayed, was rather tonic than depressing. He felt strong enough to meet and
overcome affliction, strong enough to face even Iceland. And this confidence was the greater
for his not for a moment really believing that he would be called upon to face anything at all. .
. . Heroic was the account he gave that evening of his interview with the D.H.C. ( 1947, 81-
82)

While recognizing Burgess's debt to Brave New World and Nineteen Eightyfour, we should
note how differently his dystopic vision is expressed. Alex's first-person narrative and the
Nadsat in which he speaks become the style of the novel. The witty, creative narrative has led
Gorman Beauchamp to suggest that despite its "linguistic innovations," A Clockwork Orange
is "not really a fullfledged dystopian novel, perhaps not even a 'political' novel":

First, nadsat is primarily a parody of the exclusiveness and ephemerality of teenage slang. . . .
Second, and concomitantly, nadsat reflects the social-technological realities of the society
(which is but vaguely sketched) only in the sense that it demonstrates the alienation of the
young from the old. . . . Nadsat, that is, reflects the power structure only negatively, as one
"unofficial" discourse in an increasingly officialized society. The language of the official
power elite, on the other hand--the sort of language Orwell and Zamiatin limn for us--
concerns Burgess here hardly at all. ( 1974, 475)

Beauchamp begs the question by concluding that "to explain why (if an explanation be
needed) lies beyond the limits of this note" (475). Beauchamp's judgment is mistaken on two
grounds. First, the reasons he cites against Nadsat directly follow Orwell. If Nadsat is a
parody, so is Newspeak--a parody of governmental disinformation. Newspeak is "exclusive
and ephemeral," being limited only to the Inner and Outer Party, and undergoing constant
revision. Winston has difficulty understanding the Oldspeak of the proles just as Alex is
misunderstood by his elders. Newspeak, like Nadsat, "reflects the socialtechnological realities
of the society"--realities that include the necessity for deliberate self-deception, near-universal
surveillance, and a climate of paranoid hysteria. 32

Second, Beauchamp fails to take into account the thematic differences between Burgess and
his dystopic forebears. For Huxley and Orwell, the concept of a totalitarian state bent on
stopping the cycle of history is sufficiently repugnant and topical to need little further
elaboration. When Burgess comes to write A Clockwork Orange, deliberate repression alone
is no longer sufficient to sustain a dystopic narrative. Patricia Hernlund has noted that
violence and sexuality are much more explicit in dystopias beginning in the 1960s ( 1989,
99), a point that is clarified by considering the differences between the depictions of sex and
violence in A Clockwork Orange and the two older novels.

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Furthermore, while following Alex's violent escapades, it is easy to forget that Burgess is
deliberately re-presenting the question of free will in stark terms. 33 If we condemn the moral
wrong of Oceania's denying Winston's free will, we must condemn Alex's State for likewise
oppressing him. 34

Perhaps Beauchamp's reluctance to classify A Clockwork Orange as a dystopia lies in his

willingness to respect its "linguistic innovations" and to call it "a dazzling tour de force"
( 1974, 475). I am putting words in Beauchamp's mouth here, but his statement suggests an
aesthetic reason for denying A Clockwork Orange as dystopia. Nadsat is creative, exciting,
engrossing, and clearly unconstrained by exterior forces--all considerations that conflict with
our expectations concerning a dystopian narrative. The infantile vapidity of Huxley's state and
the brutal repression of Orwell's seem to dictate against linguistic creativity, both among their
characters and in their narratives. Yet Alex and his narrative are extremely linguistically
creative. In brief, might Beauchamp's position be founded on the idea that dystopia precludes
linguistic creativity on the part of a character?

This is clearly the case in Orwell and Huxley. Although we find rebellious major characters
who are professional language users, their linguistic creations are neither impressive nor
abundantly represented in the novels. We read a few of Winston's diary entries, but never any
of the work he pursues at Minitrue (his creation of Comrade Ogilvy is described, not given to
us directly). The same is true of Helmholtz, whose yearnings as a poet are represented only in
a few brief lines ( Orwell 1982, 153-54). The mordant wit of Brave New World and the
affective power of Nineteen Eighty-four proceed from narrative voices not centered in
characters within the novels, while Alex's creative voice completely dominates A Clockwork
Orange. Burgess's text marks a departure from the thirdperson omniscience of Brave New
World and the limited third-person omniscience of Nineteen Eighty-four. While language-
users continue to be the main characters in dystopian fiction, in A Clockwork Orange they
begin to speak for themselves in highly individualized narrative voices. Like Alex, Riddley
Walker presents a young man's view of his society in a cryptically creative language. Also
like Alex, who is our only source of information about his government, the state of Gilead's
"authority is seen only through [ Offred's] eyes--a context in which its pretensions become
more than a little ridiculous. 'Context is all,' Offred reflects at one point--and her narrative
goes a long way towards demonstrating the truth of this" ( Ferns 1989, 377).

What we witness here is a shift that occurred in the thematic and linguistic priorities in the
twentieth-century dystopia. Repression is taken as a given, but new motives for such
repression are introduced: politicoreligious ideals in Atwood, purely gender-based repression
in Elgin, and a desire for technological power in Hoban. Both Elgin Native Tongue and
Atwood Handmaid's Tale explicitly center on issues of gender and sexual equality, while
Riddley Walker uses mythologized technology and technological theory to question the moral
boundaries of knowledge and power. All these works follow A Clockwork Orange in putting
language at the very heart of their dystopic portraits; all but Elgin's novels are told by a
linguistically creative first-person narrator. Finally, all three writers place language issues
more centrally than did Huxley or Orwell. Judging by these texts, dystopia does not preclude
creative language, either as or within the narrative. All appear consciously indebted to the
dystopic power of Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-four, whose examples continue to

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resonate. Late twentieth-century dystopians have found that Huxley's and Orwell's dystopias
provide major themes, from which newer works explore variations and extrapolate new
visions. With the new, as with the old, issues of language continue to play a central role.

NOTES
1. For examples, see Bailey 1947, Kumar 1987, Hillegas 1967, and Walsh 1962.
2. Numerous critics have suggested that the dystopia has displaced the utopia in popularity
and effectiveness in the latter half of the twentieth century. The problem has been most
succinctly stated by Northrop Frye: "[T]here is something of a paralysis of utopian
thought and imagination" ( 1966, 29). Walsh concurs: "[T]o judge by the output and
quality of books dealing with imaginary societies, the utopian hope is declining and being
replaced by nightmarish apprehensions" ( 1962, 24). Might this widening inequity
between utopia and dystopia result in part from the choice by writers of a form in which it
is easier to succeed?
3. "The Menippean satire deals less with people as such than with mental attitudes. Pedants,
bigots, cranks, parvenus, virtuosi, enthusiasts, rapacious and incompetent professional
men of all kinds, are handled in terms of their occupational approach to life as distinct
from their social behavior. The Menippean satire thus resembles the confession in its
ability to handle abstract ideas and theories, and differs from the novel in its
characterization, which is stylized rather than naturalistic, and presents people as
mouthpieces of the ideas they represent." ( Frye 1957, 309)
4. Looking again at Brave New World, Krishan Kumar has suggested that the entire
dystopia is rendered ambiguous because of Huxley's insufficient characterization of
Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson. Both are misfits, and their existence proves that
the World State (despite its extensive fertilization and conditioning programs) does not
yet exercise complete control over its population. Yet their potential to reveal whether the
cracks in the World State "are merely superficial, the signs of minor failings which pose
no threat to the essential stability of Brave New World, or whether on closer inspection
they turn out to be symptoms of more profound fissures in the social order" is wasted
because they have been so shallowly drawn ( 1987, 278). One could argue that Huxley
deliberately refrained from presenting more complete portraits so as not to distract
readers from the inescapable power of the World State's conditioning. Making Helmholtz
a deeper and more sympathetic character risks changing Brave New World from a
dystopia--a satire-into a tragedy, which is not at all to Huxley's purpose.
5. The government of Alex's nation, as represented by the Minister, insists on orthodox
behavior fully as much as does the Party of Oceania. The only meaningful distinction
between the two governments is that the Party explicitly demands orthodox thought,
which can only be expressed as orthodox behavior--as O'Brien says to Winston, "The
Party is not interested in the overt act; the thought is all we care about" ( Orwell 1982,
168). But Party orthodoxy demands a constant mental vigilance that depends on such
willful self-deceptions as "doublethink," "blackwhite," and "crimestop". Conversely,
Alex's society urges its people toward conformity by encouraging their weaknesses: ease
and creature comforts are placed above intellectual or philosophical pursuits. All adult
citizens who are not sick or pregnant (36) must work--the State curtails the leisure time
that its citizens might use to educate themselves to the boring reality of their existence.
What Alex calls "gloopy worldcasts"--worldwide broadcasts of mindless entertainment--
have clearly displaced libraries, as shown by the sparse population of old men Alex
 encounters in the Public Biblio. The immediate arrest of F. Alexander also indicates how
Alex's State deals with those who disagree with its aims.

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6. Alex's misdeeds pale in comparison to the acts Winston agrees to perform:

"You are prepared to commit murder?" [asked O'Brien.]

"Yes," [replied Winston.]

"To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the deaths of hundreds of innocent
people?"

"Yes."

"To betray your country to foreign powers?"

"Yes."

"You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to
distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal
diseases--to do anything which is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of
the Party?"

"Yes."

"If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a child's
face--are you prepared to do that?"

"Yes." ( Orwell 1982, 114-15)

7. On the first point, "The most sophisticated linguistic aspect of A Clockwork Orange . . . is
the stylistic range of Alex's English" ( Bailey 1991, 230).
8. Walter Meyers notes that "surprisingly few stories that describe the future of English
hypothesize any sort of influence from other languages. When one does, however, that
other language is almost certain to be Russian. . . . Usually when Russian has some
influence on the future of English, it is limited . . . to the borrowing of words" ( 1980,
19). Meyers points to A Clockwork Orange as the most commonly cited example of such
borrowing.
9. I return to this point in the final chapter of this volume.
10. The Controllers know that their conditioning program is not infallible and that it can be
subverted--as shown in the plot of the feeling picture that Lenina takes the Savage to see.
A helicopter pilot suffers a mild concussion, which "knocks all [his] conditioning into a
cocked hat" ( Huxley 1947, 142). Without his conditioning, the pilot develops an
antisocially "exclusive and maniacal passion" for a Beta woman. While the feely ends
"happily"--with the pilot "packed off to an Adult Reconditioning Centre" (142)--the
Controllers seem concerned with physical trauma rather than intellectual challenges as
 threats to their conditioning.
11. All citizens, that is, belonging to the Inner and Outer Party: the proles do not use
Newspeak and are not expected to do so.
12. Later dystopian writers wrestle with the same problem, and many have taken Orwell's
approach of splitting their texts. Margaret Atwood Handmaid's Tale ( 1986) embeds
much of its satiric force in an Appendix, "Historical Notes on The Handmaid's Tale,"
while Suzette Elgin Native Tongue novels ( 1985 and 1987) contain Prefaces,
Appendices, and brief introductory materials preceding each chapter.
13. See Hodge and Fowler 1979.
14. G. Blakemore Evans et al., 1974. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act I, scene 4, 1, 167.
15. O'Brien is, after all, one of the coauthors of The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical
Collectivism ( Orwell 1982, 174), as well as the only character in the novel who talks,
even briefly, in "the hybrid jargon of the Ministries," which is composed primarily of
Newspeak words (112).
16. For a wider discussion of Winston as a librarian and what his position might mean for
modern librarians, see John C. Swan "Winston the Librarian" ( 1984).
17. As Norman Fairclough points out, "for many media workers, the practices of production
which can be interpreted as facilitating the exercise of media power by power-holders,
are perceived as professional practices with their own internal standards of excellence
and their own rationalizations in terms of the constraint of

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the technical media themselves, what the public want, and other factors" ( 1989, 54). See
also Herman and Chomsky Manufacturing Consent ( 1988).
18. Evans here explicitly reverses what he wrote sixteen years earlier: "[B]eyond the fire of
the words, as a humanistic document and a vision of the future[,]. . . A Clockwork
Orange is a failure, on artistic grounds probably and surely on moral grounds" ( 1971,
410).
19. Leah Hadomi takes a line from this song for the title and main thrust of her critical
article, "A Look an' a Word an' the Dreams They Stirred!" ( 1985). Hadomi links the
three dominant images of this line to three "symbolic clusters" that constitute the
foundation of the opposition between individual freedom and totalitarian repression in
Nineteen Eighty-four. She considers the "look in the eyes," "in which the open gaze is
opposed to the alienated stare"; "the word," especially when sung, in both popular tunes
and Party-generated political slogans; and dreams, since dreams of "reminiscence and
anticipation turn into nightmares" (73).
20. " Burgess barters even tentative answers for impressive technique" ( Morris 1971, 58);
"[C]ommentators hitherto have been so dazzled by the cleverness of the language with
which Burgess equips Alex that they have hardly wondered why he has done so"
( McCracken 1974, 432).
21. Patai's ( 1984) critique of the "canonical" George Orwell is both far-ranging and detailed;
 I discuss only one element of her argument here.
22. Isaac Deutscher's critique has been one of the most frequently cited:

[ Orwell's] distrust of historical generalizations led him in the end to adopt and to cling to
the oldest, the most banal, the most abstract, the most metaphysical, and the most barren
of all generalizations: all their conspiracies and plots and purges and diplomatic deals had
one source and one source only--"sadistic power-hunger" ( "The Mysticism of Cruelty,"
reprinted in Orwell 1982, 341).

Philip Rahv's view has also been influential:

Evil, far more than good, is in need of the pseudo-religious justifications so readily
provided by the ideologies of world-salvation and compulsory happiness, ideologies
generated both by the Left and the Right. Power is its own end, to be sure, but even the
Grand Inquisitors are compelled, now as always, to believe in the fiction that their power
is a means to some other end. . . . Though O'Brien's realism is wholly convincing in
social and political terms, its motivation in the psychological economy of the novel
remains unclear. ( 1949, 748).
23. Patai's ( 1984) assertion is not as easy to apply to other dystopias. For example, in Huxley
Brave New World games and sports are one of the World State's most important tools
both to keep the population busy and happy (thereby avoiding the destabilizing influences
of boredom, "free time," and solitude) and to consume massive quantities of equipment
(thereby keeping the State's industries humming). See Foust ( 1982) essay.
24. Caillois identifies four types of games: the agon, or competitive game of skill; alea,
games of chance; mimicry, performances; and ilinx, play meant to induce vertigo (e.g.,
carousels and roller coasters) ( 1961, 17-23).
25. There is, in dystopias, a substantial overlap between what Foust ( 1982) calls "thematic"
games and "logos" games, in which word games conceal much deeper levels of linguistic
meaning. This overlap is most clearly expressed in Hoban Riddley Walker ( 1982) and
Atwood The Handmaid's Tale ( 1986).
26. This is not a frivolous distinction, since the boundaries between science fiction and
dystopia remain murky. There are numerous works of science fiction that were strongly
influenced by dystopian themes, images, and structures without being full-fledged
dystopias. Examples include Jack London Iron Heel ( 1908), Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s , Player
Piano ( 1952), Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 ( 1953), Poul Anderson's "Eutopia" ( 1967),
John Brunner Stand on Zanzibar ( 1968), Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog ( 1969), Ira
Levin Stepford Wives ( 1972), SamuelDelany

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Delany's Dhalgren ( 1975), the five novels that comprise Doris Lessing Canopus in
Argos: Archives ( 1979- 1983), John Calvin Batchelor Birth of the People's Republic of
Antarctica ( 1983), William Gibson Neuromancer ( 1984), James Morrow's This Is the
Way the World Ends ( 1986), and Octavia Butler Parable of the Sower ( 1994). The
problem is compounded when one considers some works that can be equally well
understood as science fiction or dystopia: examples include David Karp's One ( 1953),
 Walter M. Miller Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz ( 1959), Vonnegut Cat's Cradle ( 1963),
and Harry Harrison Make Room! Make Room! ( 1966).
27. Reexamination has not always yielded respect. Crossley notes that when English
departments hire scholars who turn out to have a hidden interest in science fiction, many
"end up grateful for the enrollments the science fiction course generates; perhaps
somewhat fewer departments regard the research pursued by their science fiction
colleague as having weight or durability" ( 1993, 909). Ursula Le Guin blames close-
minded architects of the literary canons as well as sloppy science fiction writers who do
not bother to strive for literary excellence (909).
28. During his torture, Winston ventures the guess that the Party rules for the greater good of
its citizens. He is immediately agonized by O'Brien's machine as O'Brien says "That was
stupid, Winston, stupid! . . . You should know better than to say a thing like that"
( Orwell 1982, 174).
29. Chad Walsh calls the Grand Inquisitor "the patron saint of the dystopias" ( 1962, 103),
See also Robert K. Morris The Consolations of Ambiguity ( 1971), 59-60. Robert Bowie's
essay expands this consideration beyond the Grand Inquisitor scene on Dostoevsky's part,
and (to a lesser degree) beyond A Clockwork Orange on the part of Burgess. Dostoevsky
is invoked briefly by Brown ( 1988, 224) and by Steinhoff ( 1975, 222).
30. Postman's ( 1985) assertion recalls Elliott's distinction between anti-utopia and dystopia:
an anti-utopia brings happiness to its population by suppressing their freedom but not to
those who lead and administer such a society, whereas a dystopia suppresses freedom
without bringing any happiness to the population, other than perhaps the leaders and
administrators ( Elliott 1970, 97).
31. Perhaps even more frightening is Postman's insistence that television's threat "is not to be
taken as an attempt by a malevolent government or an avaricious corporate state to
employ the age-old trick of distracting the masses" ( 1985, 15). Thus we find ourselves
enmeshed in a dystopia wherein we repress ourselves, without even the scant comfort of
knowing that our oppressor is someone else.
32. "In fact the fulfillment of Newspeak has been, like its sources, literary and not linguistic
or political. Novels of the future now take more seriously the obligation to have a future
language. Yet when they do, their conception of it is often different from Newspeak in a
way that helps us understand the role of their language and Orwell's. The novelist-linguist
Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange . . . has a narrator who employs a youth jargon
called 'nadsat', but the variety is not official and it has no pretensions to universality; on
the contrary, his elders do not understand its speaker and he does not understand the argot
of those only a few years younger. Burgess is predicting nothing about the English of the
future, but he is satirizing something about the evanescent language fads of the present.
So while the role of 'nadsat' in the action of the novel is not like that of Newspeak, its role
in the satiric purpose of the author is." ( Bolton 1984a, 154-55)
33. Responding to the question, "When you refer to language as creative and stimulus-free,
that seems almost a paraphrase for free will," Noam Chomsky replies: Well, I think the
connection is appropriate. If you go back to the Cartesian period, a very explicit
connection was drawn between the creativity of language and freedom of the will. In fact,
Descartes regarded the free creative use of language as the most striking evidence for the
existence of another mind; that is, a mind that could exercise
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free will and thought and that was not constrained by mechanical principles, and so on. It
would be very nice to be able to learn something about the nature and exercise of
freedom of the will. That's what I would call a mystery: at the moment, intrinsically
beyond the bounds of human inquiry and comprehension. ( 1988, 24546)

Burgess, however, believes that this mystery is not beyond comprehension, and inquiring
into it is one of the main thrusts of A Clockwork Orange.
34. I am not suggesting that the State is wrong to imprison Alex--he deserves to be punished
for his crimes, and prison keeps him from perpetrating more atrocities. But when the
State finds it politically expedient to use the Ludovico Technique, it becomes at least as
immoral as Alex, if not more so.

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6
Language and the Feminist Dystopia
While capable of depicting terrifying societies, dystopian fiction is equally adept at focusing
on individual characters. Dystopia's versatility permits the foregrounding of almost any
critical issue. Burgess A Clockwork Orange grapples with pressing issues of the early 1960s--
rebellious youth, rising rates of violent crime, and a crisis of confidence in representative
democratic governmental structures. In the late 1970s, continuing fears of nuclear apocalypse
coupled with worries over the widening gap between technological advancement and moral-
philosophical progress formed the core of Russell Hoban's 1980 novel, Riddley Walker. By
the mid- 1980s, however, the dominant issues had shifted once again as feminism focused
attention on issues of genderbased oppression and the rise of the activist, politically
conservative, Christian Right raised questions about the separation of church and state.
Margaret Atwood interweaves these forces to create a terrifying dystopic society in her 1986
novel, The Handmaid's Tale.

As early as 1915, Charlotte Perkins Gilman Herland posited a utopian society inhabited solely
by women. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a huge increase in the number and quality of
similar works. 1 Such fictions have tended to explore concepts of the matriarchal feminist
utopia (as in Sally Gearheart The Wanderground, 1978), or androgynous utopian societies in
which gender roles have been thoroughly equalized ( Marge Piercy Woman On the Edge of
Time, 1976), or to view gender relationships in terms of contact between

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separate alien species ( Ursula Le Guin The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969). Few writers have
explored these issues in dystopian fictions, the principal exception being Le Guin The
Dispossessed. By contrast with these works, The Handmaid's Tale has enjoyed simultaneous
critical acclaim and popular success. Furthermore, Atwood (like Gilman, Piercy, and
Gearhart) is not considered primarily a writer of speculative fiction, unlike Le Guin.
Atwood is among the first writers--if not the first--to publish a critically successful and
popular dystopia in which women are oppressed more than men and the narrative is centered
within a woman's perceptions. True, female characters have often served as catalysts for
rebellion in earlier dystopias:

Just as the appearance of D-503's lover inaugurates his rebellion against the Benefactor [in
Zamiatin We], so are the roles of women in Nineteen Eighty-four and, in a somewhat different
way, in Brave New World, linked to the hero's increasing antagonism to the prevailing
political order. It is not until Margaret Atwood dystopia, The Handmaid's Tale, that this
thematic convention is fully exploited, although Charlotte Haldane Man's World ( 1926)
develops it in conservative ways. ( Baker 1990, 44)

However, none of these characters is fully developed, and their importance within their
respective works is based solely on how these women affect the male characters. Huxley
spends very little time developing Linda's character except to set up situations that explore the
conflict between her son John and the World State. Lenina Crowne functions as the "normal"
World citizen, in contrast to Bernard Marx and the Savage. In Orwell Nineteen Eighty-four,
Julia sparks Winston's hope and propels him into a more active rebellion, but her feelings and
fate are not explored. 2

The mid- 1980s also saw the publication of two dystopian novels by Suzette Haden Elgin ,
Native Tongue ( 1984), followed in 1987 by a sequel, Native Tongue II: The Judas Rose. 3
Elgin is a professional linguistics scholar whose publications include A Primer of
Transformational Grammar for Rank Beginners ( 1975) and several books exploring the
"gentle art" of verbal self-defense. Elgin's linguistic interests are strongly expressed in her
science fiction works, and most clearly in Native Tongue and The Judas Rose. 4 These novels
posit Láadan, a fictive artificial language deliberately created by women. Elgin has developed
this language beyond her fiction: in 1988 she published A First Dictionary and Grammar of
Láadan, thereby removing Láadan from a purely fictive context by suggesting it as a viable
artificial language--one that Elgin describes as "a language constructed by a woman, for
women, for the specific purpose of expressing the perceptions of women" ( 1988, 1 ).

Atwood connects dystopian oppressors and language primarily through the perceptions of
Offred, The Handmaid's Tale's first-person narrator. Offred frequently muses on the radical
changes in meaning of even the simplest words wrought by the Gileadean revolution. Like
Nineteen Eighty-four, The Handmaid's Tale ends with an Appendix that lies outside the
fictive world of Offred's narrative, and which profoundly affects an interpretation of the text.
Elgin employs an omniscient third-person narrative to explore the lives of the women of the
Lines, families of professional linguists whose translation skills maintain diplomatic and trade
relations between humanity and hundreds of alien races. Despite phenomenal advancements
in medicine, space travel, and the quality of life worldwide, the women of Earth have been
relegated to the legal

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status of minors, unable to control their own lives and affairs. Resistance is born when the
women of the Lines begin to create Láadan.

For both Atwood and Elgin, as with the other dystopian writers under discussion, language
remains perhaps the most important means of quickly immersing the reader in an
uncomfortably strange world while didactically forcing a comparison of the fictive society
with the real world surrounding both reader and text. Furthermore, it is instructive to compare
these novels as fictions. Although written at about the same time, Atwood's novel has earned
popular and critical acclaim, while Elgin's dystopia is not widely known. The gap between
these books's receptions is due partly to the stigma attached to any text labeled "science
fiction," and especially "feminist" science fiction. 5 Other important factors in this gap include
plausibility, tone, and aesthetic value. These issues are handled much differently in Atwood's
novel than in Elgin's books. Elgin frequently sacrifices dystopian satire in favor of
conventional science fiction plotting devices. One could categorize her Láadan novels as
science fiction with strong dystopian overtones. However, such a generic label ignores the
fact that the central issue of both Láadan novels is the deliberate oppression of women by
men. The science fiction trappings of alien contact, advanced technology, and space travel
merely set the stage for oppressed women to begin a secret resistance through an artificial
language. The dystopia's didacticism and cautionary messages are as fully engaged in Elgin's
novels (if not always as skillfully) as they are in Atwood's--or, for that matter, Orwell's.

The Handmaid's Tale is narrated by a woman whose real name is unknown to the reader. 6
She is called Offred, a title that expresses her existence only as a breeding slave: she is the
"Handmaid of Fred," her Commander. Offred's narrative is divided into fifteen named
sections, seven of which are entitled "Night." She frequently reflects on her role as a
storyteller, musing on her control of the material and the frequent horror she feels for what
she tells. A perceptive reader notices Offred frequently correcting her own choice of words,
especially tenses. 7 Her narrative does not seem consciously literary but rather more
immediately personal, like a transcription of spoken words. In the sixteenth and final chapter,
"Historical Notes", we find that this is exactly what the narrative has been. Like Orwell's
Appendix on Newspeak, the "Historical Notes" radically change our understanding of the
narrative.

In a near-future America, a surprise right-wing revolution has taken place in which most
government officials have been assassinated and the constitution suspended. Much of North
America is now known as Gilead. Although few details are given, Gilead appears to be an
authoritarian oligarchy, ostensibly set up along fundamentalist Christian lines. 8 Commanders
of the Faithful, as the members of the ruling male minority are called, control Gilead through
the Angels (regular army troops), Guardians of the Faith (paramilitary police), and Eyes
(secret police). Nor are these troops idle, since resistance to the revolution continues:
ironically, the greatest resistance seems to come from other Christian groups, including
Baptists. 9 African-Americans, known as the Children of Ham, are being forcibly "resettled"
into marginally habitable areas ( Atwood 1986, 83), while Jews have been given the choice of
conversion to "official" Christianity or extradition to Israel (200-201). Continuing purges of
homosexuals ("Gender Traitors"), physicians who once performed abortions ("Angel
Makers"), Catholics, Quakers, leftists, and other undesirables maintain an atmosphere of
constant terror.

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Human fertility has declined to such an extent that the Commanders institute a breeding
program modeled on a literal reading of the biblical story of Jacob, Rachel, and her handmaid,
Bilhah. 10 Women who have borne children are forced into service as Handmaids to the
Commanders and their Wives. Offred's marriage was ruled illegal, since her husband had
been divorced previously; her daughter was taken from her and placed in a Commander's
household, and Offred has been educated as a Handmaid at the Rachel and Leah Center
(known to its inmates as the "Red Center"). In monthly Ceremonies, the language of Genesis
30:3 is literally reenacted as the Commanders attempt to impregnate the Handmaids, who lie
between the knees of the Wives. Should a Handmaid deliver a healthy baby, "she'll never be
sent to the [radioactive wastelands of the] Colonies, she'll never be declared Unwoman [and
killed]. That is her reward" ( 1986, 127). Even such a grim "reward" is rare. To be sure, the
word sterile is forbidden (61). Furthermore, "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. . . . Give me children, or else I die. There's more than one meaning to it" (61).

Offred's remembering reveals herself and the society in which she lives. Roles for Gileadean
women are severely circumscribed: they are categorized "hierarchically according to class
status and reproductive capacity," and also "metonymically color-coded according to their
function and their labor" ( Kauffman 1989, 232). The Wives of the Commanders wear blue
and enjoy the few surviving perks of alcohol, cigarettes, television, limited travel, and each
other's company. Some Wives have children, either of their own, adopted, or conceived by
their Handmaids. Daughters are dressed in white, while the Handmaids wear red, as well as
winged headdresses that serve as blinders, preventing them from seeing or being seen easily.
Older women who are past childbearing age have been enslaved as green-clad Marthas,
domestic laborers in the Commanders's households, or as Aunts, zealots who train the
Handmaids and who serve as the primary shock troops in Gilead's efforts to keep its female
population under control. The Aunts' brown uniforms recall both Hitler SA ( Sturm Abteilung)
thugs ("Brownshirts") and Brownie leaders; Lorraine York calls these "the most tyrannical of
childhood uniforms to be found in Atwood" ( 1990, 9). 11 Some women serve as Econowives,
performing all the domestic and reproductive labor in marriages to less-powerful men. They
wear striped dresses that encompass the red of the Handmaids, the green of the Marthas, and
the blue of Wives ( Atwood 1986, 24).

More than anyone or anything else, Offred remembers old words that are now proscribed or
whose meanings have been rendered obsolete or heretical by the revolution, like free ( 1986,
54), sheepish (when describing men) (138), job (something women no longer have) (173),
networking (which women no longer do) (202), romance (262), and normal (282). Offred is
deeply sensitive to the importance of names and words. Her knowledge of how Gilead's
government works or how it seized power in the first place is very limited--but her
understanding of what the revolution has done to language is profound. We discover what it is
like to live in Gilead primarily from Offred's thinking about language.

Offred's long periods of boredom are interspersed with moments of exhilaration, terror,
curiosity, and regret. Shortly after Offred's posting with Commander Fred, her shopping
partner Ofglen says that she belongs to a

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resistance group whose name and password are identical: the distress call, "Mayday" ( 1986,
43-45). In her bare room, Offred discovers a message scratched into the varnish, apparently
by a previous Handmaid: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum (52). Although Offred has no
idea what this means, the discovery of a written message intended for her is heartening. The
most jarring change in Offred's routine comes when her Commander orders her into his study,
secretly, late at night. Of the numerous possibilities that she imagines, none are as strange as
what he actually wants from her:
"I'd like you to play a game of Scrabble with me," he says. I hold myself absolutely rigid. I
keep my face unmoving. So that's what's in the forbidden room! Scrabble! I want to laugh,
shriek with laughter, fall off my chair. This was once the game of old women, old men, in the
summers or in retirement villas, to be played when there was nothing good on television. Or
of adolescents, once, long long ago. . . . Now of course it's something different. Now it's
forbidden, for us. Now it's dangerous. Now it's indecent. Now it's something he can't do with
his Wife. Now it's desirable. Now he's compromised himself. It's as if he's offered me drugs.
"All right," I say, as if indifferent. I can in fact hardly speak. (138-39)

Offred returns many times to the Commander's book-lined study for more Scrabble, and it
becomes an accepted part of her visits that she be permitted to read, an act forbidden to the
Handmaids no matter whether the text is Vogue, Ms., Reader's Digest, Mademoiselle,
Esquire, Raymond Chandler, or Dickens Hard Times--all of which Offred enjoys in the
Commander's presence (184).

After the end of Offred's narrative we come to the final chapter, entitled "Historical Notes on
The Handmaid's Tale." These notes are "a partial transcript of the proceedings of the Twelfth
Symposium on Gileadean Studies" ( 1986, 299); the conference's keynote address is given on
June 25, 2195, approximately two hundred years after the events recorded in Offred's
narrative. In that address, Professor James Darcy Pieixoto explains the recovery and
transcription of The Handmaid's Tale from an oral diary kept on some thirty cassette tapes, a
longobsolete medium. We learn that the tapes were not numbered and that the text we have
just read is a reconstruction "based on some guesswork," whose order should "be regarded as
approximate, pending further research" (302). Furthermore, Pieixoto's assertion that "we had
to go over [the tapes] several times, owing to the difficulties posed by accent, obscure
referents, and archaisms" (302) points toward possible errors of transcription. Pieixoto's
annotations to this narrative are alluded to but do not appear in the "Historical Notes".

While the "Historical Notes" raise more questions about The Handmaid's Tale than they
answer, they do reflect attention back onto the text's important issues. Suzette Elgin integrates
prefatory and epilogic material with the texts of Native Tongue and its sequel, Native Tongue
II: The Judas Rose. Both books open with fictive Prefaces set far in the future, beyond the
early twenty-third century, in which the Láadan novels themselves take place. These Prefaces
serve to explain the publication of texts that purport to have been written secretly, hidden for
years, and anonymously submitted to groups capable of publishing them. Native Tongue's
Preface announces it to be a major publishing event for several reasons. It is a "limited
edition," which has been "printed and bound in the ancient manner"; the Preface goes on to
note that it "took almost ten years, and the efforts of hundreds of persons, [in order] to secure
the necessary monies and

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to find craftsmen with the necessary skills" to produce the book in this form. 12 Eventually, the
reader understands that publication in "the ancient manner" simply means that the book was
printed on paper, rather than "the traditional publishing media of computer-disc or
microfiche" ( Elgin 1987a, 5 ). The preface is set at a time "when the publication of as many
as ten books in a single year is unusual" (5). The text is also hailed as "the only work of
fiction ever written by a member of the Lines" (5). The story, whose authorship is attributed
simply to "the women of Chornyak Barren House" (6), "is the unique example from a
linguist" of life in the early twenty-third century, which was found and submitted by an
anonymous scholar. The preface is signed by " Patricia Ann Wilkins, Executive Editor," and
asserts that Native Tongue is a joint publication of . . . The Historical Society of Earth;
WOMANTALK, Earth Section; The Metaguild of Lay Linguists, Earth Section; The Láadan
Group" (6). 13 The Judas Rose opens with a very similar Preface by the same editor, who cites
the same organizations as joint publishers. This Preface again lauds the publication of the
work "in realbook form rather than in microfiche or chiplet." 14 The major difference is that
the publication of The Judas Rose has been paid for out of a secret account established by the
women of the Lines--which, given their legal status, implies some subversion of the
repressive social order through sympathetic male assistance.

If the Prefaces to the Láadan novels are very similar, their epilogic material is quite different.
Elgin appends a short glossary of some Láadan terms to Native Tongue, which is set quite
clearly in the time of the novel's publication: this glossary includes an Arkansas address, from
which readers can purchase A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan. This juxtaposition of
the present, the twenty-third century, and an indeterminate future well beyond that time
appears inelegant but is not necessarily an insurmountable problem in interpretation.
Unfortunately, the Epilogue to The Judas Rose directly conflicts with that novel's Preface to
the extent that the two appear to be completely incompatible--indeed, it is very difficult to
read both as being equally relevant to the text, except possibly as a built-in deconstructive
device.

Both books are told in an omniscient third-person narrative. From the very beginning of
Native Tongue,

readers are reminded that the text is a text--a form of discourse--by epigraphs preceding each
chapter, fictional but documentary-seeming extracts from a wide range of conventionally
nonfictional modes of discourse such as the U.S. Constitution, training manuals, examinations
on linguistic theory, folklore and song, church service readings, and so on. . . . Chapters . . .
consist of key episodes in the lives of central characters covering a span of roughly thirty-
three years but offering scenes dated from only nine of these years. Readers must imagine
whatever intervening narrative seems necessary. ( Bray 1986, 56)

Imagining the "intervening narrative" is comparatively easy, given the amount of background
information Elgin presents in these chapter-opening extracts. Earth in the early twenty-third
century seems like paradise. World hunger no longer exists, and the problems of racism,
overpopulation, pollution, and the arms race appear to have been effectively solved.
Humanity has perfected interstellar travel to the point that human colonies are spreading to
other habitable planets and asteroids. For women, however, Earth is hell, which is
demonstrated from the start, in Chapter 1, which opens with an excerpt from the

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Constitution of the United States. The Nineteenth Amendment has been repealed; the Twenty-
fourth and Twenty-fifth Amendments declare that since women are inherently inferior to men
because of "natural limitations," they are forbidden to "serve in any elected or appointed
office, to participate in any capacity (official or unofficial) in the scholarly or scientific
professions, to hold employment outside the home" without the written permission of "a
responsible male related by blood or appointed her guardian by law, or to exercise control
over money or other property or assets without such written permission" ( Elgin 1987a, 7).
Furthermore, women are relegated to the status of minors except when being tried in court
(7). These amendments are said to have been in force since 1991; the earliest chapter of the
narrative proper begins in 2179. While no other nation's laws are quoted, we discover that the
status of women around the world is essentially the same as in the United States.

Earth has come into contact with hundreds of alien races. Consequently, in order to establish
diplomatic relations, negotiate trade agreements, exchange scientific and cultural information,
and generally conduct galactic business, it has become imperative that human translators
attain fluency in alien languages. 15 All translation duties have devolved onto the members of
thirteen extended families, the Lines, which are, in turn, made up of households in which
every member is trained from birth as a linguist. Polite discourse calls them Linguists; most of
humanity contemptuously refers to them as Lingoes ( Elgin 1987a, 321). Each member of the
Lines speaks several Earth languages and multiple alien languages as well, including
extensive manual sign languages and body languages ("body-parl"). However, there are so
many alien races with whom negotiations must be carried out that in practice, there are rarely
more than three Linguists on Earth capable of understanding and speaking any given alien
language--and only one possessing near-native fluency. For this reason, the Linguists control
Earth's economy, which would collapse without their services. The public despises Linguists
and resents their substantial government subsidies. The popular image of Linguist families is
that they work a few hours a week and enjoy incredible wealth and luxury, but nothing could
be further from the truth.

From birth, children of the Lines begin learning several human and alien languages at once.
Infants spend hours each day learning languages from resident aliens. Long before puberty, an
average Linguist child attains fluency in at least one alien language and, usually, a limited
knowledge of at least two others. Every member of every Household in every Line spends the
bulk of each day translating contracts, treaties, and agreements with alien representatives
under the nominal aegis of governmental agencies. Any remaining waking hours are spent in
practicing other languages. While the Linguists' economic power and wealth are very real,
although largely untapped, 16 their reputed lifestyle is entirely fictitious. 17

The women of the Lines work in translation duties as hard as their male relatives.
Additionally, they bear responsibility for all domestic and child rearing tasks (marrying
around the age of fifteen, so as to produce the most children). While functioning as the male
Linguists's de facto professional equals--their intellectual labor being far too precious to
waste--the women of the Lines are even more thoroughly oppressed than the other women of
Earth. Their only freedom comes after menopause, when Linguist women move into separate
dormitories, caustically named Barren Houses. But within the Barren Houses, women are
secretly working on what they hope will be an avenue toward

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equality. They are constructing an artificial language intended to express women's

perceptions.

Native Tongue's main plot revolves around Nazareth Joanna Chornyak Adiness, whom it
follows from late childhood through middle age. Even by Line standards, Nazareth is a gifted
linguist: by her fifteenth birthday she had produced seven Encodings, more than most linguist
women produce in a lifetime. These are not standard lexical encodings in the linguistic sense,
by which objects or concepts are given names which in turn become words; rather, an
Encoding, to the women of the Lines, represents "a word for a perception that had never had
a word of its own before" ( 1985, 158). Although not reproduced in the text, Nazareth's
Encodings are said to represent the most substantial single contribution yet made to the
development of Láadan. For generations, the women have hidden this evolving language in
plain sight of their men, disguising it within a meaningless and cumbersome lexigraphical
experiment called Langlish. Driven by the memories of stolen freedoms--"the long ago time
when women could vote and be doctors and fly spaceships--a fantasy world for those
girlchildren, as fabulous and glittering as any tale of castles and dragons" (158)--the women
of the Lines believe that someday they will have a language of their own, through which they
will regain control of their lives. As is typical of a dystopia, these memories are supplemented
by secret caches of forbidden items, including records and information:

The forbidden books from the time of the Women's Liberation movement, that were permitted
only to adult males. The forbidden, cherished videotapes[,] . . . blurred and scratchy now, but
no less precious for that. All the forbidden archives of a time when women dared to speak
openly of equal rights. . . . That was by no means all of the secret and forbidden things that
were hidden in the walls and the floors and the nooks and crannies of this place where women
lived always without men. (124)

Most precious of all are the secret files that hide the language women are creating for
themselves; these appear as recipes to the untrained eye.

Impressed with Nazareth's brilliance, the older women look forward to the day when she will
join them in Chornyak Barren House, which she does at the early age of thirty-seven
following a double mastectomy. 18 To their surprise, she is not elated by the secret language
project, but disgusted: Nazareth sees clearly that the language has long been sufficiently
complete for it to be taught to the women of the Lines, beginning in infancy. Nazareth
overcomes their fears, especially the concern that male Linguists will discover what is
occurring and stamp it out. The process of educating little girls begins. The one male Linguist
who discovers Láadan and understands its ramifications is murdered by a nonLinguist
sympathizer before he can give the alarm; the rest, annoyed with wives, sisters, daughters, and
grandmothers who have become too cooperative, docile, and saintly to be endured, segregate
all Linguist women into their own separate living quarters beginning at puberty rather than
menopause--as Nazareth knew would happen. As she explains it to the other women, "there
was only one reason for the Encoding Project, really, other than just the joy of it. The
hypothesis was that, if we put the project into effect it would change reality. . . . [Y]ou
weren't taking that hypothesis seriously. I was" ( 1985, 296). As Native Tongue ends,
Nazareth and the other Linguist women are considering how to spread Láadan to women
beyond the Lines.

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As The Judas Rose ( 1987a) opens, Nazareth is still alive, but the narrative no longer centers
on her. The Linguist men are still the group most likely to discover, understand, and suppress
Láadan. However, they remain convinced that Láadan is really only another name for
Langlish--unaware that Langlish disguises the dissemination of Láadan. While Láadan
flourishes among the women of the Lines, the problem becomes how to teach the language to
other women. Ironically, the breakthrough is engineered by non-Linguist women. As a means
of expanding Láadan's vocabulary and exporting the language to other women, female
Linguists begin to translate the King James Bible into Láadan and to include translated
readings in their weekly devotions. These Láadan Bible readings eventually spread to
hospitals and nursing homes, and the language finally moves into female society at large.
Through a complex subplot involving the Catholic Church, a secretly renegade nun named
Miriam Rose oversees a process intended to "sanitize" the Láadan Bible's uniquely female
language, which actually produces millions of unaltered copies. 19 By the time the Church
discovers this act--which it dares not publicly acknowledge--copies of the Láadan Bible have
been distributed to women all over Earth and on most off-world colonies as well. Miriam
Rose, now safely dead of old age, is excoriated as the Judas Rose. The Linguist males, who
are amused at the Church's hoodwinking (and certain that the translated Bibles are merely
written in the useless Langlish) take no action. Nazareth, now a very old woman, enjoys the
satisfaction of knowing that Láadan has spread too far to be contained and that the process of
social change begun with the new language is now irreversible. On this hopeful note, the text
proper ends.

The Epilogue, however, raises new difficulties. It is a memorandum to the Council of the
Consortium, contextually a galactic legislative body in which humanity is the only sentient
species not represented. As the memo makes clear, all other intelligent races view Terrans as
barbarous, backward, and almost incurably violent. We discover that trade between humans
and aliens only appears free, since the Council permits trafficking in only those goods and
services it hopes will help humans evolve into a species that can be trusted not to destroy
itself. The memo decries the constant secret surveillance of Earth and its colonies. Instead of
assisting human evolution, limited trade has confirmed and extended humanity's gender-based
oppression. Human females, the memo argues, have advanced sufficiently to earn admission
into the galactic community, but the Council's actions have severely retarded (if not halted)
male social development. Further interference can only exacerbate the situation. The memo
therefore insists that the galaxy's united races must choose between two repugnant options:
placing humanity under strict quarantine and forbidding any contact with other species (until
the human race has either developed further or has destroyed itself), or simply annihilating all
humans as quickly and painlessly as possible. Since the first option entails forcibly
repossessing all alien technology, the end result would be to "abandon the Terran peoples to
deal with the messes they could never have created without our help--messes that we
ourselves are unable to deal with effectively" ( 1987a, 361). The memo offers one ray of
hope: a suggestion that some human females understand the changes that must be made in
society, are prepared to make those changes, and perhaps should be permitted to try (362).
This suggestion, however, is offered merely as an afterthought, not a proposal.

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Elgin's epilogue conflicts with her preface. If humanity teetered on the brink of destruction at
its own hands or those of aliens at the time of the narrative, but a group of human
organizations have published Native Tongue and The Judas Rose hundreds of years after the
events recorded in these texts, humanity must somehow have avoided such destruction. Did
the aliens indeed withdraw, after which humanity surpassed expectations by solving its
gender crisis? Were women given alien support to equalize human society? The question is
not answered within Elgin's novel. If gender inequality has been solved, as the Preface
indicates, then the Epilogue represents an empty threat. For instance, since the executive
editor named in the Preface is a woman, we may assume that Earth's social structure has been
equalized; furthermore, the fact that Native Tongue and The Judas Rose are sponsored by the
"Earth sections" of both "WOMANTALK" and the "Metaguild of Lay Linguists" ( 1985, 6;
1987a, 8) suggests that humanity has indeed taken its place as an equal among the galaxy's
sentient races, having (presumably) done away with gender-based oppression.
In both Atwood's and Elgin's dystopias, as with Orwell's, the reader must adjudicate between
the conflicting authorities of the narratives and their prefatory and epilogic metatexts. Such
conflicts reinforce the didactic purpose of the dystopias by compelling the reader to mediate
between them. Conflicted authority between the texts and their attendant metatextual
materials illustrates the dystopian struggle between oppressors and rebels over the terms of
telling reality. Without the addition of metatexts, the struggles become more difficult to
locate. In Huxley Brave New World, for example, the battle for control of the telling appears
so one-sided that many readers may not notice it. Atwood follows Orwell in adding an
Epilogue, while Elgin goes Orwell one better with Prefaces and Epilogues to both of the
Láadan novels. Orwell's influence is clearest in the function of these materials, which
complicate questions of narrative authority in order to foreground issues of power depicted in
the fictions themselves. Larry Caldwell suggests that Orwell deliberately "subverts the
programmatic nature of the main narrative" by embedding the narrative of Winston Smith
"within a larger pseudo-scholarly framework" ( 1992, 338). Caldwell goes on to note how
Atwood similarly subverts Offred's narrative, with a "more consciously reflexive,"
pseudoscholarly epilogue (340-42). (The same pattern of subversion can be noted within the
Láadan novels, including a similar critique of the scholarly mindset and its prose.) 20 Caldwell
argues that the difference between Winston's and Offred's sympathetic narratives and those of
the (fictive) scholarly Appendices illustrate how both writers find "the claims of academic
analysis incommensurate with the magnitude of the utopian problem"--and that both reflect
"an indispensable, perhaps profoundly organic dynamism which by its nature denies closure
to (hi)story" (340).

Oceania and Gilead seek to end the cycle of history by inscribing narratives "formulated for
stasis" ( Caldwell 1992, 341), thus freezing social development at the point most
advantageous to the oligarchs. These oppressors create official stories and stifle other tellings.
Caldwell points out that the Inner Party disguises their attempt at stasis as a "process," since
all official records undergo constant revision, which merely recasts the same lies (341). The
Inner Party are quite conscious of the futility of their goal: they seek merely to control the
telling, not to complete the story. Winston's perspective is inadequate in that, to him and to
the reader that attends only to his narrative, the Party appear grimly successful in their
attempt. "Orwell can only restore the dynamic by reminding

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us through perspectival indeterminacy that there are many ways to tell this story" (341). As
long as the possibility of other tellings and other stories remains, the Party cannot control
history. Orwell's Appendix reminds the perceptive reader that other tellings are always
possible and that therefore, totalitarian control of memory and history can achieve only
limited, ephemeral success.

The Commanders of the Republic of Gilead do not wish to give even the appearance of a
process but rather inscribe their regime as completely static. Instead of introducing a new
language, as the Party does, the Commanders work to remove language from their society. All
women (and, presumably, all men other than the Commanders themselves) are forbidden to
read and write, with the partial exception of the Aunts, whose zealous loyalty is unquestioned
( Atwood 1986, 129). Books and magazines have been systematically destroyed and are now
available only on the black market (159). 21 When Offred first enters the Commander's study,
she is shocked to see that "all around the walls there are bookcases. They're filled with books.
Books and books and books, right out in plain view, no locks, no boxes. No wonder we can't
come in here. It's an oasis of the forbidden. I try not to stare" (137). Until the Commander
begins their assignations, Offred has nothing to read except a cushion embroidered with the
word "FAITH" and her hidden Pig Latin inscription. Only the Commanders have access to
Bibles, from which they read to their assembled Households on Ceremony nights: "It is an
incendiary device: who knows what we'd make of it, if we ever got our hands on it? We can
be read to from it, by him, but we cannot read" (87). 22 Even the most utilitarian texts have
been removed. Shop signs bear pictograms of their wares instead of words: Offred notes that
she "can see the place, under the lily, where the lettering was painted out, when they decided
that even the names of shops were too much temptation for us" (25). Picture tokens have
replaced printed and minted money, with its numbers and slogans that Offred remembers
(173). As Pieixoto address in the "Historical Notes" laments, the Commanders do not even
trust each other with language: "The surviving records of the time are spotty, as the Gileadean
regime was in the habit of wiping its own computers and destroying print-outs after various
purges and internal upheavals" (303-4). Pieixoto also uncovers a chilling statement made by
one of the two men who may have been Offred's Commander: "Our big mistake was teaching
them to read. We won't do that again" (307).

Despite the Commanders's efforts to reclaim "history as a static, genderinscribed narrative"--

or, possibly, because of their efforts--Offred emerges as an engaging, sympathetic storyteller
who is "intensely aware that she is telling a story, one with a potential infinitude of
permutations" ( Caldwell 1992, 34041). 23 Glenn Deer praises Offred as "a powerful user of
language, a poet and rhetorician who presents in a strategic way the horrors perpetrated by the
Gileadean regime" ( 1992, 231). Atwood sharpens the stylistic contrast between The
Handmaid's Tale and Nineteen Eighty-four by separating an (apparently) first-person
narrative from a third-person transcription in the Epilogue, while Orwell maintains two third-
person narratives. Offred continually muses on her task as a storyteller, frequently recasting a
story that she has just told--for example, her first tryst with Nick, which she describes,
recants, and describes again before asserting that "it didn't happen that way either. I'm not sure
how it happened; not exactly. All I can hope for is a reconstruction" ( 1986, 263). She corrects
her past tenses, as if speaking of the disappeared in the present tense

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may keep them alive--"[Moira] was still my oldest friend. Is" (173)--and to distinguish her
actions from things done to her--"Yesterday morning I went to the doctor. Was taken . . ."
(59). Offred understands that the act of telling inscribes a reality and that the teller therefore
controls reality through her language and the story she tells, no matter to whom. But unlike
the Gileadean regime, she also understands that telling cannot silence other stories and that
her telling a story is only an attempt to create a different reality:

I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those
who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it's a story I'm
telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real
life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off. It isn't a story I'm telling. It's also a story
I'm telling, in my head, as I go along. Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write
with and writing is in any case forbidden. But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling
it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even
when there is no one. . . . I'll pretend you can hear me. But it's no good, because I know you
can't. (39-40)
Offred becomes more aware of the contingencies of telling as she gets deeper into her
narrative. She becomes less concerned with controlling the story, with closure, and more
concerned with simply existing and being able to speak at all. Language cannot create a
reality for her, but she can use it to try to hold on to stories she treasures:

When I get out of here, if I'm ever able to set this down, in any form, even in the form of one
voice to another, it will be a reconstruction then too, at yet another remove. It's impossible to
say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have
to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many
gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described,
too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many. (134)

As we discover in the "Historical Notes", she does tell her story "in the form of one voice" by
recording on cassettes. Nor does Offred control this telling, since it is yet another
reconstruction removed from her by two hundred years of time, from her singularity and her
gender by a pair of male scholars, and from her personal involvement by their
hyperintellectualized "objective" distance. Caldwell is not the first critic to point out the
radical discontinuity in tone between Offred's narrative and the "Historical Notes", especially
Pieixoto's keynote address to the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies. 24 Following
Offred's highly affective tale of horror, Pieixoto's pomposity and leaden sexist jokes seem
deliberately self-deluding. Drivel gives way to dangerous moral relativism as Pieixoto all but
absolves Gilead's leaders of responsibility for their brutal repression:

If I may be permitted an editorial aside, allow me to say that in my opinion we must be

cautious about passing moral judgment upon the Gileadeans. Surely we have learned by now
that such judgments are of necessity culture-specific. Also, Gileadean society was under a
good deal of pressure, demographic and otherwise, and was subject to factors from which we
ourselves are happily more free. Our job is not to censure but to understand. (302)

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Even more terrifying is the transcribed applause that meets Pieixoto's "aside" (302).

Elgin's Láadan novels present several points of view within the story, all filtered through a
detached, third-person narrative voice. Like Atwood's, the novels are said to have been
discovered and published long after the fact. Moreover, the Prefaces, Epilogues, and
interpolated materials that begin the chapters all reflect different tellings, which suggests
Nineteen Eighty-four in basic conception but goes beyond Orwell in applying such tellings far
more frequently. To outward appearances, the men of Earth seem to have stopped the cycle of
history and inscribed their own narrative in its place by legislating women into minor status.
With the exceptions of feminist texts, we are not told of women being deprived of language in
any form. Women have unlimited access to news and entertainment media; there are few
obvious constraints on their ability to write if they choose to do so; and while they are not
eligible for advanced study or training, all women are taught to read and write from
childhood. Indeed, due to the pressing necessity for more translators, the women of the Lines
are as highly trained and well-educated as their men--a fact that both Linguist and non-
linguist men despise but must (and do) respect. There are no secret police, no constant
surveillance, no torture, and no wars between Earth's nations. Compared to the brutal tactics
of the Inner Party and the Gileadean regime, the situation for Earth's women in the Láadan
novels appears considerably more tolerable.
But the women of Earth are as thoroughly oppressed in Native Tongue and The Judas Rose as
in The Handmaid's Tale. The laws that maintain unequal status between the sexes serve only
to confirm the vast inequality that has always existed in all countries and all times. That
inequality is based in language. All human languages are revealed to be collections of male
perceptions expressed in male vocabulary, strung together by man-made grammatical rules
that follow male reasoning patterns. Women's perceptions find inadequate expression in male
languages, if they can be communicated at all. 25 Elgin takes the Whorfian hypothesis to its
logical, if grim, conclusion: forcing women to use languages totally unsuited to
communicating their perceptions is an act of oppression so thorough that only a few legal and
social modifications are necessary to complete the process of subjugation. The necessity for
women to develop their own language through which to fight oppression thus becomes the
central theme of Elgin's dystopia.

In both the Láadan novels, there is no doubt that the Linguists control the world's economy.
As one official warns his staff, without the Linguists "every last interplanetary negotiation we
have in progress--business, diplomatic, military, scientific, you name it--every last one would
simply STOP. We can't do a damn thing without the Lingoes." ( 1985, 64). That the Lines pay
lip service to their respective governments and try to keep up appearances as patriotic civil
servants makes no difference to those governments or to other citizens. Everyone hates the
Linguists and their monopoly on interspecies communication, all the more so because the
Linguists' monopoly is accidental rather than deliberate.

It appears that Earth's men have almost effortlessly silenced women's tellings. Furthermore,
Earth and its colonies have unknowingly achieved the stasis of narrative inscription for which
Oceania and Gilead strive in vain. Governments and Heads of Lines change, but the balance
of power remains

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unaffected. As human colonists settle habitable worlds, they duplicate Earth's social
structures. As the Epilogue to The Judas Rose makes clear, this stasis results from the alien
Council's trade limitations, accidentally creating a permanent state of affairs that Orwell's and
Atwood's dystopias depict as impossible to maintain in purely human cultures.

While human evolution may have reached a point of stasis--perhaps to illustrate more fully
the impossibility of further development without gender equality and the impossibility of
gender equality without a women's language-Elgin's narratives are filled with conflicts and
struggles over which viewpoints will control the telling and the text. Mary Kay Bray
identifies several conflicts operating in Elgin Native Tongue. Bray organizes these conflicts
into a descriptive level, on which "readers see overtly feminist depictions of female
experience"; a figurative level, in which language usages become "metaphors for the text's
central feminist themes"; and a metafictional level, which directly questions "whether or not
speculations about futures in which women are fully empowered can be made in a language
generated by a male-dominant society" ( 1986, 49-50). Native Tongue also employs conflicts
of structure, such as the interplay of chapters and their epigraphs and the chronological jumps
backward and forward in time within the thirty-three-year span of the novel's events (5657).
Bray warns that Elgin's novel "might seem little more than an angry feminist polemic,
exaggerating and moving out of context for its own ends features of contemporary society"
(50); this is exactly how some critics have read Native Tongue, and it is on these grounds that
the novel is often criticized. Patricia Hernlund asserts that "the least successful [works of
feminist science fiction] are . . . those written by women who are deeply angry: I think
particularly of Joanna Russ [e.g., The Female Man] and Suzette Haden Elgin Native Tongue. .
. . Here, understatement is eschewed in favor of overt arguments that women are repressed
and should not be" ( 1989, 107-8). Brian Aldiss respects Elgin's creative use of linguistics as a
basis for science fiction, but criticizes the division of the sexes that takes place at the end of
Native Tongue with the Linguist women moving into separate enclaves: "[A]s with so many
feminist SF novels of its ilk, we may applaud its diagnosis but find its solution unacceptable"
(in Aldiss and Wingrove 1986, 550-51). Oddly, both Bray and the critics she discusses miss
the critical point that the Láadan novels are exaggerated because they are dystopian, and
hence satirical. If their satire is at times bitter, this bitterness arises as much from the
dystopian form as from feminist themes.

To some extent, Atwood's and Elgin's novels force readers to take sides, not merely with the
characters but with the views of narrative expressed in them. Having done so, readers find
their choices being undercut for several reasons. First, dystopia aims to deliver warnings
about contemporary trends and to make these warnings resonate in the reader's memory.
Thus, dystopian writers must balance readability and didacticism. If a reader sympathizes
completely with a given character, the warning about real-world problems will be lost;
conversely, if the reader feels no personal investment in the novel, the warning it offers will
be forgotten quickly. 26 A writer must exercise restraint in creating sympathetic characters, a
task best accomplished by undercutting such a character's viewpoints, especially if the
character is a first-person narrator. (Third-person narratives enable the writer to switch
perspectives more easily without sacrificing sympathy.) Second, a dystopia that employs
undercutting is likely to

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maintain a higher degree of reader interest, prompting critical rereadings of key passages.
Finally, undercutting forcibly reminds the reader that while language cannot be "misused," it
can be creatively and effectively used by repressive groups for reprehensible goals. To deliver
an effective warning about potential threats, a dystopian text must thoroughly articulate those
threats, giving shape and substance to the very horrors it strives to prevent. A dystopian novel
is "caught in contradictory discursive impulses: it shows a world that is 'intolerable,' but it
cannot avoid complicity in using the mechanisms or rhetoric of that very intolerable world.
Hence, a trope that might characterize the rhetorical gestalt of the novel is paralepsis, the
figure of verbal dissimulation and duplicity that asserts its lack of rhetoric while using
rhetoric . . . that feigns powerlessness in order to wield power" ( Deer 1992, 216).

A reader finds substantial undercutting in The Handmaid's Tale long before reaching the
"Historical Notes". Offred is a victim who "does not speak entirely in the voice of the victim";
she is articulate, skilled in presenting her story for maximum emotional impact, witty, and
capable of discussing, incisively and at length, the silence enforced upon her ( Deer 1992,
219). Despite the bleakness of her surroundings, she uses startling figurative images in her
narrative, as when she describes the hooks from which corpses dangle as "steel question
marks, upside-down and sideways" ( Atwood 1986, 32), or in her simile of the Scrabble tiles,
"like candies, made of peppermint, cool like that. . . . I would like to put them into my mouth.
They would taste also of lime" (139). Frequently Offred builds tension by telling events in
choppy, incomplete fragments which the reader must reassemble. For example, Offred
presents her family's abortive escape attempt in six discrete fragments. 27 Offred's statements
sometimes deconstruct themselves, as when she offers what appears to be an apology for her
narrative: "I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body
caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it" (267).
As Deer notes, even while Offred professes "that her discourse is artless and innocent," the
very discourse she narrates paraleptically disproves her claim ( Deer 1992, 226).

Undercutting continues in the "Historical Notes", beginning with our realization that Offred's
narrative is neither immediate nor written. " Atwood's withholding of the contextualizing
information creates a gap between our initial, heuristic reading of the book, a reading in
which the narrator's authority is valorized through its writerly surface structure, and our
retrospective reimaginings and re-readings, informed by the information in the "Historical
Notes" section, which postulate an oral consciousness rather than one originally cast in
writing" ( Deer 1992, 225-26). The differences in tone soon become apparent. Pieixoto's
academic posturing trivializes Offred's narrative. The process can be viewed as a series of
thefts of language. The Gileadean oligarchs steal Offred's real freedom, including her job as a
preserver of literature, her access to texts and writing materials, and her control over her own
life. The "Historical Notes", and Pieixoto in particular, attempt to recast Offred's narrative for
their own purposes: a story that has been told in the first person "I" is now controlled by the
third-person, scholarly "we." The jarring dislocations between Pieixoto's address and Offred's
narrative reveal a new attempt at control as the academics gloss over the emotional and moral
impact of her story. For example, after Offred's harrowing narrative--which ends without clear
evidence as to whether she has truly escaped--Pieixoto seizes control by commenting on the

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difficulties of the "laborious" transcription and arrangement, thus robbing Offred of her
language after the fact ( Atwood 1986, 302).

But neither the Gileadean repression nor the condescension of the "Historical Notes" silences
or controls Offred's inscribing her experiences. Linda Kauffman notes that Offred is the most
successful thief in The Handmaid's Tale, since "language is what she steals, and through
language, knowledge and power" ( 1989, 229). Nor is Offred unconscious of what she is
doing, as is Alex in A Clockwork Orange. She constantly muses over her choice of words, the
changes in names and meanings that the revolution has caused, and her reconstructions of the
events she narrates. Offred recognizes language's limited power to relate experience, and she
makes up for this lack by emphasizing "synesthesia, the poetic mixture of sensory
impressions" (225). Pieixoto laments the relative paucity of verifiable historic facts in Offred's
narrative, despite her obvious lack of access to such information (224). Still, Offred creates as
complete a portrait of life in Gilead as one could reasonably expect.

Kauffman considers the surreptitious Scrabble games between Offred and her Commander the
most significant example of Offred's "stealing the language back again" ( 1989, 229). The
fundamental alteration in the nature of the game itself reveals the immense changes wrought
by the Gileadean revolution. When words were free enough to be a game, before the
Gileadean takeover, they seemed faintly silly--amusements for old people and adolescents, as
Offred remembers ( Atwood 1986, 138-39). Now, however, they are the most precious things
imaginable. Language, the game of words, has become the most dangerous game in Gilead. 28
Despite the danger, Offred finds Scrabble an opportunity to flaunt her creativity with
language and to wryly comment on her life under oppression. The words she chooses resonate
with new meaning in the Brave New World of Gilead: "Larynx, I spell. Valance. Quince.
Zygote" ( Atwood 1986, 139). (These are the organ of speech; draperies around a bed; fruit, as
in "Blessed be the fruit"; a fertilized egg. These meaningful choices seem deliberate.) "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" (139). Metaphorically, of course, the
problem in Gilead is male sterility, despite the legislation that holds women responsible for
conception. Too, Offred is certainly gorging on her first chance in years to freely play with
language, an idea reinforced by her choosing the imagery of Scrabble tiles as candy (139).
Another game she mentions again shows Offred choosing words that seem to refer to her
relationship to the surrounding culture: "Prolix, quartz, quandary, sylph, rhythm, all the old
tricks with consonants I could dream up or remember" (155). Wordy; transparent stone,
deceptively clear but impenetrable; uncertainty; an airy, unfettered female spirit; patterns of
speech--all these words are too appropriate to be entirely random.

Actually, three different games take place simultaneously during these surreptitious meetings.
On the surface we see Scrabble, in which creativity of language and the ability to make words
literally wins more points--and, eventually, the game. Beneath the literal game, Offred and the
Commander spar intellectually and emotionally. He controls the situation, and Offred
wonders why a man with his power would take such a risk to indulge in simple play. She
waits to discover what he hides behind the literal game:

I win the first game, I let him win the second: I still haven't discovered what the terms are,
what I will be able to ask for, in exchange. . . . Men are sex machines, said Aunt

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Lydia, and not much more. They only want one thing. You must learn to manipulate them, for
your own good. . . . But how to fit the Commander into this, as he exists in his study, with his
word games and his desire, for what? ( 1986, 139, 144)

Offred assesses the situation correctly, except that the Commander does not know what he
wants: "[N]ow I think that his motives and desires weren't obvious even to him. They had not
yet reached the level of words" (155). He knows only that, through permitting his Handmaid
to enjoy gradually increasing interludes of language (Scrabble, magazines, books,
conversation, even writing), he will gain sufficient hold over her to ensure her cooperation
whenever he decides what he does want. While Fred may appear to be giving up some of his
power as Offred's opponent on the game board, he still controls the telling of the event, down
to the outcomes of the games--"The first time, I realized, he'd let me win" (156). When the
Commander finally decides that he wants Offred's "company" for a night at Jezebel's, the
tawdriness of his desires seem to betray the intricate trap he has created with words to ensure
Offred's cooperation.

These two levels of games closely correspond with the second and third of the four levels
Foust identifies as constituting the dystopian "logos game." 29 Viewed through Foust's model,
the Scrabble games played between Offred and the Commander reflect the "thematic game,"
since it is a real game repeatedly played in the narrative ( 1982, 84). Following Foust, Gilead's
brutal social rituals--mass forced marriages, Prayvaganzas, Testifyings, Salvagings, and
Particicutions--constitute "the debasement of education into a tool of behavior control; the
public is 'educated' into docility by the State's tactics, which amount to pandering to the
hysteria latent in the repressed mass" (85). Foust's third level, the "logos game" proper (the
"self-reflexive level of the story") (85), directly applies to the second level of mental fencing
that Offred and the Commander conduct. Language is not only figuratively at issue, but
literally as well. The Commander uses these sessions to remind Offred of his power, not only
by permitting her to read, but by refusing to be bound by the rules of the game:

Sometimes after a few drinks he becomes silly, and cheats at Scrabble. He encourages me to
do it, too, and we take extra letters and make words with them that don't exist, words like
smurt and crup, giggling over them. Sometimes he turns on his short-wave radio, displaying
before me a minute or two of Radio Free America, to show me he can. Then he turns it off
again. Damn Cubans, he says. All that filth about universal daycare. ( Atwood 1986, 209)

Offred is forbidden to speak, to read, to drink alcohol, to receive uncensored news from the
outside world, and certainly to spend time alone with her Commander. He breaks these
taboos, but not merely to play with words on a game board. Eventually he tries to draw her
into political conversation, and he defends the new world order by noting that "better never
means better for everyone. . . . It always means worse, for some" (211). To some extent these
Scrabble sessions parallel Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor" episode--except that the
Commander justifies Gilead's concentration of power through his casual sexual abuse of
Offred rather than through direct confrontation and political discussion. Atwood comments
ironically on gender imbalances within the dystopian genre: O'Brien appreciates the quality of
Winston's mind ( Orwell 1982, 172), while the Commander is interested only in Offred's
body.

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Foust's fourth and final level, the "anagogic game," is "the serious game played by the absent
author and present reader," in which the author manipulates the reader into perceiving the
narrowness of the gulf between contemporary reality and extrapolated horror. This game's
goal is to help the reader rediscover "the seemingly obvious but frequently forgotten fact that
mankind's political fictions are just that--fictive" ( 1982, 86-87). Foust's anagogic game
corresponds with Atwood's third level of meaning implicit in the Scrabble games. The
Commander sets up the board but leaves Offred free to form whatever words she chooses.
Atwood gives us the fragments of Offred's narrative while reminding us that they are
fragments, already disarranged like Scrabble tiles in a box. Offred constantly says that
everything she relates is a reconstruction. At yet another remove from the text is our attempt
to (re)construct a reading of Offred's fragments, to put the pieces together in some sort of
order that will help us "win" the anagogic game. The reader shares with Offred the
understanding that the reading itself is the prize, a privilege to be enjoyed in return for playing
the game. Winning and losing are irrelevant: the stolen privilege of playing the game (of
Scrabble or of reading) in the first place outweighs the possibility of losing, especially since
one can always play again. Furthermore, even when the reader or Offred wins, neither can be
sure whether the opponent ( Antwood, the Commander) has permitted the victory in order to
further some hidden purpose.

Elgin starkly portrays the battle of the sexes without such subtle metaphors. Elgin's novels
subdivide into several polarities of conflict. In Native Tongue ( 1985), these include the men
and women of the Lines pitted against one another; government leaders and officials versus
the men of the Lines, each despising (but forced to cooperate with) the other; and the entire
human race ranged against the Linguists. Elgin broadens these conflicts in The Judas Rose
( 1987a) to include rivalry between Earth governments, whose parochial concerns are
scrupulously ignored by all aliens; the as-yet unannounced conflict between different points
of view among the members of the alien Council; and, ultimately, humanity versus all other
races. The most important conflicts, though, are between humanity's two genders and their
respective languages. Elgin yokes these conflicts by showing us a future world in which male
languages have silenced women's perceptions. If language is the most powerful tool of
oppression, there is a certain moral justification in making language-literally, making a
language, Láadan--the liberating tool.

But despite the interpolated prefaces, epilogues and chapter epigraphs, the Láadan novels
conclude with no clear victory or defeat. While Nineteen Eightyfour ends with Winston
broken in spirit, the Appendix on Newspeak indicates that Oceania did not last; similarly,
though Offred's fate remains an open question, the Historical Notes to The Handmaid's Tale
at least show that Gilead, too, eventually fell. If we do not consider the epilogue, The Judas
Rose closes with humanity's women just as oppressed as they were at the beginning of Native
Tongue. If we do bring The Judas Rose's epilogue into the discussion, then we must face the
strong possibility that the oppression of women will end if (and when) the aliens of the
Council decide to exterminate all human beings. Only in the prefaces do we find
circumstantial evidence that somehow genderbased oppression among humanity has ceased
and that the human race has not only survived but been fully accepted into the galactic
community. Other than scattered acts of resistance on a personal scale, human women engage
in only

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one substantial rebellion. This act is the construction and secret scattering of Láadan
throughout the Lines and beyond. Nazareth, Miriam Rose and other important Linguist
women believe that simply spreading Láadan will change reality, but are they correct? If we
believe the evidence of the Prefaces, can we credit Láadan with having ended the oppression
of women?

Peter Fitting argues this point in his essay, The Turn from Utopia in Recent Feminist Fiction
( 1990). Fitting agrees that "patriarchal ideology transmits and reproduces itself . . . through
language, and Elgin rightly calls attention to the relevance of combating sexism through
critiques of and changes in the patriarchal concepts and modes of thought embedded in our
current language practices" (148). He questions, however, whether changing those language
practices (even through replacing or undercutting patriarchal tongues with a nonpatriarchal
invented language) could truly change our world, "or even the ways that we understand social
reality" (148). Fitting argues that the introduction of Láadan, as shown in Elgin's novels,
would actually retard women's advancement:

While the women living together in the Barren Houses do experience reality in specific ways,
the majority of their experiences remain shaped by the power relationships in which they are
inscribed and exploited. They are still legally minors, bound to their husbands, fathers, and
families; their reproductive functions, to take the issue central to The Handmaid's Tale . . . are
completely under the control of the male members of this patriarchal household. Rather than
providing a way of transforming the world, this new language will condition the women to
accept their inferior and exploited state. Allowed to live separately, even with their own
language, they will still be little more than slaves, and it should be noted that in the more than
one hundred years which pass between the invention of Láadan and the end of the sequel. . . .
Elgin's women are still little more than slaves. Reality will not be changed by this new
language; it will become an instrument of self-deception, bleeding off the rebellious energies
of a group of exploited women. (148)
Elgin appears to have anticipated such a critique, since she answers it through the character of
Aquina Chornyak and through a significant crisis in the development of Láadan. Aquina is the
closest thing we find to a feminist activist in Native Tongue: she argues for the necessity of
planning direct resistance, an idea the other Women of the Lines actively resist. Furthermore,
Aquina quickly seizes an opportunity to advance their cause when she believes that other
Linguist women will let it slip by. It is Aquina who first discovers Nazareth's brilliant
linguistic talents and tells the other Linguist women of Chornyak Barren House. When they
are unwilling to violate the child's privacy, even to gain precious major Encodings, Aquina is
quite prepared to do so. Unfortunately, Aquina's hotheadedness usually defeats her own
schemes. In a bungled attempt to sterilize Nazareth, and thereby bring her more quickly into
the Barren House, Aquina almost poisons the girl ( 1985, 113-15). Aquina argues very much
along Fitting's lines that Láadan cannot change reality except negatively, by lulling women
into a false sense of having begun to affect reality. She repeatedly invokes the wrath of the
other Chornyak women by warning that Láadan will be discovered and suppressed, insisting
that plans must be laid to prevent such suppression in the event of discovery. Aquina argues
that women must be ready to flee to (and defend) remote hiding places, preferably off-world,
in order to protect Láadan and ensure its survival in a context of matriarchal independence. 30
When Nazareth enters Chornyak Barren House, she is horrified to discover that the wonderful
women's language has been finished for years, perhaps decades--

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but the women of the Lines continue to make excuses about why Láadan is not yet ready, and
about why they have not begun to teach it to their female children. Only Aquina is willing to
confront the truth and admit to Nazareth that the women of the Lines are afraid to take the
irrevocable step of beginning to spread Láadan. That done, they will no longer be able to
avoid the difficult issues that Aquina raises (244-54).

However, the need to carry out such plans never arises. Fitting is narrowly correct in his
assertion that as The Judas Rose concludes, human women are just as oppressed as they were
in the opening pages of Native Tongue. Still, Fitting's argument is based on a different ideal of
the relationship between language and objective reality than Elgin inscribes in her dystopia. In
Fitting's judgment, after more than a hundred years, Láadan has done nothing to relieve
oppression, except to bleed "off the rebellious energies" of the Linguist women ( 1990, 148).
31
By contrast, Elgin seems to be working from a conception of language affecting reality,
which involves a much longer "percolation" time than is covered in the Láadan novels. In
scolding her relatives for not disseminating Láadan, Nazareth points out that

if those of you tending infants for the main house begin this very day murmuring to those
babies in Láadan instead of English, it will not be until they are adult women and are doing
the same for the next generation--or maybe the generation after that, because no language has
ever . . . been started this way--it will be at the very least the generation after those infants
before Láadan is a creole. And still another before it can be called a living language with the
status of other living languages. ( 1985, 248)

Therefore at least four generations must pass before Láadan can be considered a living
language. Furthermore, since it must develop in secret among a captive group, Láadan will
undoubtedly spread much more slowly. Finally, once Láadan reaches the status of a living
language, it must spread through several more generations of boys as well as girls. At some
point Láadan will have permeated society sufficiently not only to offer women their own
language in which to freely express their perceptions, but to give men who learn the language
from infancy a means of understanding and respecting women's perceptions:

If [Nazareth] lived long enough, she would be so interested to see what they were going to be
like--the first human men who had learned Láadan as infants and toddlers. It might make little
difference, or no difference at all; on the other hand, it might make a difference worth
rejoicing over, and the chances were good enough to make that the likely outcome. ( 1987a,
355)

This vision constitutes Elgin's most unique contribution to the dystopian genre.

A dystopian society that comes about through violence and rapid upheaval tends to fall after a
relatively short lifespan (as we see in Nineteen Eighty-four and The Handmaid's Tale).
Societies that have gradually developed into fullblown dystopias over long periods of gradual
social engineering, such as Brave New World, require greater changes over longer periods in
order to reverse them. There is only a hint in Huxley's dystopia that there are individuals who
understand how language can eventually change this society. Elgin extrapolates further and
suggests a scenario in which a dystopian worldview will not only be changed to an equal one,
but in which dystopia will be rendered impossible. In fact, what Elgin plays with in the long-
term spread of Láadan is the idea that language can aid humanity in the process of growth
toward utopian societies.

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The ramifications of Elgin's model reach beyond how a language can overthrow dystopian
oppressors to explore how language can eventually bring about a new culture in which
oppression itself becomes obsolete. This assertion raises the question of whether a dystopia
can offer hope for inclusive, empowering social development without betraying the basic
mission of the genre, and I shall explore it in detail in this study's concluding chapter.

Elgin's novels are weakened by some lapses in plausibility. Critics have dismissed the sudden
imposition of oppressive laws, which Elgin postulates as having been passed in the United
States in early 1991 ( 1985, 7-8), especially since she depicts such laws having been imposed
without force or resistance. (By contrast, Atwood creates a sudden and violent military
takeover, of which Offred knows very little.) 32 We never discover just why the public hold
the Lines in such violent contempt: there are references to "anti-linguist riots" (14, 104), and
the Lines have built their extensive households underground with a view toward making them
defensible against all but professional military attack (102-3). The public seems most bitter
over the Linguist's incredible wealth, which in the popular mind is equated with reckless
waste and conspicuous consumption. The fact that the Linguists live plainly, in a concerted
attempt to defuse such hatred, is either unknown or deliberately ignored. More importantly,
no clear rationale is given as to why only members of the Line families can learn alien
languages. Multiple subplots in both novels deal with this specific question: in every one,
jealous non-Linguists, including government scientists and an ambitious academic, employ
extraordinary (and extraordinarily brutal) means to learn alien languages. These attempts
always fail, despite the Linguists's repeated assertions that there is no genetic difference
between themselves and other human beings. Elgin valorizes linguists, depicting their work as
a noble calling that ultimately supports an ungrateful world in luxury. As a professional
linguist, Elgin may perhaps be forgiven this exaggeration, but her fiction is not well-served by
it.
While Elgin's Láadan novels are not as well-crafted as The Handmaid's Tale, they contain a
very thorough debunking of one of science fiction's most cherished conventions, the
"universal translator." This fictive device is perhaps the third most ludicrous concept one
finds in science fiction, after time travel and faster-than-light spaceship drives. A human
encounters an alien, often for the first time; each speaks, and the device instantaneously
translates their communication, down to the smallest nuances and subtleties. Such a device
cannot now be constructed that translates accurately between two human beings speaking
different languages. When one considers the probability that even humanoid aliens might use
"languages" involving much more than audible vocalizations--perhaps including different
sensory organs, communication in the realms of taste, smell or color, alien gestures, speech
that takes place outside the range of human hearing, and so forth ( Barnouw 1981, 332)--the
concept becomes patently ridiculous. Yet a majority of science fiction authors "seldom spare
their protagonists where physical and mental degradation and suffering are involved . . . [but]
shy away from the rigors of learning a foreign language" (332). Rather than shying away from
such rigors, Elgin clarifies them.

In his groundbreaking study, Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction
( 1980), Walter E. Meyers articulates a "theory of plausibility" in science fiction, which he
divides into "strong" and "weak" forms. The strong form holds "plausibility to be a necessary
condition for good science fiction" and insists that "science-fiction writers have a special duty
not to violate our

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understanding of the world; their success is to be primarily judged on whether or not their
work maintains an internal plausibility, the ingredients of which are authority and
extrapolation" (124). In practice, while it is possible for science fiction works to maintain
internal plausibility, it is impossible for them to completely respect the confining factors of
authority and extrapolation: "no writers seriously practice or practiced the plausibility theory
in its strong form, whatever they may say they do or did" (126). This explains the need for the
weak form of the plausibility theory, without which "science fiction disappears as a genre, and
becomes indistinguishable from fantasy in general except by arbitrary ruling" (126). Meyers
explicitly quotes Joanna Russ and echoes her in valuing the writer's creative needs above
actual scientific knowledge: "science fiction must not offend against what is known to be
known, unless there is some overriding artistic reason" (129). Given this weak version of the
theory, Meyers grudgingly admits that the "universal translator" may not render every work in
which it appears bad science fiction simply by its presence, but even as an accepted
convention, it is much easier to misuse than to use sensibly.

Elgin will have nothing to do with the "magic decoder," except to lampoon it directly ( 1987a,
40-41). Nor does she undercut her alien races' superiority to humanity: in contrast to most
other science fiction, no aliens in her novels bother to learn any human languages--and why
should they, considering the contempt in which barbarous humanity is held? A few
extraterrestrials condescend to use Standard Panglish, apparently a galaxy-wide artificial
language constructed by aliens solely to speak to humans in one-sided diplomatic
"negotiations" (41). But Elgin strains credulity with the sheer number of alien races one must
accept in order to support her concept of the Lines's economic stranglehold on human-alien
communications. Since each of the thirteen Line households consists of an average of 150
individuals ( 1985, 122), there are approximately 1,950 Linguists on Earth. Although Elgin
makes clear that all Linguists from the age of six through their early seventies perform alien
translations, let us say that only two-thirds of each Household, or a total of 1,300 Linguists of
all ages, actually perform such labor. Nearly every Linguist is the sole human with near-
native fluency in some alien language, although there are usually at least two others whose
more basic command of the language enables them to do backup work or to translate very
simple ideas. Even allowing for such overlap, Elgin posits more than a thousand sentient
humanoid races-and even the Linguists are incapable of communicating with nonhumanoid
aliens. It is hard to imagine that in such a crowded galaxy, not one race has a social structure
in which the genders are equal, or in which females dominate. Elgin leaves no alternative for
Earth's women: their only escape from the oppression of patriarchal human communications
lies in creating their own language.

Though the dissemination of Láadan will take generations, Linguist women who begin the
task clearly believe that their language will change reality. Such an ideal may be more
feasible than hoping for short-term victory. The "Historical Notes" that conclude The
Handmaid's Tale make it very clear that the Gileadean regime did not last long. Their tone,
however, raises concerns as to how far society has advanced beyond Gilead's gender
inequalities. Beneath Pieixoto's pompous "little chat" we find a disturbing vein of sexism.
Pieixoto disparages Offred's education and her skills as a narrator. He is unwilling even to
dignify her narrative by calling it a document ( Atwood 1986, 301). Pieixoto

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shows an extraordinary insensitivity, not only to Offred, but to the women who suffered under
Gileadean repression: he puns on Offred's tale as "tail," "that being, to some extent, the bone,
as it were, of contention, in that phase of Gileadean society of which our saga treats," as well
as by referring to the network of escape routes as the "Underground Frailroad" (301).
Pieixoto's contempt extends to his female colleagues, in his joking about "enjoying" the
"charming Arctic chair" (300). It is fair to ask, as Linda Kauffman does, "[I]s it a telling
comment that the archivist refuses to condemn Gilead as evil? Perhaps his society has merely
perfected Gilead's 'genius for synthesis,' making the mechanisms of power and repression
completely invisible--and thus allpervasive" ( 1989, 240).

Indeed, Kauffman's question, "What, if anything, have we learned from history?" ( 1989, 240)
might best be answered with a quotation from another piece written on The Handmaid's Tale.
David Halliday attacks the "cliché" of "women being ground under the heels of a male
world," and faults Atwood for treating this idea "as if [it] were not [a cliché] at all but some
sort of truth that Atwood has decided to focus the powers of her imagination upon" ( 1987,
53). David Ketterer reads the "Historical Notes" and concludes that the future depicted in
Offred's narrative is

perhaps like the present of the 1980s to the extent that from both perspectives Gilead appears
to be an almost incredible societal extreme. At the same time the "Notes" strongly imply that
Atwood cannot have intended The Handmaid's Tale only as the typical dire dystopian
warning or call to rebellion if she envisages Gilead either passing away naturally in the
fullness of time or being dramatically overthrown. Gilead does not correspond to an
Orwellian "boot stamping on a human face-forever." . . . It might, then, be asked: Is there any
point in penning a dystopia if that dystopia is explicitly presented as only transitory? ( 1989,
212-13)
Ketterer argues that the "Historical Notes" constitutes what he calls a "Contextual Dystopia,"
one in which the author breaks with the traditional dystopian view of time as linear by
recognizing (and depicting) the cyclical nature of history--admitting that history, because
composed of "a series of pendulum swings," inevitably oscillates through a pattern of
dystopic and eutopic social models ( 1989, 213-14). 33

Ketterer glosses over the similarities between Orwell and Atwood. Gilead's atrocities are no
less brutal than the Party's, even though the Commanders do not seem to relish power for its
own sake. The striking image of the eternal boot in the face is O'Brien's, which he uses during
one of his sessions torturing Winston. The Handmaid's Tale contains no direct analogue to
this scene between Winston and O'Brien, since the Commander does not consider Offred
important enough to talk seriously to, let alone torture: Jezebel's, the Red Center, and the
Colonies provide sufficiently chilling pictures of women's futures in Gilead. Ketterer finds in
the "Historical Notes" a return to predystopic normalcy, as, for that matter, do Deer,
Kauffman, and Malak. However, through close readings of the "Historical Notes," these
critics forcibly remind us that the normalcy to which the notes return is one in which reality is
inscribed by the patriarchy, and in which women's voices continue to be silenced or
marginalized. 34

That such readings as Halliday's and Ketterer's are possible may speak to a problem inherent
in the dystopian tradition. Dystopia has no difficulty rendering vast concepts like
totalitarianism understandable on an individual level.

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At the level of sexual politics, however, dystopian fictions are less successful in exposing the
fundamental contradictions within the traditional utopian dream. Indeed, it may be argued
that, while it may not endorse it, dystopian fiction nonetheless enacts the same suppression
and rejection of the feminine so characteristic of the male utopian ideal. . . . [I]t is not
sufficient for patriarchal supremacy to triumph over an inferior male opponent: the real
enemy is in fact the woman--a fact that becomes more evident when one considers the manner
in which the final defeat of the opposition is depicted. ( Ferns 1989, 374)

Ferns defends this assertion with evidence from Zamiatin, Huxley, and Orwell before
addressing Atwood's treatment of the problem. Ferns discusses the extraordinary degree to
which Atwood "focuses on the private consciousness of her protagonist," at least as compared
with We, the only other major dystopia she examines which is narrated in first person (377).
Like Ketterer, Ferns emphasizes context--but in very different ways. For example, in Offred's
narrative, "patriarchal authority no longer looms as large as it does in earlier dystopian texts"
(377). Huxley, Orwell, and Zamiatin create male authority figures that appear either nearly
omnipotent (the Benefactor, Big Brother) or merely supercompetent (Mustapha Mond,
O'Brien). By contrast, Offred's Commander, "with . . . his furtive glee over the schoolboy
obscenities scrawled in his Latin textbook, his excitement at a trip to a brothel where sexual
allure is provided by old cheerleaders' outfits and second-hand Bunny costumes, is merely
ludicrous" (377), despite his genuine power. Furthermore, Ferns points to the liberating power
of laughter, which is freely utilized in Atwood's dystopia. "Laughter is both an assertion of
independent identity, of an alternative mode of perceiving reality, and part of a larger
mechanism whereby the individual reclaims experience and endows it with a personal
significance" (378-79). Moira laughs at the Aunts ( Atwood 1986, 222) and at Offred's
Commander (243), empowering Offred to laugh as well at the thought of how refreshing such
defiance can be:

There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's
something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a
spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be
dealt with. In the paint of the washroom cubicle someone unknown had scratched: Aunt Lydia
sucks. It was like a flag waved from a hilltop in rebellion. (222)

In Elgin's Láadan novels, the women of the Lines fully appreciate the subversive power of
joking language and revel in its cathartic and regenerative joys. One might suggest that they
have an advantage in commanding hundreds of human and alien languages in which to
express their contempt. Most important for both feminist dystopias, the language of obscenity
and humor empowers oppressed women by giving them outlets to declare independence, at
least mentally. "While, as Orwell perceived, the standardization and impoverishment of
language is an essential prerequisite for an extension of the State's control of individual
thought, Atwood's rebels exploit the richness and ambiguity of a linguistic realm over which
the State has no jurisdiction" ( Ferns 1989, 379).

While agreeing that earlier dystopias do inscribe substantially the same patterns of patriarchal
domination as the utopian ideals they satirize, Atwood's and Elgin's dystopias prove that this
inscription is not a necessary component of the genre. Indeed, judging from the popular
response, The Handmaid's Tale

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promises to join Nineteen Eighty-four and Brave New World as archetypal examples of the
twentieth-century dystopian novel. This is a welcome sign that the dystopian novel is indeed
flexible enough to embrace a much wider range of issues than earlier writers were concerned
with. Yet while there are important differences between the Orwell/ Huxley dystopian axis
and the feminist dystopias discussed here, in all cases language still lies at the heart of the
matter. Indeed, Elgin may be the twentieth-century dystopian writer who most explicitly
states this theme.

NOTES
1. In "The Turn from Utopia in Recent Feminist Fiction" ( 1990), Peter Fitting points to
several works built around this concern, including Ursula K. Le Guin The Dispossessed
( 1975), Joanna Russ groundbreaking The Female Man ( 1975), Marge Piercy's Woman
on The Edge of Time ( 1976), Sally Gearhart The Wanderground ( 1978), and Suzy
McKee Charnas's Motherlines ( 1979). Fitting is especially interested in Zöe Fairbairns
Benefits ( 1979), and he explicitly compares Atwood's Handmaid's Tale to many of these
works, as well as to Suzette Haden Elgin Native Tongue ( 1984). See also his "'So We All
Became Mothers': New Roles for Men in Recent Utopian Fiction" ( 1985) and its sequel,
"For Men Only: A Guide to Reading Single-Sex Worlds" ( 1988), which adds Edmond
Cooper Gender Genocide ( 1972) and Alice Sheldon 1976 novella, "Houston, Houston,
Do You Read?" to the debate. It should be noted, however, that of these works, only Le
Guin's The Dispossessed, Fairbairns's Benefits, Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, and Elgin's
Native Tongue are dystopias.
2. Daphne Patai makes several observations concerning the role of women in Orwell's
 dystopia in her essay "Gamesmanship and Androcentrism in Nineteen Eighty-four
( 1984). This essay constitutes the eighth chapter of The Orwell Mystique; pp. 238-263
are especially relevant. See also Baker 1990, 140-41, for a discussion of the
characterization of women, especially Lenina, in Brave New World; Elaine Hoffman
Baruch offers an even bleaker assessment in her essay, "Women in Men's Utopias",
especially 215-17, in Women in Search of Utopia ( 1984), which Baruch co-edited with
Ruby Rohrlich. Kathryn M. Grossman, on the other hand, argues that in earlier dystopias
(notably Nineteen Eighty-four, We, and Bradbury Fahrenheit451), female characters
represent a "temptress" figure who serves the positive role of jarring the male
protagonists out of their acceptance of oppression into active rebellion ( 1987, 135-45). A
brief introduction to feminist dystopias can be found in Chapter 7 of Sarah Lefanu book,
In the Chinks of the World Machine ( 1988).
3. Hereafter I refer to the first of these novels as Native Tongue, the second as The Judas
Rose, and their joint exploration of a dystopian culture as the Láadan novels. Elgin
published a third novel in the series, Earthsong: Native Tongue III, in 1994--however,
this third novel abandons the plot and language concerns of the first two books and is not
discussed herein.
4. Edgar Chapman has noted that some of the plot ideas of Elgin novel At the Seventh Level
( 1972) seem to anticipate, in several ways, what happens in Native Tongue: a woman
translating between humanity and a group of aliens for economic reasons, a repressive
male government that refuses to recognize her extraordinary linguistic talents, and a
political system that bars women from positions of authority. See his essay, "Sex, Satire,
and Feminism in the Science Fiction of Suzette Haden Elgin" ( 1982).
5. Elgin expresses amusement at critical opinion that dismissed Native Tongue as absurdly
unrealistic, while lauding Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, based on a very similar idea. Why,
then, has Elgin ghettoized her work by publishing it as science

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fiction? "I chose fiction because I could reach a larger audience than I could reach
through scholarly publication. I chose science fiction because that is where I had a
reputation sufficient to be sure that the book would sell and that it would be read"
( 1987b, 181).
6. There are several hints in the text that her real name is "June": Ketterer briefly discusses
this idea in his 1989 essay (214). For a further exploration of this issue, see also Lucy M.
Friebert "Control and Creativity: The Politics of Risk in Margaret Atwood's The
Handmaid's Tale" ( 1988) and, especially, Constance Rooke essay, "Interpreting The
Handmaid's Tale: Offred's Name and the 'Arnolfini Marriage.'" ( 1989). Michele
Lacombe explores the ramifications of the assigned name "Offred," especially as "off-
read"--literally, she is "misread" both by her Commander and by the male scholars who
reassemble her story at the Nunavit conference ( 1986).
7. Frances Bartkowski reads Offred's hesitations as indicative of a residual state of shock at
the speed and efficiency with which the Gileadean revolution has so fundamentally
altered reality. Chapter 5 of her Feminist Utopias ( 1989) examines The Handmaid's Tale
in depth; see 135.
8. W. J. Keith compares The Handmaid's Tale with Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork
Orange. In both novels, "the rules and regulations that we first dismiss as the totalitarian
methods of an extreme group are now seen to arise . . . in response to a crisis deriving
from earlier moral breakdown" ( 1987, 125). In this sense, Keith argues, both novels raise
difficult questions about our own times (as dystopia should do), which partially accounts
for Pieixoto's assertion that we should not be quick to pass judgment on Gilead.
9. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale ( 1986), 82. All subsequent references are to this
edition.
10. Genesis 30:1-3. Atwood takes these verses as the first of The Handmaid's Tale's three
epigraphs. Interestingly, the second of these is a quotation from Jonathan Swift A Modest
Proposal ( 1729), surely one of the most bitter dystopic satires ever published.
11. York discusses the significance of women's colored uniforms as a broader indication of
Atwood's continuing interest in issues of uniformity and transgression in her essay, "The
Habits of Language: Uniform(ity), Transgression and Margaret Atwood" ( 1990). She
concentrates especially on The Handmaid's Tale and Lady Oracle ( 1976).
12. Suzette Haden Elgin, Native Tongue ( 1985), 6. All subsequent references are to this
edition.
13. No explanation of what these groups do or represent is given in the text. Mary Kay Bray
argues that "at its outset, through reference to itself as a "document" and through
presenting itself at a double remove from readers' reality, Native Tongue stresses its
existence as a text and encourages readers' awareness of itself as such" ( 1986, 57).
14. Suzette Haden Elgin, Native Tongue II: The Judas Rose ( 1987), 7-8. All subsequent
references are to this edition.
15. Interestingly, Elgin never depicts aliens versed in human languages. In Elgin's
conception, humanity is the most backward race capable of leaving its homeworld: since
humans stand to gain far more from social intercourse with aliens than the aliens do with
humanity, Earth is forced to provide its own translators or else suffer the consequences of
not communicating. Few humans are aware of this power imbalance, because there is a
deliberate conspiracy on Earth to keep this knowledge from the public (see 1987, 36-37).
There is a strong hint that this one-sided exchange is a deliberate, if subtle, attempt on the
aliens' part to help humanity evolve beyond gender-based oppression (see The Judas
Rose's Epilogue, 357-363).
16. Elgin's novels often strain credulity, and Peter Fitting finds this economic paradox
particularly troublesome:

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Even if the reader accepts that the linguists are able to maintain a monopoly on
negotiations because they are the only ones able to learn alien languages, and even if the
reader accepts the widespread hostility and even disgust that the U.S. populace shows for
the linguists, a major question remains which is constantly raised in the novel and which
is constantly avoided: what do they do with their money? They are feared and hated
partially because it is assumed that they live so much better than the rest of society. Yet
each time an outsider comes into extended contact with them . . . she is shocked to
 discover that this is not true. . . . The novel is so concerned with setting up a situation in
which the women can develop a new language in the very heart of a repressive patriarchy
that it fails to make that situation very convincing. We are shown a powerful, elite family
of linguists who jealously control all negotiations with other races but who are not
interested in power or money and who seem to lack any motivation. ( 1990, 146-47).
17. The popular stereotype of Linguist lifestyle is so pervasive that it forms the basis for a
routine lecture given by a U.S. Department of Analysis and Translation official to (male)
trainees: [T]he linguist's lifestyle has an austerity and frugality that I am absolutely
certain not one of you would willingly endure. Only in the monasteries of the Roman
Catholic Church could you find anything even remotely comparable as a standard of
living-and if it were not for the advanced technology required by their duties as linguists,
which does entail some expensive electronic equipment, a more apt comparison would be
the communities of the American Amish and Mennonites. . . . And I hasten to add that the
lifestyle is not imposed by any government authority. ( Elgin 1987a, 89)
18. Medical technology has advanced to the point that Nazareth's breasts could be quickly
and cheaply regenerated, totally free from cancer, from her own DNA. However, in a
particularly harsh concession to public misconceptions about the Lines' financial
frivolity, Nazareth's male relatives dismiss the operation as unnecessary.
19. For example, concerning the attempt to sanitize the language, the phrase "thou annointest
my head with oil" in the fifth verse of the Twenty-Third Psalm has been slightly altered
from the English sense. The Láadan phrase is "Boóbin Na delith lethath oma Nathanan,"
which translates as "Thou braidest my hair with thine own hands," "'Thou' and 'Thine'
being understood as containing in addition the morpheme 'Beloved'" ( 1987a, 209-10).
20. This critique is scattered throughout Native Tongue in the form of excerpts from small-
minded lecturers, which appear as epigraphs to chapters. The Judas Rose expands the
critique of academia through subplots involving an ambitious professor and the
professional jealousy of academic linguists who seek to repudiate the theories and
empirical research conducted by the linguists of the Lines.
21. Ironically, both sides have burned books. Offred remembers attending a bookburning in
her childhood, where she witnessed the incineration of hundreds of pornographic
magazines ( Atwood 1986, 38). Although the pornographers have long since been
liquidated (230), brutal, hard-core pornographic movies are shown to the Handmaids
during their training (118), which are intended to make them thankful that such abuse no
longer (officially) exists.
22. Keeping Bibles away from all but the Commanders has enabled them to begin rewriting
Scripture to more completely serve their own ends, as Offred knows from hearing tape-
recorded readings of the Beatitudes played at lunch in the Rachel and Leah Center:
"Blessed are the silent. I knew they made that up, I knew it was wrong, and they left
things out, too, but there was no way of checking" ( Atwood 1986, 89). Not even the
Aunts are permitted to read from the Bible: hence the taped readings at breakfast in the
Red Center.

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23. Harriet Bergmann's essay explores the idea that Offred's narrative skills may well have
 been brought to the surface by repression, since there is no indication in her narrative that
she has ever previously been a writer or creative teller at all.
24. For other opinions, see Davidson 1988, 120; Deer 1992, 227-28; Kauffman 1989, 239-
240; Lacombe 1986, 19; Malak 1987, 14-15.
25. Such an hypothesis is not new in feminist scholarship-- Elgin notes that she first came
across the idea while reading Cheris Kramarae Women and Men Speaking ( 1981). She
went on to read widely in this area, including such critics as Hélène Cixous, Luce
Irigaray, Jacques Lacan, Adrienne Rich, and Mary Daly. "And I found the hypothesis
especially interesting for its paradox. Because if it were actually true that existing human
languages are inadequate to express the perceptions of women, then the only mechanism
available to women for explaining this situation and for working with it was the very
language that was inadequate!" ( 1987b, 177). Elaine Showalter argues, "The problem is
not that language is insufficient to express women's consciousness but that women have
been denied the full resources of language and have been forced into silence, euphemism,
or circumlocution" ( 1985, 255); Showalter gives a cogent overview of the debate
concerning patriarchal language and women's responses on 252-56.
26. In terms of purely stylistic and aesthetic concerns, Brave New World is a far better-
crafted novel than Nineteen Eighty-four, and yet the latter is the better-known and more
memorable of the two dystopias, especially with a popular reading public. Where Brave
New World is content to make mordantly witty observations about the ease with which
humanity can be pampered into giving up freedom, Nineteen Eightyfour, for all its
stylistic shortcomings, goes for the reader's figurative jugular.
27. Atwood 1986, 74, 84-85, 104-6, 192-93, 224-25, 227.
28. Foust connects the manhunt in Richard Connell's short story, "The Most Dangerous
Game", to the thematic game present in the dystopia ( 1982, 84).
29. Foust's first level of the "logos game" ( 1982) is absent from The Handmaid's Tale. Foust
calls this level the "structural game," which he argues consists of the State's hunting down
the protagonist once that character has awakened to rebellion. In Nineteen Eighty-four
there is significant evidence that the Inner Party has manufactured Winston's resistance.
Offred, by contrast, is rebellious from the start, but she does not initiate any acts of
resistance. Instead, all such acts--Scrabble with the Commander, conversation with
Ofglen, sex with Nick--are set in motion by other characters. The black van that comes to
take Offred to her uncertain fate is not the culmination of a long hunt. It is not even clear
who summoned the van.
30. Aquina seems to be arguing here for the same sort of women-only utopia as Suzy McKee
Charnas explores in her 1979 novel Motherlines.
31. Fitting's ( 1990) timetable is overstated. We do not know when Láadan was invented, but
only that in 2205, with Nazareth's arrival in Chornyak Barren House, the language begins
to be spread outside the Barren Houses. Nazareth is thirty-seven at this time. Elgin does
not give dates in The Judas Rose ( 1987a). At the end of that novel, Nazareth is already a
great-great-grandmother--though since the Lines marry their women off beginning at
fifteen, Nazareth is probably in her late eighties to late nineties. Assuming that Nazareth
is in her late nineties in The Judas Rose, Láadan has been spreading for, at most, sixty to
sixty-five years. Again, assuming a generation of only about eighteen to twenty years in a
family of the Lines, this length of time does not even fulfill Nazareth's predictions about
 how long it will take for Láadan to reach the level of a living language.
32. In defense of both Elgin and Atwood, the abrupt oppression they both depict as having
taken place in the late 1980s to early 1990s appears slightly less implausible when
viewed in historical context. After decades of struggle for equality, many feminists
viewed with alarm the conservative backlash of the Reagan presidency, the Moral
Majority and other explicitly antifeminist groups--see Elgincomments in "Women's
Language and Near Future Science Fiction: A Reply" ( 1987b), 176

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comments in "Women's Language and Near Future Science Fiction: A Reply" ( 1987b),
176. Extrapolating feminist dystopias from such actual conditions is no more implausible
than Orwell's extrapolating of Oceania from postwar Britain's exhausted squalor.
33. Ketterer recognizes that he stands on shaky ground, and admits that a "contextual
dystopia" in the sense that he has defined it "is rare. In fact, I know of no other example
[than The Handmaid's Tale]" ( 1989, 213).
34. Deer: "[T]hese "Historical Notes" are a further reinforcing of the authority of Offred's
narrative: the academics are satirized as trivializers of history. They have turned Gilead
into a matter of textual authentication, and an occasion for levity and entertainment. . . .
Offred's story has not been understood by these scholars, who are rather poor readers of
texts" ( 1992, 226-27).

Kauffman: "You can only forgive atrocities that you forget, and Offred reminds us never
to forget, never to bury the horrors of history among vague clichés in which there are no
agents and no evils. Judgment is necessary, she insists, to prevent the past from repeating
itself" ( 1989, 240).

Malak: "[W]hen a critic or scholar (and by extension a reader) avoids, under the guise of
scholarly objectivity, taking a moral or political stand about an issue of crucial magnitude
such as totalitarianism, he or she will necessarily become an apologist for evil; more
significantly, the applause the speaker receives gives us a further compelling glimpse into
a distant future that still harbours strong misogynous tendencies" ( 1987, 15).

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7
"You Never Know Where It Begun Realy"
Critics of Russell Hoban Riddley Walker ( 1980) are united as to the brilliance of the language
Hoban employs in it, but no such unanimity prevails regarding its genre. Riddley Walker has
been called apocalyptic science fiction, a postnuclear bildungsroman, a futuristic novel, a
comic novel, a philosophical novel, a futuristic fable, and a metaphysical novel. 1 I argue that
Hoban's novel is a dystopia, one which further expands the dystopian framework while
maintaining the dependence on language as the central element. Riddley Walker reverses the
terms of the argument, by offering us a novel in which the central importance of its language
is obvious, while its genre is not. By examining Hoban's transformations of language, Riddley
Walker reveals itself as a dystopian novel.

Hoban immerses the reader in a strange world, which is described in a wonderfully odd
patois:

On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the
las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him
nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when
he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the reqwyrt he
ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and there we wer then. 2

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Readers familiar with Burgess A Clockwork Orange will feel a sense of déjà vu as they
grapple with Riddley's fractured English narrative. Like Nadsat, Riddley's English forces
readers to pick their way through sentences, attempting to make sense of the words. But
Nadsat is mainly a vocabulary of invented words, most of which are altered Russian terms;
the structure and form of Alex's lingo is essentially standard English. Alex's argot becomes
comprehensible after a few pages of reading contextually. By contrast, Riddley Walker
presents the reader with strange orthography, run-on sentences, multifaceted puns, and a host
of other linguistic difficulties that are never facile:

The language itself . . . is actantial; that is, it is as important for shaping the narrative as any
particular event, or the behavior of any character. In this regard there is a tension between . . .
a quest for characters to understand and make sense of the conceptual abstractions of physics,
metaphysical science, and technology, and the eternal enigmas, dualities, and paradoxes of
life that have addressed themselves to people through the centuries. ( Wilkie 1989, 58)

There are no speakers of standard English in Riddley's world. Furthermore, Riddley uses
several terms that have no single English referent but rather carry multiple meanings--all of
them crucial to an understanding of his culture.

Riddley Walker, the novel's first-person narrator, begins his tale on his twelfth birthday, the
date of his formal coming of age. Riddley's voice and character immediately call to mind
Mark Twain Huckleberry Finn. 3 Like Huck, Riddley's conscious narrative is scrupulously
honest--however, because he sometimes misreads situations, he is not a completely reliable
narrator. Formally, Riddley Walker is as much a bildungsroman as is Huckleberry Finn. It is
difficult to separate the plot events from the language in which Riddley records them. The
novel is set far in the future, long after a nuclear holocaust has devastated the earth. Even the
topography has been greatly altered: Riddley's map of Inland, which precedes the text of the
novel, is barely recognizable as eastern Kent. Civilization has struggled back to the
technological level of the early Iron Age in most places. As a result, the "forms" (permanent
farming communities) are beginning to pose a direct challenge to the seminomadic hunter-
gatherer tribes who move from one "fents" (temporary walled encampments) to another. The
past, including the technological feats of "boats in the air" and "picters on the wind," is
remembered only in fragments of song and rhyme. The clearest memory preserved is that of
the "1 Big 1" (nuclear disaster) and the "Bad Time" that followed. Physical evidence of the
apocalypse remains as fragments of metal excavated as raw material for primitive iron
foundries, and in the ruins of "dead towns," most notably "Cambry" and its Power Ring Ditch
(Canterbury and the surrounding wreckage of a nuclear particle accelerator). The dead towns
are forbidden zones said to be inhabited by half dog-half human monsters. While several
expressions and images from before Bad Time remain in the language, their original
meanings have been lost.

Riddley is the son of Brooder Walker, the "connexion man" to the How Fents tribe. Riddley is
forced to assume his father's responsibilities when Brooder is killed in a freak accident at the
Widders Dump excavation a few days after Riddley's naming. At first, Riddley looks to others
for answers, most notably Reckman Bessup, the Widders Dump connexion man ( Hoban
1982, 12-14) and Lorna Elswint, How Fents's "tel woman" (23-25). But when they cannot
answer his questions, he begins interpreting events for himself--as well as for the entire

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tribe after the Eusa show arrives. This is a puppet show that inculcates official propaganda
and historical interpretation, which is performed by the Pry Mincer ( Abel Goodparley) and
the Wes Mincer ( Erny Orfing) of Inland. The Mincers are the highest officials in the Ram
government, and their authority extends over all of Inland. Their itinerant puppet show is not
entertainment, but a serious means of political indoctrination and social control. The "Eusa
Story" is Inland's central myth, explaining how Bad Time came about; the Eusa show serves
as an ongoing exegesis to interpret this myth. The connexion men's duty is to explicate the
meanings of the Eusa show for the populace. Riddley has been trained to "make connexions"
by memorizing the Eusa story. He can also read and write, rare skills in a predominately
illiterate culture which preserves both history and legends in oral tales and songs. Riddley
records several of these tales, all of which explore historical and spiritual truths which bear
upon his narrative. 4 Of these, the chant from a children's game, "Fools Circel 9wys", gives
Riddley's quest its structure:

Horny Boy rung Widders Bel

Stoal his Fathers Ham as wel
Bernt his Arse and Forkt a Stoan
Done It Over broak a boan
Out of Good Shoar vackt his wayt
Scratcht Sams Itch for No. 8
Gone to senter nex to see
Cambry coming 3 times 3
Sharna pax and get the poal
When the Ardship of Cambry comes out of the hoal (5) 5

This rhyme is repeated figuratively during Riddley's peregrinations, as he unintentionally

follows the same route as given in the song--discovering along the way that others take its
words literally and that he is not the first to walk this route.

The most important tale Riddley tells is the Eusa story, which (like all connexion men and
Mincery officials) he has memorized. Eusa is the archetypal scientist held responsible for
having brought about the 1 Big 1. Among other meanings, the complex punning name Eusa
could simultaneously refer to the U.S.A., the European Space Agency, Eastern Europe, and
the U.S.S.R. Swanson points out that Eusa also suggests the Latin "Jesu," for Jesus, or the
same name in Greek; Good Say, from (eu-sa[y]), namely, the Good News, or Gospel; and the
words, "used to" and "you say" ( 1982, 206). The name recalls Orpheus (the decapitated head
speaks before swimming out to sea) and Esau, who traded away his birthright for a mess of
pottage and wandered in hope of eventually finding his freedom ( Genesis 27:39-40). Eusa
definitely also refers to the conflation of nuclear apocalypse and Saint Eustace, whose legend
is given later in the text. In the novel's Acknowledgments and in an interview with Edward
Myers, Hoban has stated that the impulse to write Riddley Walker came when he first saw the
fifteenth-century wall painting of the life of Saint Eustace undergoing restoration in
Canterbury Cathedral: 6

There was some essence in it that mattered to everybody. And then the whole world of
Riddley Walker dropped into my head. I had already been thinking a lot about Punch.
Suddenly I had this idea of desolate England, long after civilization is destroyed and
Christianity is defunct, when the state religion is something that's carried on by

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puppeteers going from one little fenced-in settlement to another. . . . The Eusa story was one
of the first things; I worked that out before I got to where it first appears in the book. ( Myers
1984, 13-14)

Riddley pauses to give the Eusa story in its entirety on pages 30 - 33 ; it forms a single
chapter by itself. David Lake admirably condenses and summarizes this "canonical" version
of the Eusa story:

Eusa with his two dogs enter the "wud in the hart of the stoan," meet the Hart (stag) between
whose antlers stands the crucified "Littl Shynin Man the Addom" [Adam/Christ/the atomic
nucleus]. The two dogs are afraid and warn Eusa, but he ignores them and later kills them.
Eusa shoots the stag, and pulls the Littl Man apart. After that, nuclear war and other disasters
follow, Eusa's family are dispersed, and finally the Littl Man appears to Eusa and prophesies
Eusa's further sufferings. ( Lake 1984, 165)

This is the story as Riddley has learned it. Significantly, it ends with the prophecy that Eusa
must wander and suffer through his "Chaynjis" before he can finally find spiritual
enlightenment and the peace of death. Riddley hears other versions as he travels about,
versions whose endings directly relate to the political agendas of their tellers.

Riddley hears one such version from Lissener, whom Riddley frees from a cell in a dead
town. Lissener is one of the Eusa Folk, deformed mutants descended from scientists who
survived Bad Time--in fact, Lissener (so named for his telepathic ability) is the Ardship of
Cambry. The Ram has enslaved the Eusa Folk, who call themselves the Puter Leat (Computer
Elite), and have hidden them in the dead towns. For generations, the Mincery has reenacted
Eusa's last days every twelfth year, following the pattern established in Fools Circel 9wys. By
retracing this circular path, culminating in the human sacrifice of the Ardship in Cambry, the
Mincery hopes to rediscover the lost secrets of the 1 Big 1. In Lissener's version of the story,
Eusa seeks to atone for his sins by going from town to town and warning of the dangers of
technology. Instead, the Ram tries to force from him the secrets of the 1 Big 1. When Eusa
refuses to tell, they kill him and place his head on a pole. Eusa's head begins to talk,
prophesying a tidal wave that cuts the Ram off from the rest of Inland. To keep his memory
and his warnings alive, and to try to bring back his knowledge, Eusa commands that the
Mincery institute the Eusa shows. Eusa orders the Mincery to do what they prevented him
from doing in life: with metaphorical heads on poles (wooden puppet heads), they are to visit
all the towns and re-tell his story. As Lissener says, "They jus keap hoaping some time some
Goodparley wil ask the right asking and some Ardship will say a anser whatwl break them
thru the barren year [barrier]" ( Hoban 1982, 84). 7

The Mincery officials depend on the connexion men to interpret the Eusa shows, and through
them to help maintain the Ram's control over the populace. The tel women interpret "blips
and syns," deciphering meanings of natural events such as stillbirths, weather, and untimely
deaths. Unlike connexion men, tel women are not literate, but they nonetheless preserve most
of Inland's stories, legends, and knowledge--and their authority is independent of the Mincery.
Lorna Elswint is the most important influence we see on Riddley's development: while both
Goodparley and Lissener will emphasize the Eusa story and the drive to recover "clevverness"
(technological know-how), Lorna helps Riddley consider the importance of the "1st knowing"
(spiritual wisdom, unity

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with nature). Significantly, she tells him the story of "Why the Dog Wont Show Its Eyes",
which relates a profoundly different version of how the 1 Big 1 and Bad Time came about.
Lorna's tale never mentions Eusa; instead, it places the responsibility for abandoning the "1st
knowing" and creating the 1 Big 1 on men and women in general. In Lorna's story, humanity's
great mistake lay in thinking "if the 1st knowing is this good what myt the 2nd knowing and
the 3rd be and so on?" ( 1982, 18). In Lorna's estimation, the 1 Big 1 was the logical
conclusion of the process begun when humanity divorced itself from the natural world.

The Eusa story is written in a language different from Riddley's--as he says, "the same as it
ben wrote out 1st and past on down to us. Its all ways wrote down in the old spel. . . . You
wunt have seen the woal thing wrote out without you ben a Eusa show man or connexion man
or in the Mincery. No 1 else is allowit to have it wrote down the same which that dont make
no odds becaws no I else knows how to read" ( 1982, 29). This is the first of two
interpolations whose language varies from Riddley's (the other is "The Legend of St. Eustace"
on 123 -24). The "old spel" is even more difficult to read than Riddley's English, since its
orthography is farther removed from standard English. It is a much more phonetic language
than Riddley's and demonstrates both the continuing development of language and the
holiness of the Eusa story, which is so sacred as to be preserved in its archaic diction. This
latter view is reinforced by the fact that the story is given in thirty-three numbered paragraphs,
reminiscent of scriptural verses.

Goodparley, the Pry Mincer (Prime Minister), and Orfing, the Wes Mincer (Westminster),
confirm Riddley as How Fents's new connexion man before performing the Eusa show.
Goodparley is anxious to win Riddley's trust and political allegiance. During their
conversation there are hints of discord between the Mincery officials: Goodparley
understands the Littl Shynin Man as a literal thing to be put back together, while Orfing reads
the Littl Shynin Man as representing things that cannot be reassembled. The Big 2, as they are
called, perform the Eusa show after a quasi-religious chant that promises a "new chance every
time" (possibly to gain spiritual understanding, possibly for actual knowledge). Goodparley is
the puppeteer, while Orfing stands outside the puppet stage as the straight man "for the patter"
( 1982, 44). This particular performance shows the overworked Eusa building an iron box
which will be "a nother head and bigger so it can do some of this hevvy head work"--a
computer (47). But as soon as Eusa begins to put knowledge from his head into the computer,
with the aim of using it to create "Good Time" (a distinctly Wellsian utopia driven by
"teckernogical progers"), the evil Mr. Clevver (who resembles a storybook devil) accelerates
the process and steals the computer. Eusa is left weakened and nearly mindless as Mr.
Clevver uses the knowledge in the box to bring about the 1 Big 1 and Bad Time. The show
ends with Orfing arguing with Eusa over his responsibility for the 1 Big 1: the traditional
story puts the blame squarely on Eusa himself, while the show suggests that Eusa's knowledge
was appropriated and misused by Mr. Clevver.

The distinction between Lissener's and Goodparley's accounts of the Eusa story lies in the
very different ways they use the story to justify their interactions between the Mincery and the
Eusa Folk. Lissener portrays the Eusa Folk as victims being manipulated by an ignorant,
power-hungry government, while Goodparley paints himself as a dedicated leader trying to
pull his nation up

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from the mud and into utopia. Riddley is especially confused when Goodparley shows him a
copy of "The Legend of St. Eustace". This page has miraculously survived Bad Time, and is
written in standard English; it is the second part of Riddley's narrative not written in his
vernacular. The page describes a wall painting of Saint Eustace's life and martyrdom, very
clearly modeled on the same restored painting that can be seen today in Canterbury Cathedral,
and to which Hoban directly refers in his Acknowledgments. While the page's purpose is very
clear to the reader, it is nearly impenetrable to Goodparley and Riddley, at least insofar as its
historical meaning is concerned. Goodparley explains and interprets the page to Riddley.
Although his interpretations are rarely factually correct, they brilliantly elucidate many of the
realities of Goodparley's and Riddley's world. Maynor and Patteson point to such episodes as
proof that "metaphysical truth may well be concealed within the webs of historical error"
( 1982, 19).

Goodparley helps us more accurately date Riddley's narrative as he explains how long it has
been since Bad Time:

Theres a stoan in the Power Ring stannings has the year number 1997 cut in to it nor we aint
never seen no year number farther on nor that. After Bad Time dint no 1 write down no year
count for a long time we dont know how long til the Mincery begun agen. Since we startit
counting its come to 2347 O.C. which means Our Count. ( 1982, 125)

Even allowing for only a single generation between the nuclear holocaust and the resumption
of keeping calendars, Riddley's narrative is set more than twentythree centuries beyond the
present day, and possibly further than that--a much greater distance between real present and
fictive future than in any of the works previously discussed. Yet even across such a vast time,
many of Goodparley's guesses are quite shrewd. Among the secrets he has deciphered,
Goodparley believes that he is on the verge of finding something practical having to do with
the combination of the "yellerboy stoan" and a few other chemicals. Although he insists that
he follows the twelve-year cycle of "doing the askings" and "helping the qwirys" on the
Ardship--that is, torturing and beheading him--only because it is Mincery policy, Goodparley
plays on Riddley's growing sympathy with his cause:

Im teming them [the Mincery] frontwards in a woal lot of ways only I cant do it all at Ice. . . .
May be you ben thinking Im your nemminy but that aint how it is. You think like I do you
feal like I do we aint nemminys. Its them as cant think nor feal none of them things theyre the
nemminy. Them peopl as jus want to hol on to what theyve got theyre afeart to chance any
thing theyre afeart to move even 1 littl step forit. I dont care if its Mincery or forms or fentses
its them as wont move theyre the nemminy. (126)

Goodparley is obsessed with rediscovering and utilizing the knowledge from before Bad
Time. Such is the intensity of Goodparley's emotions and his desire to convert Riddley to his
way of thinking that when he sees Riddley's Punch puppet (dug from a bog), he is briefly
overcome. Goodparley describes how, as a child, he witnessed the slaughter of his entire
village, and was subsequently adopted by the mysterious, Punch-like Granser.

This character clearly refers to Jack London novella The Scarlet Plague, first published in
1915. London depicts a postapocalyptic society that has been decimated by a mysterious
disease, the Scarlet Death (in turn reminiscent of

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Poe "The Masque of the Red Death"). On the coast of California, an old man named Granser
tells a group of young boys about the collapse of the society he knew as a professor of English
literature at the University of California at Berkeley. The boys laugh at the patent absurdities
of wireless communications, motor vehicles (especially airplanes), microscopic bacteria, and
populations numbering in the millions, while they cannot count above ten--yet Granser's tale
holds them spellbound. Hoban is clearly indebted to an idea that comes up late in the story:

There is another little device [says Granser] that men inevitably will rediscover. It is called
gunpowder. It was what enabled us to kill surely and at long distances. Certain things which
are found in the ground, when combined in the right proportions, will make this
gunpowder. . . . The gunpowder will come. Nothing can stop it--the same old story over and
over. Man will increase, and men will fight. ( London 1975, 45052) 8

London's Granser is an old man who depends on his young charges for food and protection.
To them, his knowledge is only a source of entertainment. By contrast, Hoban's Granser is a
mysterious and powerful figure. Unlike London's character, his preserved knowledge is of
immediate practical use to his protégé, Goodparley.

Goodparley performs the show that he learned from Granser, a Punch and Judy show. Riddley
is amazed to see a duplicate of his Punch figure, but brightly colored and dressed where his
own is rotten and fouled with muck. Goodparley's goals become clear as he mixes in Eusa
elements with the Punch show, including the Bomb, Pooty as Moon Sow, cannibalism, and
Mr. Clevver acting as Punch's hump, symbolizing the load of guilt on his back. Goodparley
finally tells of the sexual abuse he suffered at Granser's instigation, ending with his murdering
the old man (as he thinks) and joining the Mincery.

Riddley Walker reveals itself as a dystopia in a number of ways. Post apocalyptic Inland is,
quite literally, a "bad place": disease, semiintelligent wild dogs, eternally foul weather, and
the lingering effects of radioactive fallout make survival a difficult business. Life expectancy
is short, infant mortality is high, and maturity comes early (Riddley enters adulthood on his
twelfth birthday). The constant threat of warfare is clear in both Brooder's "reveal"
(interpretation of events) after the Dog Et Form "largens in" (i.e., forcibly absorbs) Littl
Salting Fents ( Hoban 1982, 56) and Goodparley's story of how he was orphaned in an
Outland raid on Bad Mercy Fents (131-32). Finally, the brutalities of political expediency--
culling the Eusa Folk (96), murdering the Ardship, torturing for information (145-47)--
threaten everyone who gets in the government's way. The rediscovery of gunpowder (the 1
Littl 1) promises to make such a grim world even more dangerous.

Riddley Walker also functions as a dystopia by extrapolating current events for didactic
purposes. At the time of the novel's publication, the Cold War's apparent headlong rush
toward nuclear devastation seemed irreversible. Hoban extrapolates thousands of years into
the future to illustrate the lingering horrors of even a limited nuclear exchange. Hoban
reminds us that the aftereffects of nuclear winter and radioactive pollution are measured in
centuries, not generations. For Huxley, Orwell and Atwood--all of whose dystopias take place
after limited nuclear wars--it is sufficient for their fictive societies to have experienced
nuclear devastation on a small scale, whether recently (as in TheHandmaid's Tale

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Handmaid's Tale and Nineteen Eighty-four) or hundreds of years before the action takes place
(as in Brave New World's nearly-forgotten Nine Days' War). In these novels, nuclear weapons
are not the issue, but merely useful tools in constructing a fictive reality. Hoban puts nuclear
devastation at the center of his dystopia--not to warn against nuclear weapons and their use
per se, but to satirize both the fascination with them and the vast disparity between
technological progress and moral development that makes the use of such weapons possible. 9

The strongest argument for labeling Riddley Walker a dystopia lies in its depiction of a
repressive government that keeps its citizens uninformed in order to control them. The
Mincery suppresses opposition by restricting literacy, making certain that only its own
officials and its network of unwitting apologists (the connexion men) ever learn to read and
write. Against the slight chance that someone outside their control might become literate, the
Mincery preserves the Eusa story only in the archaic "old spel." The Ram has made the Eusa
story the official scripture of the state religion, a religion that is "designed to prevent the
return of science and its perceived misdeeds by casting 'clevverness' [scientific knowledge] as
a moral crime against humanity" ( Porter 1990, 466). But while the Mincery publicly portrays
science as a crime, it conducts clandestine research in the forbidden dead towns. The public is
kept ignorant of the existence of the Eusa Folk, and rumors of monsters circulate against the
possibility that someone outside the Mincery might see a Eusa person.

The traveling Eusa showmen (themselves Mincery officials) use their puppet theater to
disseminate official propaganda and control public opinion. The best example of this occurs
in Riddley's remembrance of a Eusa show his father "connected" years before. When Littl
Salting Fents refuses Dog Et Form's offer to "largen in" together--entailing the absorption of
the Fents's lands, herds, and people--Dog Et destroys Littl Salting and puts out an excuse
about "Outland raiders." This lie is recognized by other fentses, but when the Mincery puts
out a special Eusa show to deal with the crisis, that "cow shit" show (as Riddley calls it) does
not condemn Dog Et's actions. Instead, the show metaphorically justifies what Dog Et has
done, preaching official approval of the "largening in" process ( 1982, 56-60). When Riddley
frees Lissener and hears his version of the ending to the Eusa story, he discovers that

even the sacred ritual itself--the commemorative puppet show--was devised not so much for
devotional as for political purposes. The Ram killed Eusa; thus, they have produced a puppet
to take his place--a puppet in both the literal and figurative senses, a figure to divert the
people from the government's real aims. . . . [T]he Ram [government]. . . has not heeded
Eusa's warnings and, therefore, must regard the mythical figure as less than sacred.
( Mustazza 1989, 23)

Goodparley's rendition of this same ending shatters Riddley's illusions concerning the sanctity
of the Eusa myth. Goodparley's tale is a politically expedient reading of the Eusa story,
especially the final sentence: "When the right head of Inland fynds the right head of Eusa the
anser wil come and Inland wil rise up out of what she ben brung down to" ( Hoban 1982,
122). As Leonard Mustazza notes, there can be little question as to whom Goodparley means
when he talks of the "right head of Inland" ( 1989, 24). 10 The state religion is a sham
designed to keep the population ignorant while its leaders pursue the secrets of

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lost technology. Riddley penetrates the official lies and begins to expose them for the rest of
Inland's population, signifying that the Ram's tight control cannot long endure. Hoban's
didactic warnings go beyond simply reminding us of the horrors of nuclear weapons,
satirizing the root cause of the arms race--the speed with which scientific and technological
knowledge progresses outpaces the moral and ethical growth necessary to deal with them. 11
But if Riddley Walker is a dystopia, what are the ramifications of its language?

Hoban's linguistic creativity ensures that the reader must constantly probe the narrative's
idiosyncratic language. By having to read Riddley's narrative in his words, we are forced (as
with Alex in A Clockwork Orange) to adopt many of Riddley's viewpoints, at least
temporarily, in order to understand more clearly what he is saying. For example, we cannot
simply explore the multiple meanings of the word Eusa as it relates to the reader's world, but
must also accept the Eusa story and Eusa show as the myths they purport to be. Riddley's faith
in the Eusa myth is firm until he ponders Lissener's and Goodparley's differing accounts of its
ending: if the reader has failed to pay attention to the myth and Riddley's understanding of it,
the magnitude of his change of mind (and that of others like Rightway and Deaper Flinter)
will pass unnoticed. The novel refuses to yield up its meanings without multiple close
readings, which can turn on the explications of a few words. At first the language appears to
impede understanding. With time it becomes clear that Riddley Walker's strange language
illuminates the novel's concerns. "Once [readers] take the language on its own terms, they
often find it a source of amusement rather than frustration" ( Myers 1984, 6).

In an interview with Edward Myers, Hoban admits that he has no philological training and
that he sought no professional linguistic aid in constructing Riddley Walker's language:

I started writing it in straight English, and it just began to drift. The characters began to say
words that didn't exist in English, and their English began to drift into a vernacular. Then I
saw that what was really happening was the real linguistic process that does happen. Speech
always encapsulates a place and a time and a world-view. And their speech would naturally
do the same. (in Myers 1984, 14)

It is possible to study the relationships between worldviews and languages in the past, but it is
not easy to extrapolate these relationships into the future. As Walter Meyers points out, "only
science fiction requires its practitioners to put down on paper their estimates of the language
of the next decade, the next century, or the next millennium" ( 1984, 12). 12 On the whole,
Meyers argues, most science fiction writers have failed to extrapolate future language use, no
matter how carefully they might justify advances in space travel, medicine, and other fields:
the majority of science fiction narratives show characters speaking in standard English (18-
29). This is partly due to the paucity of linguistic knowledge that science fiction authors can
legitimately assume their readers possess (5). But while science fiction writers can circumvent
the necessity to create credible future languages for their characters, dystopian writers enjoy
no such luxury. In order "to convey the stultifying effect that the rigidly controlled society
would have on how its citizens think and speak," dystopian writers must "create an
imaginatively valid language reflecting the specific social and technological realities of the
projected future" ( Beauchamp 1974, 464). 13

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Language is only one of the elements with which a dystopian writer must flesh out a fictional
society. Once created, the challenge is to introduce the reader to that culture without lapsing
into the utopian tradition's interminable lecture. Huxley presents his World State in a series of
ironic concatenating vignettes, whose net effect makes the Brave New World seem far more
removed from contemporary reality than it actually is. Orwell's solution is simply to immerse
the reader in the culture without an introduction ( Zwerdling 1971, 100-101). Orwell has been
widely (and successfully) emulated. With the exception of Elgin, whose chapter epigraphs to
both Láadan novels convey a sense of historical movement, all the dystopian novels studied in
this volume follow Orwell's example. Nadsat's strangeness makes A Clockwork Orange the
most difficult of these novels for the reader to assimilate until we turn to Hoban and Riddley
Walker. Burgess's Nadsat is useful primarily in creating Alex's character: without that
language, the near-future culture in which Alex lives is sufficiently close to the reader's that
we have little difficulty in understanding it. However, Hoban goes farther than Burgess by
creating a society so unlike our own that its language must be penetrated in order to clearly
apprehend how it functions. It would be absurd to pretend that a society two thousand years in
the future would speak standard English as it now exists.

However, Hoban cannot extrapolate his language to a linguistically realistic point, since it
would be incomprehensible to most readers. The tension lies between plausibility--where, as
noted in Walter Meyers's ( 1980) theory, a concept must merely seem correct when judged
against the fictive construct in which it appears--and realism--in which the concept must not
violate actual physical laws or historical accuracy. In comparing the minor linguistic shift
Hoban extrapolates to the actual evolution of English over the last two thousand years, it
becomes clear that Hoban values affective plausibility over realism. 14 Fiction's demands
outweigh the need to satisfy linguistic considerations. For example, Suzy McKee Charnas
relates how she abandoned a realistic language she had constructed in her dystopic novel,
Walk to the End of the World ( 1974):

In the winter of 1972-3 I set about completely rewriting my first book. . . . Written in what
one editor had called "a private code," it was unreadable by anyone but its author. I had
invented an elaborate future religion complete with mystifying terminology and underlying
assumptions that I had never explained since they would have taken up the whole book. Sadly
I dismantled all this. What was left was a thin, familiar tale set in a post-holocaust future
about a young hero adventuring with two male companions in search of his father. (cited in
Barr 1981, 103)

Despite the conflict between these considerations, many linguistic techniques could serve as
the bases for a fictive future language--though few of these have been employed in
speculative fiction. Walter Meyers notes that most writers who extrapolate language into the
future, even in other countries, tend to use English as a universal language, and few bring in
words from other tongues (the principal exceptions being Russian science fiction writers and
Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange). Meyers shows the easiest means of showing
linguistic change as the most commonly used: "the noting of some difference in
pronunciation, and the insertion of a few [strange new] words" ( 1980, 29). 15 Hoban's lack of
professional linguistic training is not indicative of the richness of the language he invents in
Riddley Walker. David Dowling lists ten separate literary devices at work in what he calls
Hoban's "nukespeak": phonetic

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spellings (pernear for "pretty near"), homonyms or homophonous puns (minim for "minute,"
fizzics for "physics"), metathesis (arnge for "orange"), childish pronunciations (amminals for
"animals"), onomatopoeia (feral dogs grooling and smarling), archaic English words
(glimmers), computer jargon (pirntowt), contemporary slang (rain pissing down), and a form
Dowling calls "Clockwork Orange-ese" (zanting for "dancing"), as well as the widespread use
of Cockney English ( 1988, 182). David Lake's study is somewhat more painstaking. Beyond
the changed orthography, Lake notes eight separate developments proceeding from Standard
English. These may be divided into changes in grammar and changes in vocabulary,
especially as concerns new words. The former include the use of substandard dialectical
forms, a pair of sound changes ("loss of final -t after s" and "strengthening of final -ed in past
tense/past participle verb forms to -it"), the use of the present participle as the past tense, and
the decay of single present words into two separate parts (gallack seas for "galaxies," as plain
for "explain") ( 1984, 160-61). ( Porter ( 1990) discusses this word splitting as a metaphor for
nuclear fission on pages 456-57.) Lake isolates the majority of changes in Riddley Walker's
language as alterations in vocabulary, including new words formed without a clear etymology
(arga warga meaning violent death), new words formed from present-day words (nexters for
"trusted followers" and memberment from "memory"), and, especially, the formation of new
words based on present-day computer terminology ( 1984, 160-62). Lake notes two
difficulties that make the text more difficult to read: the scarcity of punctuation ("commas are
used only before direct speech, colons only before lengthy quotations, and semicolons do not
exist") and the expression of all numbers in Arabic numerals, which "leads to a constant
confusion between '1' (one) and 'I' (the singular first person pronoun)," although he also
discusses the justification for using the latter technique (163).

Of the numerous points Lake ( 1984) and Dowling ( 1988) raise, the most central is the use in
Riddley's language of words based on forgotten scientific and technological terminology.
Such "techno-mythological" terms recur throughout Riddley's narrative: unless one grasps
their multiple meanings, the mythic dimensions of Hoban's novel are lost. These dimensions
enable us to reconsider contemporary problems, especially the gap between nuclear
technology and gunpowder morality. Through fragmented jargon-cum-sacred imagery, Hoban
simplifies the linked complexities of nuclear physics and the overwhelming moral questions
regarding the application of such knowledge--empowering us to speak about the unspeakable.

Jeffrey Porter begins his masterful essay, 'Three Quarks for Muster Mark': Quantum
Wordplay and Nuclear Discourse in Russell Hoban Riddley Walker ( 1990) by reminding us
that In Physics and Philosophy ( 1958), Werner Heisenberg raised a deceptively simple
question about the role of language in modern science when he asked "How might we
understand nuclear physics when we cannot speak about the atom in ordinary language?"
(448). 16 Porter praises Riddley Walker as second only to Joyce Finnegans Wake in "shaping
an idea of quantum language" (450-51) capable of discussing otherwise impenetrably abstruse
issues. Furthermore, Porter locates Riddley Walker squarely in the tradition of such dystopias
as Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-four, and A Clockwork Orange, each of which
constructs "an alternative and anomalous speech which operates by utilizing elements
excluded from language by normal discourse" (450).

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These "antilanguages" (to borrow M. A. K. Halliday's term) redirect the reader's attention
toward issues that power groups have deliberately removed from public discussion. 17 Such
removal is only rarely accomplished by direct fiat, as Orwell realized even while exaggerating
the power of Newspeak; more commonly, power groups find it expedient to modify the terms
of discussion so as to create the appearance of free expression when no such unconstrained
expression is actually possible. 18 Hoban takes a different approach, however. Considering
Alex Zwerdling's assertions that "Orwell was essentially moving toward an interest in and a
need for myth," ( 1971, 90), 19 Hoban completes the circle by writing a mythic dystopia. 20
That is, Hoban depicts a society so thoroughly controlled by the oligarchs' use of
religiohistorical myth that neither physical conditioning (as in Brave New World and A
Clockwork Orange) nor brutal terrorism (as in Nineteen Eighty-four and The Handmaid's
Tale) are necessary to maintain power.

Hoban also satirizes the deliberate obfuscation by euphemism which has characterized
Western discourse concerning the use and effects of nuclear weapons. Porter asserts:

a quick glance at the official vocabulary of the Atomic Energy Commission reveals that the
business of naming--or rather misnaming--is a calculated act. The technocrats who oversaw
the political management of atomic energy in the fifties and sixties were anxious to find ways
to pacify public alarm in the face of the growing menace of the bomb. Their solution was to
invent an auxiliary language wherein the idea of the nuclear could be stripped of its
expressive possibilities. . . . Determined to replace scary words with what it called "palatable
synonyms[,]" . . . the Atomic Energy Commission spent long hours reexamining its
vocabulary, looking for terms which would support the epic future it foresaw in nuclear
power. ( 1990, 465-66)

Such "palatable synonyms" as deterrence (for "balance of terror") have so permeated our
culture that diplomats and military officials no longer need to consciously avoid speaking in
chillingly clear terms. By euphemizing the terminology of nuclear brinksmanship (e.g.,
megadeaths), we have largely avoided grappling with the grim issues that such terms
accurately express (e.g., genocide). Nor is such linguistic camouflage a relic of the 1950s and
1960s, as evidenced by such recent terms as, for example, "High Frontier" defense systems,
which would create a "peace shield" through the use of "brilliant pebbles." 21 Even more
insidious are vague acronyms like MAD, which have a way of becoming separated from their
original definitions (in this case, mutual assured destruction). The more our discourse depends
on such "palatable synonyms" and acronyms, the more likely we are to forget the stark
realities behind the rhetoric. 22 "Under the sign of the nuclear what cannot be said cannot, at
least officially, be thought" (462). If in fact "language dooms mankind to war," then we can
only hope Dowling is correct in suggesting that "a playful attitude to language will break us
out of the mind-trap of nuclear conflict" ( 1987, 166).
Riddley Walker's language is constantly playful, never euphemistic, and, by helping us
confront our "nuclear amnesia" ( Porter 1990, 463), it supports the serious possibility of
finding another path than one that leads to nuclear apocalypse. 23 It is difficult not to chuckle
at such expressions as "scatter my datter" ( Hoban 1982, 48), and there is a certain grubby
rightness in measuring distances in "faggers," which Lake defines as the distance one can
walk while smoking a fag ( 1984, 162). Literal slapstick humor plays a part in such comic

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scenes as the Punch show Goodparley performs for Riddley. Punch, having devoured a
"swossage" that strikingly resembles a bomb, exclaims Um. You cant beat a good banger
( Hoban 1982, 135). Hoban's novel is rich in puns, providing both humor and deeper
philosophical meaning through what Christine Wilkie calls the "inevitable conflation of the
abstract and noumenal with the concrete and literal" ( 1989, 58). For example, Lissener is the
Ardship of Cambry, combining "archbishop" with the actual "hardship" he will suffer when
beheaded in Cambry. Goodparley, the Pry Mincer (prime minister) not only serves as the head
of the Ram government--which, in turn, suggests the herd dominance of a ram, a massive
blow, and the corruption of the word "Ramsgate"--but pries into lost secrets, eternally asking
and reexamining (mincing) his scraps of information for whatever they will yield. Place
names take on extra significance, such as Do It Over standing for Dover and for the repeated
cycles of "doing the askings" with the Ardship as well as humanity's self-destructive urge.
The Eusa story's puns are most important and operate on many levels both for Riddley and the
reader. At the center of the Eusa story we find the "hart of the wud," which incorporates the
stag in the forest that Saint Eustace encounters, heartwood, the hearth on which wood is
burned, hardwood for making charcoal, the center of the forests wherein the charcoal burners
tend their fires, the name these burners give to the stacks of wood they burn, the atomic
nucleus, the life within all natural things, and the central ambition to surrender one's
individual identity ("would," as in "will") while becoming part of a larger organic whole, be it
God or nature--what Riddley describes as "the hart of the wanting to be" ( 1982, 165).

Paronomastic creativity invests multiple levels of meaning to larger patterns beyond

individual words. The circle fulfills several different functions within the novel. 24 Riddley
recapitulates the pattern of Fools Circel 9wys, traveling from dead town to dead town in the
same way that Goodparley is forcibly moving the Ardship around the circle of the rhyme. In
every town, Goodparley seeks to wring information from the Eusa folk but learns nothing; by
contrast, Riddley effortlessly learns something new in each town. As he walks the circle, he
discovers more meaning that has been hidden from him, turning his cycle from an endless
closed circle (like Fools Circel 9wys) into an open, ascending spiral. Riddley follows his
lifelong training and "makes the connections." His travels duplicate the circular acceleration
of charged particles in the ruined Power Ring around Cambry--as well as the path of an
electron whose orbit around an atomic nucleus is altered as that nucleus undergoes fission.
Without the strong attraction of the nucleus, the electron escapes its orbit and flies off to join
other molecules, as Riddley does.

Here Hoban begins to answer Heisenberg's question regarding the inability of ordinary
language to discuss quantum mechanics. Through a combination of wordplay and the circle
motif, Riddley's narrative provides a basic understanding of nuclear fission, which in turn
enables the reader to grasp the profundity of the moral issues involved. In this sense,
"language . . . knows more than its users" ( Porter 1990, 457). The Littl Shynin Man and the
Master Chaynjis are Hoban's fictive vehicles to unite quantum theory, social development,
and individual responsibility. On one level, the Littl Man stands for the atom, which is split to
begin nuclear fission (whether controlled, as in a power plant, or uncontrolled, as in a bomb).
Uncontrolled fission begins with the unforgettable image of the man-made sun and the
mushroom cloud; the Master Chaynjis describe the

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changes that take place in an atomic nucleus once the process has begun. As fission tears
apart the electrons and neutrons of a bomb's fissionable material, they recombine into other
unstable radioactive elements, which in turn decay and recombine until the particles finally
assume the form of a stable element. Such radioactive decay takes many thousands of years. 25
The changes in atomic nuclei during and after fission lie beyond the range of human senses
(although many of their effects are not), and can be discussed only through the use of
abstractions that have no counterparts in everyday existence. Thus, in discussing nuclear
issues, the unspeakable refers, not only to the possible use of such power against human
beings, but also to the difficulty in putting nuclear concepts into words.

Hoban answers both needs in one fictional creation. With the Littl Shynin Man, the Addom,
Hoban brilliantly renders an abstruse concept into a concrete image that is immediately
graspable for both Riddley's culture and the reader. In the canonical version of the Eusa story,
Eusa finds the Littl Shynin Man standing between the antlers of the Hart of the Wood. Eusa
tears the Littl Man apart, thereby causing the 1 Big 1 and liberating the Master Chaynjis.
During the ensuing Bad Time, Eusa loses everything. But before he can escape the horror of
his life into the peace of death, the Littl Shynin Man tells Eusa that, having set the Master
Chaynjis in motion, Eusa--like a nuclear particle undergoing radioactive decay--must go
through them all. Eusa is mystified by this, and after trying unsuccessfully to wake up out of
what he believes is a strange dream, he begs the Shynin Man to tell him how many Chaynjis
there are: "The Littl Man sed, As menne as reqwyrd. Eusa sed, Reqwyrd by wut? The Littl
Man sed, Reqwyrd by the idear uv yu. Eusa sed, Wut is the idear uv me? The Littl Man sed,
That we doan no til yuv gon thru aul yur Chaynjis" ( 1982, 36).

Thus, Eusa's journey through the dead towns begins. Significantly, while Lissener and
Goodparley tell Riddley different versions of Eusa's travels, their stories agree on his
wandering about and being killed. By performing the traveling Eusa shows, the Ram reenacts
Eusa's travels, hoping that such a performance will eventually break through to some form of
higher understanding. This hope is clarified in the ritual antiphonal prayer uttered by the
connexion man and the audience before a Eusa show:

I said, "Weare going aint we."

The crowd said, "Yes weare going."
I said, "Down that road with Eusa."
They said, "Time and reqwyrt."
I said, "Where them Chaynjis take us."
They said, "He done his time wewl do our time."
I said, "Hes doing it for us."
They said, "Weare doing it for him."
I said, "Keap it going. Chances this time."
They said, "Chances nex time."
I said, "New chance every time."
They said, "New chance every time." ( 1982, 44)
The Eusa show is an accepted public ritual, and it fits neatly into Foust's construction of the
"thematic game" in that it serves both as "a tool of behavior control" and "foreground[s] the
author's intention by encouraging the reader to

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see the fiction itself as a complex intellectual game" ( 1982, 84-85). 26 In addition, as Riddley
discovers, the Ram secretly continues the grisly tradition of "doing the askings" every twelve
years with the Ardship. Despite the fact that the open traditions of the Eusa show and the
hidden ones of "doing the askings" have never produced new insights, the Ram believes that
if the same questions are asked often enough, they will eventually find answers. The Ram
understands the Chaynjis as sudden and unpredictable technological insights which they hope
to bring about by repeating a single pattern. Interestingly enough, despite their antipathy
toward the Ram, the Eusa folk understand the Chaynjis in the same way. This similarity
becomes clear in Lissener's description of the Eusa folk "doing some poasyum" and "talking
vansit theary" in order to penetrate to a higher knowledge ( Hoban 1982, 107). Both the Ram's
and the Eusa folk's understanding of the Chaynjis is false, since their respective methods have
led nowhere for hundreds of years--except to death for the generations of Eusa folk whom the
Ram has enslaved.

Riddley indirectly follows in Eusa's footsteps as well, but his understanding of the Master
Chaynjis undergoes a significant shift as he proceeds around the Fools Circel. Riddley is
initially awed at the vast difference between his culture and that of the one before Bad Time,
which has left such evidence as the impressive ruined machines he finds at Fork Stoan. Seeing
these things moves him to accept Goodparley's views for a time: "How cud any 1 not want to
get that shyning Power back from time back way back? How cud any 1 not want to be like
them what had boats in the air and picters on the wind?" ( 1982, 100). But as he travels
farther, Riddley experiences the Punch show, witnesses Belnot Phist being tortured, has a
religious experience in Cambry's ruins, and sees Goodparley blinded before coming to
Granser's encampment. With each episode, Riddley gains a new insight: the Punch show
changes his feelings about the Eusa shows; Goodparley's seductive dreams of technological
power are built on torturing the innocent, which shocks and repels Riddley; and his
conversion experience in the Cathedral crypt leads him to value spiritual power above
technological power. Riddley's Chaynjis are actual changes in his outlook.

Maynor and Patteson point out that Riddley's language fulfills the reader's expectations of a
language belonging to a primitive society: it is a concrete, reific language that appears to have
great difficulty expressing abstract concepts ( 1984, 20-21). Of course, there is no such thing
as a truly primitive language. Nor is it hard for Riddley's language to discuss abstractions--
insofar as they are understood by their speakers. For example, the Ardship's story "The
Lissener and the Other Voyce Owl of the Worl" elegantly metaphorizes the abstract conflict
between energy and entropy ( Hoban 1982, 85-86). The Littl Shynin Man is not a
scientifically accurate description of nuclear fission, but the Eusa story expresses everything
about the process that Riddley's culture knows (or needs to know, for most purposes other
than building bombs). While a nuclear chain reaction is impossible to watch and extremely
difficult for even a modern audience to imagine, the gruesome image of the Littl Man being
torn in half is easily understood. The Eusa story's expressiveness rests on concrete imagery:
"the Right syd uv him had the nek & hed the Left syd uv him had his cok & bauls" (34). Yet
this imagery lends itself to substantial abstraction into other binary oppositions: the Littl Man
can be viewed as a metaphor for the Fall, which split Adam and Eve apart from God (or the
individual mind from the universal consciousness), or as the division of the human spirit into
the

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incomplete analytical/thoughtful (Apollonian) and emotional/creative (Dionysian) halves,

symbolized respectively by the head and the genitals. Furthermore, the story concatenates the
physical effects of splitting the atom and the moral consequences of that act. Fission does not
end with splitting the atom but rather with the thousands of years necessary for radioactive
elements to decay into inert stability. Hoban reminds us that as the custodians of nuclear
weapons, we are not only responsible to all of humanity currently alive, but to hundreds of
generations unborn.

As the novel ends, Riddley's Chaynjis have only begun--and, as with both fissionable material
and Eusa, he can never go back to what he was at the beginning. Riddley experiences (and
survives) several events that mark the period of his narrative as the turning point of his culture
( Taylor 1989, 29). While there is no epilogic text to tell us what has happened (as we find in
Orwell, Atwood, and Elgin), we see that Inland's future cannot continue in the same paths it
was following when Riddley came to manhood. The rediscovery of gunpowder, a power
vacuum in the Mincery, and the beginning of the breakdown of the official body of Eusa
propaganda all occur within a brief period. Hoban's dystopia ends on a note of uncertainty,
particularly concerning the fatal fascination that the 1 Littl 1 will undoubtedly exert. Erny
Orfing's social diagnosis is bleakly frank:

Wel its luce now innit. Its luce and itwl fetch. Every 1 as can get the Nos. of the mixter and
them 3 gready mints of it thewyl have a go wont they. Somewl go 1 way with it some a
nother. You can get jus as dead from a kick in the head as you can from the 1 Littl 1 but its
the natur of it gets peopl as cited. I mean your foot is all ways on the end of your leg innit. So
if youre going to kick some 1 to death it aint all that thrilling is it. This other tho youve got to
have the Nos. of the mixter then youve got to fynd your gready mints then youve got to do the
mixing of the mixter and youve got to say the fissional seakerts of the act befor you kil some
body its all that chemistery and fizzics of it you see. Its some thing new. Which ever way you
look at it I dont think Aunty [Death] and her red eyed rat be too far from us. ( Hoban 1982,
201)

Riddley has played the leading role in rediscovering the 1 Littl 1, and therefore bears a heavy
load of responsibility--"Drop Johns ryding on his back" ( 1982, 219), as foreshadowed in
Punch's hump. "The hump is sin, guilt, the fall, the 1 Big 1, Bad Time; it is each man's
recognition of his individual and collective guilt . . . [which] becomes the symbol of accepting
responsibility for one's acts" ( Taylor 1989, 34). Riddley willingly accepts his load, despite
the obvious dangers. The question then becomes whether the rest of humanity will begin
another self-destructive cycle moving inexorably toward another 1 Big 1? Some critics have
read the novel as pointing in the same pessimistic direction as Walter Miller A Canticle for
Leibowitz, toward an inevitable second apocalypse. Jack Branscomb suggests that the novel
ends with Riddley "still on the road, walking and looking for answers to the unsolvable
riddles of sin and guilt," and that the "circular pattern here suggests the futile, destructive,
repetitive nature of the human search for knowledge and power" ( 1986, 33). Nancy Dew
Taylor notes extremely pessimistic readings of Riddley Walker's ending by both Jennifer
Uglow and David Cowart ( Taylor 1989, 29). Maynor and Patteson suggest that while the
"failure to understand fully the bits and pieces of scientific knowledge from before Bad Time"
have so far protected Inland from "repeating the catastrophe of the 1 Big 1," the "prospect of
future success

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in their self-destruction is strong" ( 1984, 23). Leonard Mustazza generally lauds the ending
as indicative of "the emergence of modern humanity," although he inexplicably dismisses the
importance of Goodparley's death by newlyrediscovered gunpowder ( 1989, 26). However,
Mustazza is mistaken in his final point:

I think that we can easily extrapolate, based upon our own knowledge of humankind's
anthropological progress, that the sacred myth of origin will soon lose its prestigious
centrality in Riddley's world, despite his attempts to keep it alive through his performance of
Punch and Judy puppet shows. Such a show--apart from its illegality, for which he expects to
be punished at some point by the authorities-is too self-consciously contrived to gain a strong
foothold as a sacred cultural ritual. (25)

Mustazza misreads the meaning of Riddley's and Orfing's Punch show: they are not laboring
to preserve the Eusa story at all, but to tear it down in order that Inland's populace can begin
to make the transition from passive observers to active participants in their own destiny.
Riddley expects to be punished because his Punch show discredits the Eusa story, the
foundation of the Mincery's authority. The Punch show is intentionally "self-conscious" and
"contrived," precisely because it is intended to dislodge a "sacred cultural ritual": "It aint in
the natur of a show to be the same every time it aint like a story what you pas down trying not
to change nothing which even then the changes wil creap in. No a figger show its got its own
chemistery and fizzics" ( Hoban205).

Nor does Riddley hope to erect a new myth in place of the old one. He seeks to use the puppet
show, the most powerful form of education and entertainment his society possesses, to
educate the populace away from dependence on official myths and toward a reliance on
personal morality. Foust's argument is again instructive: "Utopian fantasy tends toward
mythopoesis, while dystopian fiction is fictive in the full sense of the word: it is skeptical,
provisional and historically rather than mythically oriented" ( 1982, 81). Riddley and Orfing
intend their Punch show as a warning against repeating the mistakes of "time back way back."
History's lesson shows that humanity took the wrong path when it began pursuing the
mythical glory of the "Nos. of thay Master Chaynjis" (i.e., technological power), a pursuit that
ended in nuclear holocaust. Riddley's new show preaches the dangers inherent in repeating
such pursuit, and instead strives to put people back on the track toward the "1st knowing," a
nearEdenic understanding of humanity as part of the natural world's larger unity ( Taylor
1989, 29). Riddley himself has already experienced the beginnings of reintegration with the
natural order through his rare "dog frendyness," if we accept Branscomb's reading of the wild
dogs--"formerly the friends and servants of man, but now vicious and uncannily intelligent"--
as representing "[n]ature alienated and ravaged by man's exploitation of knowledge for
power" ( Hoban 1982, 34). 27 His spiritual awakening is strengthened by his epiphany in the
ruins of Canterbury and the Cathedral crypt. Here, for the first time, Riddley comprehends
that although humanity ultimately followed the wrong path toward destruction, they had once
possessed the "1st knowing" to a much greater degree; hence, he has every reason to hope that
the human race can regain this understanding and treasure it:
If you cud even jus only put your self right with 1 stoan. Thats what kep saying its self in my
head. If you cud even jus only put your self right with 1 stoan youwd be

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moving with the girt dants of the every thing the 1 Big 1 the Master Chaynjis. Then you myt
have the res of it or not. The boats in the air or what ever. What ever you done wud be right.
(162)

While Hoban's novel frankly insists that we question our conception of what "civilization"
means ( Taylor 1989, 29), Riddley's argument is neither antiscientific nor antitechnological.
Instead, he points to the split between moral evolution and technological innovation as the
mistake that ultimately brought on the apocalyptic 1 Big 1. Humanity has separated itself
from the natural world of which we are only a constituent part. If we could again find a
degree of union with the natural world (such as Riddley enjoys on page 196 ), then we would
gain the power to control our technological advancement, which would no longer be a blind
imperative drive in itself. The absence of moral maturity is the root of all evil, not technology.
Going forth to spread this message at a troubled time when gunpowder has just been
reintroduced is indeed the act of a man who has looked at reality and decided that "you bes go
ballsy" ( 1982, 172).

Neither Orfing nor Riddley expect that they will be welcomed and their message widely
understood: "Orfing and me we know weare living on burrow time but then who aint. . . . It
use to be if you wer agenst the Ram youwd be agenst the forms becaws you knowit they wer
all 1 thing jus like a body and its head. Now the head myt say 1 thing only you dont know
what the body wil do" ( 1992, 203). The Weaping Formers' reaction bears Riddley out.
Standing before the gate, knowing that their lives hang in the balance, Orfing cannot promise
that their show is not dangerous--"Parbly weare Trubba right a nuff" (209). The formers have
some inkling of the magnitude of what they have admitted as soon as their connexion man
announces that "this here show what weare going to see it aint no Eusa show its some kynd of
a new show" (213). Leaving Eusa out of the preshow incantation upsets some members of the
audience, and when the crooked Punch first comes up, the uproar begins in earnest, with
direct challenges to the authority of Rightway Flinter, who has given permission for the show.
But as Rightway says, there is that which is crooked on the outside, like Punch, and that
which is crooked on the inside, like the Mincery (and, by extension, the pursuit of the 1 Littl
1): "Like Eusa, Punch destroys his children and family in his desire to remain powerful, but
the play says simply this, portraying man's basic aggression in comic form. Its view of man is
as uncompromising as Riddley's at the end of his quest: life is a matter of "sum tyms bytin
sum tyms bit" ( Dowling 1987, 206). Easyer's attack on Mr. Punch interrupts the show, but
both Rightway and Deaper have seen enough to know that they would rather risk everything
to follow a chance at independence than remain puppets for the Mincery to manipulate. 28
Rightway Flinter knows that "theres all ways some kynd of clevverness waiting somers near
or far its all ways waiting to happen its all ways waiting for some 1 to pul it some 1 to fetch it
some 1 to bring it down on the res of us" ( Hoban 1982, 211-12). Riddley's behavior with Mr.
Punch outside the gate convinces Rightway that Riddley and Orfing may not be spreading the
new "clevverness," and their show vindicates Rightway's fears of the new technology while
setting an example to follow in resisting its advance. As Nancy Dew Taylor points out,
Easyer's attack on Riddley holds out a promise for the future, since
this time the baby is "saved." We are taken back, at this point, to the very first story in the
book, "Hart of the Wood," in which the parents trade their baby's life to Mr.

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Clevver--and we are taken back to Goodparley's Punch show in which Punch beats both Pooty
and the baby to death [136]. Even though Riddley knows it is inevitable that Punch "wil all
ways kil the babby if he can" [220]--man will always "fall," will always be guilty of
performing acts of meaningless violence--Easyer's [attack has] set up the right kind of
interference, the right response: he prevents the violence from happening; he prevents a
repetition of history. (37)

Nor does Riddley expect that this is the last time their show will be greeted with (or incite)
violent disagreement: "[W]e dint dy at Weaping Form nor we dint get cut off nor blyndit. We
livet and we kep our eyes and our cocks and balls that time any how. What the nex time wil
bring no 1 cant never say" (213).

Dowling finds this ending deliberately vague, with Riddley having arrived at "an acceptance
of mystery and an extreme epistemological skepticism" ( 1988, 185). But dystopia
consistently stresses the need for vagueness--the ambiguity of freely choosing among multiple
possibilities--as being superior to utopia's smug certainty, from which ambiguity and personal
initiative have been carefully eliminated. We do not know what ultimately happens to Riddley
and Orfing, just as we do not know whether Helmholtz Watson ever uses his poetic gifts to
incite a revolution or whether Offred has truly escaped from Gilead. Riddley Walker resists
closure, as do all the novels considered in this volume. The dystopia attacks the imposition of
closure, in society as well as in fiction, demanding that the reader resist any attempts to stop
the cycle of human history while simultaneously empowering him or her to resist. The
answers Riddley finds are difficult and fragmentary at best, but he now knows that he cannot
avoid their implications: "Whynt we stay hoalt up? Whynt we go somers far a way? Becaws
you cant stay hoalt up. Becaws ther aint no far a way. Becaws where you happen is where you
happen" ( Hoban 1982, 211). Despite the frank possibility of death that hovers over Riddley
and his followers, Hoban's novel ends on the most optimistic note of all the dystopias herein
discussed. Unlike the women of the Lines, Riddley needs no prodding to begin spreading
hope through his world: unlike Offred, his narrative has not been appropriated and
disempowered. Instead Riddley finds a new voice--that of Punch--through which he can speak
in addition to his own. Although the metaphor of cycle or circle might lead a reader to expect
nothing better from humanity this time around, as in Miller A Canticle for Leibowitz ( 1969),
Taylor finds the existence of the text itself evidence that "Hoban does not concede man's
recapitulation to history" ( 1989, 30). Indeed, Swanson even suggests that the survival of
Riddley's culture proves that Winston Smith's hope in the proles has been justified (207).

Riddley has gained more than another voice in his travels: in some sense, he has learned to
read myths and events for meanings that eluded him before. In spite of his intelligence and his
training to be a connexion man, Riddley begins the novel trying to assign definite meanings to
his experiences and to the tales he relates. The first story he tells, "Hart of the Wood," is
ostensibly an explanation of why charcoal burners live beyond fents and form, and how some
of their techniques and terminology have come about:

There is the Hart of the Wud in the Eusa Story that wer a stag every 1 knows that. There is the
hart of the wood meaning the veryes deap of it thats a nother thing. There is the hart of the
wood where they bern the chard coal thats a nother thing agen innit. . . . Berning the chard
coal in the hart of the wood. Thats what they call the stack of

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wood you see. The stack of wood in the shape they do it for chard coal berning. Why do they
call it the hart tho? Thats what this here story tels of. ( 1982, 2)

At this point Riddley does not look for more than one-to-one concrete correspondences of
meaning. From the central metaphor of "Hart of the Wood," Riddley is prepared to draw out
multiple tenors belonging to the vehicle of the "hart," but all are equally concrete and small-
scale. The reading of this story as a metaphor for the arms race--parents trade their child for
"security," but are destroyed by it--never occurs to him until much later, after the 1 Littl 1 gets
loose. As his story begins, Riddley knows that this habit is a shortcoming, and he looks to
others for interpretations. Reckman Bessup grudgingly obliges, while Lorna Elswint obliges
gladly and freely, but both warn him that the time for him to decipher his own larger
meanings has come: "You bes start putting things to gether for your self you aint a kid no
mor" (14).

However, instead of developing his own skills after jumping the fence, Riddley continues to
accept the readings of those around him, although with growing skepticism. He adopts
Goodparley and Lissener's equally problematical approach, that of trying to nail down every
possible meaning that can be understood from a given concept. Riddley is initially attracted
toward Lissener's apparently large store of knowledge, and then toward Goodparley's far-
ranging and painstaking interpretations. But Riddley finds Lissener's knowledge fragmentary
and essentially useless. Similarly, Goodparley's ability to "read" events appears impressive
but ultimately fails, as shown by his off-the-cuff interpretation of Fools Circel 9wys as it
applies to Riddley's early life and first day of independent wandering ( 1982, 120). The more
interpretations Riddley encounters, the less willing he becomes to accept any of them at face
value: "1st I ben with Lissener agenst Goodparley then in my mynd I begun to go tords
Goodparley and a way from Lissener. Now on a suddn I wer off the boath of them" (169).
Riddley finally realizes that there can be no accurate interpretations when the critic bends
meanings to fit preconceived ideas. Neither Goodparley nor Lissener pay attention to those
elements of their knowledge that warn against the unrestricted use of technology, and in their
pursuit of the 1 Big 1 both are killed by the gunpowder that they have helped rediscover.

Riddley completes another circle, that of returning to Lorna Elswint's natural wisdom in
which meaning reveals itself. Before Riddley leaves his tribe, she warns him that stories
overlap, change, and contradict one another as they are passed on--even written texts like the
Eusa story, which "aint nothing strait but at leas its stayd the same" ( 1982, 20). Riddley has
heard Goodparley live up to his title as "Pry Mincer" by wringing every possible meaning out
of the Eusa story except the knowledge that matters most, that of the need to subordinate
technological progress to ethical development. "Using words to divide the universe into
discrete entities leaves man demoralized by his efforts to master reality, especially when his
misnomers conceal the relations among the parts" ( Porter 1990, 468). Riddley also sees
Goodparley's head on a pole as a result of his interpretive exertions. In the absence of
certainty, Riddley abandons the role of the critic for that of the artist:

You take a figger out of the bag. . . . Then you put it on. You put your head finger in the head
you put your arm fingers in the arms then that figger looks roun and takes noatis it has things
to say. Which they wont all ways be things youwd think of saying o no them wood heads the
hart of the wood is in them and the hart of the wud

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and all. They have ther knowing and they have ther saying which you bes lissen for it you bes
let it happen. 'I never look for my reveal til its ben.' Thats what my dad said time back. . . .
Not to lern no body nothing I cant even lern my oan self all I can do is try not to get in front
of whats coming. Jus try to keap out of the way of it. ( Hoban 1982, 204)

If the choice is between excluding possible meanings and including every possible
interpretation in the hopes that the audience will sift out the important ones and "keap them in
memberment," Riddley will choose the latter path:

If youre a show man then what ever happens is took in to your figgers and your fit up its took
in to your show. If you dont know whats happent sooner youwl hear of it later youwl hear
your figgers tel of it 1 way or a nother. . . . May be the idear of it ben waiting all them years
for me to come along and be it. (206-7)

As Lake notes, "Wordsworth and any number of other Nature mystics might have put this
differently; but they would not have expressed it better" ( 1984, 169).

NOTES
1. For a representative sampling of early reviews, see pages 264-67 of Stine, 1983.
2. Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker ( 1982), 1. All subsequent references are to this edition.
3. See Alvarez, 1981.
4. Riddley already knows some of these stories; others are told to him during the course of
his travels: "Hart of the Wood" ( Hoban 1982, 2-4), "Why the Dog Wont Show Its Eyes"
(17-20), "The Eusa Story" (30-36), "The Lissener and the Other Voyce Owl of the Worl"
(85-86), The Bloak as Got on Top of Aunty" (90-93), "The Legend of St. Eustace (123-
24), and "Stoan" (163-64)--this last is Riddley's original composition, and we are his first
audience for it. In addition, Riddley records four puppet shows: two Eusa Shows, on
pages 44-53 and 57-59, and two Punch and "Pooty" ( Judy) shows, on pages 133-40 and
214-19.
5. Riddley's map shows the circular relationship between these towns, which are the
bombed-out ruins of, respectively, Herne Bay, Whitstable, Faversham, Ashford,
Folkestone, Dover, Deal, Sandwich, and Canterbury. David Dowling explores the
meanings of these and other place names (e.g. "Dog Et" for Dargate, "Dunk Your Arse"
for Dungenesse, "Nellys Bum" for the river Nailbourne, and "Monkeys Whoar Town" for
Monks Horton), following Riddley's comment, "In your mynd places be come the name
of what happent in them" ( Hoban 1982, 184); see Dowling 1988, 182.
6. Given the critical connection between the Saint Eustace legend and its pictorial
representation in Canterbury Cathedral, Maynor and Patteson suggest that the name
"Eusa" may also derive from St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury ( 1984,
19). This argument is even more persuasive when one considers that "Eusa is said to have
been the "1st Ardship of Cambry" (19) (see Hoban 1982, 80), and it is Lissener, the
 current Ardship, who helps Riddley discover some other interpretations of the Eusa Story
that the Mincery had kept secret.
7. Given the similarities between Riddley and Huck Finn, there is a fainter similarity
between Lissener and Tom Sawyer as Tom is presented in The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn. Both Lissener and Tom are more intellectually gifted than their
companions, but both behave unscrupulously and unethically. Tom's egotistical
impulsiveness gets him shot, while Lissener's arrogance leads to his death in a bomb
blast.

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8. For further notes on Hoban's debt to London, see Dowling 1987, 150.
9. Hoban directly lampoons Wellsian utopian visions, in which technological advances--
gleaming skyscrapers, sleek aircraft, antiseptic cleanliness--often assume (but rarely
discuss) concomitant leaps in moral and ethical understanding.
10. Mustazza also points out that neither of these endings are known to most people in
Inland, and that both Lissener and Goodparley use their versions of the ending in order to
justify their own ambitions to power. Mustazza notes that "what Riddley--and through
him, the reader--is witnessing in these revelations [of the political nature of the story] is
the emergence of the modern world, the modern attitude . . . which rejects the disguised
truth of myth and embraces history, both as a 'philosophy' and as a means toward
continued progress" ( 1989, 25). That is, as Nancy Dew Taylor ( 1989) argues in her
essay, Riddley Walker describes a turning point in future human history, when the
reliance on myth will begin to give way to a linked dependence on empiricism and
experience.
11. There is an entire subgenre of science fiction devoted to postapocalyptic, postnuclear
fiction. These fictions frequently share more than just a grim outlook with dystopia.
Examples include Nevil Shute On the Beach ( 1957), Mordecai Roshwald's Level 7
( 1959), Walter M. Miller Jr., "A Canticle for Leibowitz" ( 1959), and, especially, L. P.
Hartley Facial Justice ( 1960), which some critics consider a true dystopia. For further
discussion of apocalyptic science fiction, see Eric Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and
Joseph D. Olander ( 1983a, 1983b) as well as David Dowling's ( 1987) book. Rob Kroes's
( 1985) book examines apocalypticism in American literature in extended relation to
Orwell's dystopia.
12. Meyers ( 1980) uses the term "science fiction" in this context to refer to any narrative set
in the future.
13. Beauchamp argues that, while generally superior to science fiction, "most dystopian
fantasies share with utopian ones a failure of imagination in creating a 'future language'" (
1974, 463).
14. David Lake notes the vast changes in English that have taken place in less than half the
time that exists between Riddley's world and ours, but argues that we "can 'save the
phenomena' by assuming that Riddley is writing for his peers . . . 'learned' scribes, in a
very archaic dialect. . . . And in any case, we must gratefully accept Riddley's 'archaic'
standard, for without that convention we would certainly not be able to read his English"
( 1984, 162). Bolton makes the same observation regarding the unrealistically small
 degree of change in Hoban's English, but defends this as a direct following of Orwell's
Newspeak, which is an artistic creation rather than a linguistic one ( 1984a, 155).
15. Walter Meyers pursues this point and cites a key example: An author needs rather more
imagination to conceive of a change in the language that goes beyond word-formation,
and the conception is doubly imaginative if the author can, at the same time, suggest a
plausible reason for the change. An example of this more satisfying treatment of future
English is found in David Karp One ( 1953). Karp's excellent dystopian novel is set near
the end of the twentieth century. The dictatorial government of England of that time uses
two major weapons to enforce conformity among the masses: its hidden one is a network
of informers who regularly report any forbidden word or action; the other weapon, just as
secret in its purposes but open in its operation, is a growing religion, the Church of State.
Church of State members are notable by their speech--they speak of themselves in the
third person "as if they did not exist by themselves but only as part of a third group. Me,
my, I, mine did not exist in the language of the Church of State families" ( Karp18). In
sketching a change in pronoun usage, Karp has gone the inventors of new words one
better, and in selecting religion as the reason for the change, he has picked a force
powerful enough to make the change possible. ( 1980, 32-33)

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16. Dowling quotes Brigadier General Thomas A. Farrell, who, upon witnessing the first
Alamagordo atomic test in 1945, said: "Words are inadequate tools for the job of
acquainting those not present with the physical, mental and psychological effects. It had
to be witnessed to be realized" (in Dowling 1987, 6). Dowling traces this idea of the
inadequacy of human language to describe the Apocalypse back to biblical prophets; see
1987, 120-26. Brian Stableford provides an excellent overview of the development of the
idea of the Apocalypse from the Pentateuch through modern science fiction in his essay,
"Man-Made Catastrophes" ( 1983), in Rabkin, Greenberg and Olander The End of the
World.
17. On "antilanguages," see Chapter 9 of Halliday Language as Social Semiotic ( 1978).
18. This is precisely the kind of "real-world" thought control that Noam Chomsky has
discussed at length in much of his writing, especially in his own books Language and
Politics ( 1988) and Necessary Illusions ( 1989), as well as with Edward Herman in
Manufacturing Consent ( Herman and Chomsky 1988). Chomsky has strongly criticized
Orwell's depiction of thought control as an unnecessarily brutal and overt means to
consolidate totalitarian authority, arguing (pace Huxley) that the same ends can be
achieved covertly, without bloodshed. I explicitly consider relevant aspects of Chomsky's
arguments in the conclusion.
19. " Orwell hoped to find, in the fantastic works of the nineteen-forties, a literary vehicle
which would expose readers directly to the irrational forces that seemed to control the
world. Clearly, he needed a form which would give him great freedom to invent, one
which would rely on the power of his imagination rather than the accuracy of his
observation. He wanted a mode of expression which acted on some deeper and more
primitive level of consciousness than realism or documentary had done. . . . Fantasy is an
unpredictable force and not at all easy to manipulate in order to express preconceived
purposes. It can become really powerful only if the artist relaxes his absolute rational
control and allows his imagination a certain freedom to wander. That such relaxation of
 purpose did not come easily to Orwell is suggested by the difference between his first
attempt at fantasy [ Animal Farm] and his second [ Nineteen Eighty-four]." ( Zwerdling
1971, 90-91).
20. Foust suggests that William Golding Lord of the Flies ( 1959) can also be discussed as a
mythic dystopia ( 1982, 84-85).
21. "Brilliant pebbles" and "a thousand points of light," two examples of 1990s political
Newspeak, are strikingly similar in both the vehicles of the metaphors and in their
essential vapidity.
22. Even those who try to remind us of these horrific realities may blunt their own efforts by
using such synonyms. Dowling suggests that "the jargon of nukespeak . . . irradiates"
General Sir John Hackett The Third World War ( 1978) and The Untold Story ( 1982)
( 1987, 74-75).
23. It is this possibility of learning from nuclear "mistakes"--through language or any other
agency--that forms the central difference between Riddley Walker and Walter M. Miller
Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz--further compared in Dowling's Fictions of Nuclear Disaster
( 1987), 193-208.
24. "At another level, the theme of circularity is equally representative of mandala
symbolism used psychoanalytically to explain the state of original chaos in which
consciousness, as yet small and underdeveloped, is comparable to Riddley Walker's type
of the original chaos and its underdeveloped thinking as inheritance from a scarcely
remembered past" ( Wilkie60). Compare Peter Schwenger ( 1991) essay "Circling
Ground Zero," which expands the discussion of Riddley Walker's mandala symbolism to
include atomic structure, nuclear fission and the paradox of the "icon" at the heart of all
structures as set forth in Jacques Derrida "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of
the Human Sciences" ( 1978).

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25. See 466-68 of Porter's ( 1990) essay for an absorbing discussion of nuclear fission and
radioactive decay in relation to the Master Chaynjis.
26. Foust ( 1982) does not cite Riddley Walker, but it strongly supports his thesis. In addition
to the Eusa show as "thematic game," Riddley's travels form the "structural game," with
Riddley awakening to his individuality while Goodparley waits for results; Hoban's
original language functions as the "logos game," and the novel's nuclear didacticism
satisfies Foust's theories of the "anagogic game" ( Foust 1982, 83-86).
27. Branscomb persuasively traces the development of Hoban's interest in his characters's
"searches for wholeness which turn out to be circular, leading them into the past before
allowing them to escape into the present. Ultimately, their quests lead them to acceptance
of their place in time, reintegration, and painful self-knowledge" ( 1986, 30). Branscomb
further suggests that "it is both legitimate and useful to treat" Riddley Walker and
Pilgermann ( 1983), Hoban's next novel, as "complementary" (33).
28. Again, names give clues to the significant disagreement. Easyer equals "easier," namely
following the Mincery in using technology to change lives without developing the
necessary moral structures to keep it a means and not an end in itself. Rightway equals
 "the right way," which is following Riddley and looking to the hard questions of spiritual
and moral growth to give value and determinacy to existence, including technological
development.

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8
Claiming Mastery Over the Word
While each of the dystopian writers considered here foregrounds language as the central
conflict in their novels, they rarely inform their fictions with accurate linguistic information.
This is surprising, given the extraordinary linguistic talents of the polyglot Anthony Burgess,
George Orwell's lifelong concern with the English language, and the fact that Suzette Haden
Elgin is a professional linguistics scholar. Despite their knowledge of how language actually
functions, these dystopian writers tend to recast real-world language practices to fit their own
didactic, cautionary tales, to whatever degree seems most effective. Brave New World and,
especially, Riddley Walker are set hundreds of years in the future, and yet we find in them
languages that are really no different from our own contemporary English. Huxley's dystopia
has successfully stopped the cycle of history, and therefore it might be argued that language in
the World State has not advanced because nothing has been permitted to advance. No such
logical argument can be put forward to explain how Riddley Walker, set more than two
thousand years from now, presents us with an English that varies from ours only in its surface
details. Orwell's Newspeak defies the rules of actual language development: even supporters
of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis would hesitate to assert that an artificial language of limited
(and declining) expressive power could actually be legislated into common use, let alone
supplant organic languages. Burgess's Nadsat is not truly a language, merely a small
vocabulary of twisted Russian words fitted into the structures of English. On the other hand,
Elgin's Láadan is perfectly constructed as a workable language--but it makes only a few

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token appearances in Native Tongue and The Judas Rose. Its importance lies in its existence
among the women of the Lines, rather than its form. Except for a very few words and one
complete phrase ( The Judas Rose 1987a, 209-10), Láadan is conspicuously absent from both
the novels in which it is the central plot element. Dystopian writers--even writers like Elgin
who possess substantial training in language studies--make little effort to accurately apply
lessons derived from linguistics. 1

Walter Meyers, in his study, Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction
( 1980), advances some reasons for this ostensible lack. Science fiction authors may safely
assume a certain amount of scientific education on the part of their readers, but they cannot
expect even a minor degree of linguistic training in more than a small fraction of their
potential readership (5). Most readers are unlikely to possess sufficient linguistic knowledge
to distinguish between accurate and erroneous language extrapolation. Given the significant
degree of overlap between science fiction and dystopian fiction, it seems reasonable to expand
Meyers's assertion to include dystopia as well as science fiction. Furthermore, Meyers's
plausibility theory--under which the appearance of plausibility is more important than
adherence to facts--holds as strongly for linguistic knowledge as for any other empirical
scholarship. While there are a few science fiction and dystopian writers who take pains to
adhere faithfully to contemporary linguistic understanding in their fictions, such writers
represent the exception rather than the rule. 2 How do we reconcile the crucial importance of
language in dystopian fiction with the marginalization of actual linguistic knowledge and
practice? If the idea of language is so important in dystopian fiction, why do a representative
group of such fictions reveal so little attention to real languages and linguistic structures?

Dystopian fiction deemphasizes linguistics because accurate language structure is beside the
point, and we need look no further than the primary tenet of dystopian fiction--cautionary
didacticism--to discover why. As practiced in science fiction, didacticism can range from
overt scientific lecture thinly disguised as fiction to thoughtful explorations of what
distinguishes the human from the alien "other". Much of the pulp science fiction of the 1920s
and 1930s consists of a thin literary apparatus enfolding lessons designed to teach a scientific
fact or theory. These stories have been dismissed as poor fiction, if they deserve to be called
fiction at all. 3 Later science fiction has tended toward more purely literary motives, although
numerous authors (such as Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Frederick Pohl, and Arthur C. Clarke)
have happily worked instruction into their stories when it is possible to do so without
weakening their fiction's readability. Meyers divides science fiction's didactic concerns into
two categories: "The first is a didacticism of purpose; science fiction can act as a vehicle for
the arguing of the author's point in just the same way that a medieval morality play or one of
Donne's sermons does. More particularized is the second kind of didacticism, one of method
rather than purpose, and it is this second kind that especially marks the genre" ( 1980, 4 ).
Dystopia is almost wholly concerned with Meyers's first type, didacticism of purpose. The
task of the dystopian writer is rendered easier still, since all dystopias serve essentially the
same purpose. If a writer warns of a reality that may not necessarily exist, but which, the
author fears, could come about if no action is taken, this fulfills the genre's didactic mission.
Jeffrey Berman notes that "whereas the technician, scientist, and engineer are called upon to
solve social problems, the artist's task is different.

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[Anton] Chekhov makes a distinction between 'the solution of the problem and a correct
presentation of the problem.' 'Only the latter is obligatory,' he adds" ( Berman 1981, 168). The
dystopia follows Chekhov by presenting nightmarish scenarios in which language figures as
the central tool of oppression, but it rarely (if ever) advances linguistics as the solution to
oppression. Dystopian didacticism frequently becomes polemical: the writer grabs the reader's
attention viscerally, and there are few concepts more immediately frightening to a majority of
readers than the thought of their language being manipulated by an oppressive government.
Affectiveness takes precedence over other literary considerations in the dystopia. Granted,
many dystopian writers go beyond their "obligation" and present language as the means to
resist such oppression; in the process of doing so, these writers may accurately depict
linguistic structures. Portions of Orwell's Appendix on Newspeak reflect contemporary
linguistic thought, and Elgin's Láadan novels benefit from her linguistic knowledge. Still, the
writer's basic goal is to terrify in order to teach. 4

I am not suggesting that dystopian literature is sensationalistic, but that its educational value
rests on its power to shock. Both the immediate and lasting popular impact of any dystopia
depends upon its "fear quotient"; these fictions risk the diminution of their affectiveness if
their extrapolated societies no longer seem easily (and, hence, terrifyingly) possible. For
example, several critics have declared Orwell's dystopia passé since no totalitarian state
identical to Oceania currently exists. David Dowling's comment is typical: pursuing his thesis
concerning fictions about nuclear holocaust, he intimates that Nineteen Eightyfour "may be
put away safely . . . [since] the dreaded year is past" ( 1987, 215). Such literalistic readings
are shortsighted, to be sure, but they illustrate how ephemeral a dystopia's reputation can be.
We have short memories for pain: critics have shown themselves eager to rationalize the
terror out of dystopias, in proportion to the degree of popular fear the dystopia taps. 5 Since
dystopias are generally projected not far into the writer's future, historical events can overtake
a dystopia's fearful warnings and render them moot, even though dystopias rarely attempt to
predict actual future events. Katharine Burdekin predicates Swastika Night ( 1940) on a Nazi
takeover of Earth: her novel has lost much of its terror value since the end of World War II.
Faced with the certainty that changes in historical reality and critical opinion will weaken the
fearful thrust of their fictions, dystopian writers have sought to construct their dire societies
around concepts that will continue to terrify generations of readers long after their novels'
initial shock value has worn off. The fear that language could be manipulated in order to
control thought has remained powerful since the turn of the century. Thus, concern over
language has served as the most timeless dystopian apprehension.

No writer can play on a reader's fears for any purpose unless that writer meets one of two
criteria. The writer must either create particular fears in the reader's heart or take advantage of
the reader's preexisting fears. Even if we grant that a writer can create apprehension ex nihilo,
it should be obvious that such a process demands a greater degree of painstaking work than
merely exploiting anxieties that the reader already holds. Furthermore, a writer may safely
assume that existing fears are likely to be more widespread throughout the potential
readership than is a susceptibility to new misgivings. Therefore, fictions that call upon
existing terrors can more easily reach and sway a much larger body of readers. For example,
Hoban could have depicted Riddley Walker's world as

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having been brought about by a natural cataclysm, such as a huge meteorite striking Earth,
rather than by nuclear holocaust, but it would be difficult to create apprehension about such a
cataclysm; most readers would scoff at such an event as "unlikely" or "too fantastic," since it
lies outside their experience. Basing Riddley Walker on a limited nuclear exchange is not only
easier for Hoban to write, it speaks directly to concerns over nuclear weapons that are shared
by most modern readers.

Clearly, twentieth-century dystopian writers have foregrounded issues of controlling language

because they believe that a substantial number of their potential readers already share these
fears and that their fictions will be both more affective and more enduringly meaningful if
based on such warnings. Science fiction has often succeeded by warning readers against such
dangers as overpopulation ( Harry Harrison 1966 Make Room! Make Room!) and radioactive
fallout ( Raymond Briggs 1983 When The Wind Blows), but science fiction has also
repeatedly utilized impossible or fantastic events for dramatic effect (e.g., time travel that
alters the past, thereby changing or erasing the present). Dystopian concerns over
manipulating thought through language are never fantastic. Conscious attempts to control
language in order to limit and direct thought, and especially to stifle dissent, are social
realities even in socalled enlightened Western democracies. One way or another, all of the
techniques used to control language in the fictions discussed here have been, and continue to
be, used by various governments and power groups. Neil Postman discusses the pervasive
vapidity of American television, especially news broadcasts, as giving "the world the clearest
vision of the Huxleyan future" ( 1985, 14 ). Suzette Elgin's depictions of diplomatic talks as
bickering over minutiae in which both sides resent the translators are borne out in
negotiations, to say nothing of her portrayal of the ways in which men and women use the
same languages to mean wildly different things. 6 One need not read Atwood Handmaid's
Tale in order to find justification for the systematic oppression of women based on a selective
interpretation of the Bible.

The twentieth century has witnessed a rapid rise in the number and quality of dystopian
fictions, not only because people are becoming more aware of the implications of language
controls, but also because the growth of mass media and new information technologies has
provided more avenues through which such controls can be installed. 7 Such media are not the
source of oppression: they merely multiply the effective outlets for official propaganda and
thought control. The linguist Noam Chomsky has been the most outspoken critic of modern
thought control as practiced by the Western media. Chomsky has constructed a model of
propaganda dissemination in Western democracies that seems to reflect more of Huxley's
views on thought control than Orwell's, arguing that

the system of thought control that has been developed in the U.S. (and to a large degree
throughout the world of capitalist democracy) is much more subtle than the propaganda
systems of the totalitarian states, but quite possibly more effective. In a totalitarian state, the
official propaganda agencies produce official truth blatantly and overtly; one must simply
obey, or take the risk, which is often great, of dissenting. In the American system, debate is
encouraged within a certain framework of presuppositions, sometimes articulated, sometimes
not even expressed. . . . [This framework follows] a very systematic pattern: debate takes
place, indeed is encouraged, within a certain system of assumptions. If one challenges those

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assumptions, one is simply excluded from the debate as "irresponsible" or "AntiAmerican" or

"emotional," etc. . . . Such people are not sent to concentration camps, but they have virtually
no access to the public. . . . [T]he system has created the illusion of free and open debate
while in fact ensuring that only a narrow spectrum of opinion and analysis reaches a broad
public. ( 1988, 293-94)

Briefly, Chomsky has pointed out that, rather than fulfilling their self-declared role as
"providing [citizens of Western democracies] with the information needed for the intelligent
discharge of political responsibilities," the media have instead served to "inculcate and defend
the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic
society and the state" (in Herman and Chomsky 1988, 298). This function is accomplished
almost invisibly, not through deliberate suppression of information but by framing debates in
such a way that viewpoints potentially embarrassing to the sociopolitical status quo are never
admitted into "serious" discussion (298). Governments and powerful groups thus control
which issues will be publicly debated and can influence public opinion without force.
Chomsky points to five levels of "filters," pervasive factors that aid in constructing this
"societal" propaganda model. These filters include private corporate ownership of large media
outlets, which are run by small boards of directors; the demands of advertisers and the media's
need to meet these demands for fear of losing revenues; media dependence on limited news
sources (such as government press liaisons and official spokespersons at all political levels);
the power that negative reactions to media coverage ("flak") exerts to limit discussion of
unwelcome ideas; and the continued vitality of anticommunism as a ready tool with which to
fight any apparent threat to property and political interests (4-31).

Chomsky further argues that these filters operate, for the most part, below the threshold of
recognition: even its own practitioners are not aware of their participation in controlling
thought by framing the debate--as Chomsky calls it, "the bounding of the thinkable" ( 1989,
105 ). Chomsky bolsters his arguments with abundant evidence from events as varied as the
American intervention in Southeast Asia, the Watergate burglary, U.S. involvement in Central
American elections, and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. Significantly,
Chomsky points to the archetypal dystopian figure of the Grand Inquisitor, who saves
humanity by taking away their freedom, which makes them miserable and prevents them from
achieving happiness:

Despite the frank acknowledgment of the need to deceive the public, it would be an error to
suppose that practitioners of the art are typically engaged in conscious deceit; few reach the
level of sophistication of the Grand Inquisitor or maintain such insights for long. On the
contrary, as the intellectuals pursue their grim and demanding vocation, they readily adopt
beliefs that serve institutional needs; those who do not will have to seek employment
elsewhere. . . . The psychology of leaders is a topic of little interest. The institutional factors
that constrain their actions and beliefs are what merit attention. (18-19)

Chomsky insists that his "societal" propaganda model is far more effective than the brutal
methods of thought control Orwell articulates in Nineteen Eightyfour. 8 But even Chomsky
admits the enduring chill of Orwell's Newspeak terminology as a means of muffling
government atrocities ( Herman and Chomsky 1988, 181 ; Chomsky 1988, 724-27). He never
alludes to Huxley's propaganda model, even though it anticipates many of his arguments.
Chomsky

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seems to believe that by disproving Orwell's ideas about thought control, he has essentially
disposed of dystopian literature, since he does not cite any other dystopian works. 9

Overlooking all dystopias other than Orwell's loses several opportunities for Chomsky to
illustrate his points with fictive examples. Huxley Brave New World, of course, is inhabited
by citizens who are happy in the knowledge that the numerous media they enjoy presents their
world as it actually is. As in Chomsky's model, even the highest echelons of editors,
publishers, and directors believe that their reportage is accurate and unconstrained. The
limitations on media freedom apply equally to everyone (in the form of prenatal behavioral
conditioning), and so are completely invisible to all but a "maladjusted" few, such as Bernard
and Helmholtz. When reporters of such newspapers as the Hourly Radio, the New York Times,
the Frankfurt Four-Dimensional Continuum, the Fordian Science Monitor, and the Delta
Mirror approach the Savage in his self-imposed exile, it is clear that they cannot overcome
their conditioning enough to understand why the Savage has fled London. To these reporters
and their readers, the Savage is a comical misfit rather than a potentially destabilizing social
commentator ( Huxley 1947, 213-15). Burgess shows the Government in A Clockwork
Orange deeply concerned with "spin control" over Alex's suicide attempt, rather than with
either assisting the victim or altering their approach to the Ludovico Treatment. The
IntInfMin's words to Alex caricaturizes political bridge building:
I and the Government of which I am a member want you to regard us as friends. Yes, friends.
We have put you right, yes? You are getting the best of treatment. We never wished you
harm, but there are some who did and do. . . . There are certain men who wanted to use you,
yes, use you for political ends. They would have been glad, yes, glad for you to be dead, for
they thought they could then blame it all on the Government. I think you know who those
men are." ( Burgess 1987a, 177 )

Alex knows exactly who they are: not just Alexander, Dolin, da Silva, and Rubinstein, who
wanted to use him for political ends, but the Government itself, who actually did so. When
expedient, the Government quickly revises its portrayal of Alex as a vicious criminal to paint
him as a "worthy" victim, who has been abused by enemies of the State. 10 Hoban Riddley
Walker shows government taking Chomsky's idea that "government presuppositions embody
the state religion" ( Chomsky 1988, 293) to its literal extreme. The Mincery constructs a
religion around the idea that ancient technology must be recovered for the greater good of
society--a religion complete with government officials as high priests. And it is difficult not to
think of Atwood Handmaid's Tale and the way Gilead's Commanders read Genesis 30:1-3
literally when Chomsky reminds us that states "also resort to cruder means, the method of
'interpretation of some phrase' being a notable instrument" ( 1989, 105 ).

Responding to the question "When you refer to language as creative and stimulus-free, that
seems almost a paraphrase for free will," Chomsky replied "Well, I think the connection is
appropriate" ( 1988, 245). He expanded this point in a later interview:

I believe that the study of human cognitive structures and human intellectual achievements
reveals a high degree of genetically determined innate structure that lies at the basis of the
creative aspect of language use, which is easily perceived in every aspect of normal
intellectual development, most strikingly, most easily, perhaps, in

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the acquisition and free use of the systems of language, which permit the free expression of
thought over an unbounded range. Similarly, I think--we can here only speculate because so
little is known--that related aspects of human nature lie at the core of the continuing human
search for freedom from authoritarian rule, from external restriction, from repressive
structures, what might be called an instinct for freedom. ( 1988, 566)

Thus, Chomsky believes that if such an "instinct for freedom" exists, it finds strong
expression in language. Speaking historically, Chomsky takes comfort from events like the
"rise of cable and satellite communications," since such media fragment and weaken the
"power of the network oligopoly and [retain] a potential for enhanced local-group access" (in
Herman and Chomsky 1988, 3067).

Although Chomsky fails to take more of the dystopian tradition into account, it may be
because his propaganda model explicitly leaves room for hope, which would seem
incompatible with the dystopian tradition if one looked no deeper than the fiction's surface
bleakness. However, Chomsky's avowed belief in language as both a means of expression and
a metaphor of free will has always been at the heart of dystopian literature. Dystopian fiction
is always set in the future, suggesting that there is yet time to reverse trends that concern the
author. Dystopia is a hopeful genre, which deliberately scares us for our own good: it does not
exist in a vacuum, but shows the reader frightening visions of what might arise from events he
or she can clearly see in the contemporary world. Northrop Frye takes this approach when
arguing that "insofar as the satirist has a 'position' of his own, it is the preference of practice to
theory, experience to metaphysics" ( 1957, 230). Logically, the dystopian writer is attacking
totalitarian thought control, not to prove an intellectual point, but to prevent such a system
from actually emerging: a warning is worthless if sounded too late to take corrective action.
Moreover, glancing at the surface forms of the dystopian novels discussed herein reveals a
degree of hope made explicit in the plot structures of the fictions themselves. None of these
dystopias end happily; a happy ending implies resolution or salvation, and it suggests that the
problems posed in the novel have been solved or will do so by themselves. Such endings
would severely undercut the dystopian framework. Still, there are varying degrees of hope
observable, each closely intertwined with the characters' use of language to solve the
problems of their oppression. The more actively characters in these dystopias pursue language
as their key to freedom, the greater the degree of hope we find on the novels' surface.

Nineteen Eighty-four is the grimmest of these dystopias. Julia and Winston have both been
broken, and there is no indication that anything will avert the world order symbolized by
O'Brien's promised "eternal boot in the face." The hope in this novel is nevertheless situated
in language, specifically in the past tenses in which the Appendix on Newspeak is written. It
is unclear how Oceania's Inner Party (and, for that matter, the ruling oligarchs of Eurasia and
Eastasia) have been overthrown, or by whom. In direct contrast is the situation at the end of
Brave New World, in which we know of at least one character who could engineer a
counterrevolution--but how, or even whether, Helmholtz will ever do so is pure conjecture.
Our only hope in Huxley's dystopia is the relative ease with which language can disrupt the
State's careful conditioning process ( 1947, 153-54). There is no Appendix to tell us whether
such a counterrevolution ever comes about. We do find an Appendix to Atwood's

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Handmaid's Tale, but it leaves open the question of Offred's fate. Offred's narrative has
survived, and the scholarly symposium shows that Gilead has fallen. We may presume that
Offred herself survived, at least temporarily: there is no indication in her narrative that she
found access to a tape recorder in the Commander's house, which she must later have done,
since Pieixoto has reconstructed her tale from audiotapes. The presence of female scholars at
the conference, including Professor Maryann Crescent Moon as chair, might suggest that
Gilead's vast gender oppression has ended. On the other hand, the smugly paternalistic tone of
Pieixoto's address raises disturbing questions as to whether real equality or only a less-
obvious state of inequality has come about. 11

A Clockwork Orange reveals a protagonist who has grown beyond his initial viciousness, and
from whom all traces of State-imposed conditioning have been removed. Alex's extraordinary
narrative voice stands as convincing evidence that his mind is now completely his own, as
does the fact that he has written his story out in novel form. The question is not about State
control: the embarrassing publicity over Alex's suicide attempt have effectively quashed, at
least for the present, the Government's intention publicly to use the Ludovico Technique.
Rather, Alex's certainty that his son will grow up to be just as amoral and dangerous as his
father ends the dystopia on a sobering note. We may take comfort from the fact that Alex's
criminality, which his son is expected to repeat, is a naturally occurring phenomenon, which
we must accept as the price of freedom. Dystopia does not pretend that freedom is easy or
without terrors of its own, but merely that the alternative to freedom is far worse than the
costs of enforced stability and security.
Riddley Walker ends guardedly. A small group of dedicated activists might be able to prevent
a repetition of earlier mistakes. We have Riddley's narrative as evidence of his increasing
reliance on (and confidence in) language. Furthermore, the first performance of the new show,
itself an artifact of language, proves successful, convincing those with open minds to work for
a different future. With the Mincery's power broken and the knowledge of the 1 Littl 1
spreading through Inland, social instability offers the best possible circumstances for Riddley
individual skepticism. Elgin Judas Rose ends on the most optimistic note of the dystopias
discussed in this volume. As Nazareth Chornyak Adiness's life comes to its end, she is content
in the knowledge that Láadan has spread too far to be contained or suppressed. Although
generations will pass between Láadan's creation and the evolution of the gender-equal society
this language is intended to foster, Nazareth and the other women of Chornyak Barren House
are convinced that their aim will ultimately succeed. The Epilogue raises the specter of
humanity's annihilation, thus undercutting the optimism; arguably, though, the optimism of
the prologue seems to cancel out the pessimism of the Epilogue, leaving us with the hope
contained in the text itself.

On the generic level, all dystopias are optimistic in that the act of writing a dystopia
presupposes a conviction that the intended audience can still be warned against disturbing
trends. Satire without insight becomes parody; dystopia without optimism becomes anti-
utopia. Within the dystopian genre, however, constituent fictions break down into three types:
the "bleak" dystopia, the "disputable" dystopia, and the "hopeful" dystopia. This division can
be made by weighing the fates of the main characters against the survival or downfall of the
oppressive state. Two of these dystopias qualify as bleak ones: Nineteen Eighty-four

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four and The Handmaid's Tale are almost entirely grim. The best hope we can find in them is
evidence that the particular oppressive society we have been shown has ended, although there
is no clear indication how. Language is a means of resistance, but not of salvation. Still, we
may find, with George Woodcock, that it is better to resist and be destroyed than simply to
give up: "The important thing about Winston Smith is not that he should have been defeated,
but that he should ever have begun his private war against a regime that symbolized and
constrained all the anti-human and anti-vitalist forces which social man rears up to the
detriment of individual man" ( 1984, 181).

Disputable dystopias end without clues to the ultimate fate of their societies, which are as
strong at the ending of the fictions as at the beginning. Brave New World concludes with the
Savage dead and Helmholtz and Bernard exiled. Huxley's dystopia leaves open the slim
possibility of the Alpha islanders mounting a counterrevolution, but it seems more likely that
they might choose simply to construct a better civilization among themselves, without
attempting to change the entire world. After reading A Clockwork Orange we may believe
that Alex is fully cured and ready to join normal society, but we have not seen that either he
or the Government have learned any permanent lessons from their struggle. Alex shows no
remorse over the crimes that he has committed; they strike him as being of a piece with the
other childish behaviors that he gives up by accepting adulthood. Neither has the State
disavowed its conditioning program. We can easily believe that the Government, once it has
dealt with the public relations problems raised by Alex's case, will simply become more
secretive in perfecting and implementing the Ludovico Technique. These sorts of dystopias,
then, challenge our notions of how far an individual can alter a society.
Finally, both Riddley Walker and the Láadan novels end on overtly hopeful notes. Their main
characters are not destroyed but rather live to see the beginnings of movement toward better
societies. We do not see the collapse of the dystopic cultures; instead, we witness the
nurturing of new social developments that will ultimately end the oppression that creates the
dystopia. One might expect the most optimism from novels that clearly indicate the end of
their hellish societies, but instead these are the least optimistic ones. By contrast, the novels
that end with the main characters only beginning a generations-long effort to change society
seem the most optimistic. The distinction seems to be in the degree to which the author feels
bound to give some sort of answer to the dystopian question, "What can we do about this?"
Harking back to Chekhov's insistence that the artist need only clearly state the problem
( Berman 1981, 168), we may justify the range of hope present in these dystopias as simply
based on differing interpretations on the part of individual authors as to what constitutes a
clear statement.

For Hoban and Burgess, the problem is not merely the ways in which language can be used to
oppress and to resist but in how readers view language acquisition as a forbidding challenge.
In order to read these dystopias, we must acquire the rudiments of new languages, without
assistance or explicit instruction. Burgess notes that when readers finish A Clockwork Orange,
they will find themselves "in possession of a minimal Russian vocabulary--without effort,
without surprise" ( 1972, 199). Burgess suggests that he intended this to point out how
brainwashing may take place subliminally, without our becoming

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aware we are being conditioned. Dowling points out that we may also learn a language
through reading Hoban's dystopia:

Disaster fictions have been increasingly aware of the verbal texture of their created world . . .
and Riddley Walker has the richest texture of any novel considered here, a texture almost as
rich as that of Finnegans Wake. . . . The language of the debased and degraded future that
Riddley lives in is bound to be full of uncomprehended remnants of what we have today. No
other nuclear disaster fiction has pushed this commonplace idea as far as Hoban has in this
novel, which teaches the reader a dimly recognisable, mutated form of Cockney English even
as he reads. ( 1987, 201)

Although the idea of learning a language as proof of the ease with which we can be
brainwashed is not in Dowling's discussion, we do learn a new language from the novel. The
relative ease with which the reader comes to understand Nadsat and "Inlish" directly
challenges our received notions of learning a language as being a monumentally difficult task.
Of course, neither Nadsat nor Inlish constitutes an actual language, and we "learn" them only
to read the novels they narrate. Still, there is a certain amount of language acquisition that
must take place before one can comprehend either novel. Both authors force us to rethink the
challenge of language acquisition, and by extension they empower us to reconsider other tasks
that we may find daunting--such as avoiding Armageddon and building a more livable
society. Language is the "foot in the door" that these dystopias use to weaken our insistence
that we are personally powerless to confront and influence huge, faceless problems like
ignorance, arms buildups, and repressive governments.

A reader who acquires Nadsat or Inlish through reading these dystopias has learned an
artificial language, which does not exist outside of that fiction. 12 This feature distinguishes
Inlish and Nadsat from "real" artificial languages, which are constructed outside the bounds of
fiction in order to serve as actual languages. Significantly, four of the six dystopias studied
contain artificial languages, the other two being Orwell's Newspeak and Elgin's Láadan.
Artificial languages have figured prominently in many utopian schemes, since "it has
variously been posited that artificial languages facilitate logical thought, eliminate ambiguity
of expression, and foster the brotherhood of mankind" ( Large 1985, vii). Dozens of artificial
languages have been produced, most intended as "international auxiliary languages" to
complement existing natural languages and help prevent miscommunication. In a more
utopian vein, some "language schemes have been intended to act as a universal language in
place of all existing languages: one language for the world" (vii). Artificial languages of this
type are, by definition, utopian schemes; certainly, artificial languages have been abundant in
utopian fiction. Edward Bulwer-Lytton The Coming Race ( 1877) is dedicated to the
philologist Max Mueller, whose 1868 study, On the Stratification of Language, he greatly
admired. Chapter 12 refers explicitly to Mueller's theories in describing the language of the
Vril-ya. Bulwer-Lytton portrays the underground society of the Vril-ya as nearly perfect,
thanks in large part to their language (described in 1973, 56-63). This language, which is
"akin to Aryan or IndoGermanic" (62), is "able to express far more 'complex ideas' than
English. . . . Vril-ya, in short, is a vision of English purified along the lines commended by the
language improvers of the mid-nineteenth century" ( Bailey 1991, 216-17). H. G. Wells seems
to have changed his mind about artificial languages. Richard Bailey suggests that "Wells was
sceptical of wholly rational systems (and hence

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of imaginary rational languages) on the grounds that the essential nature of human intellection
is dynamic, evolutionary, and individual. Thus, the sort of ideal language that animated the
minds of linguistic improvers of his day seemed to him quite uninteresting" (217). But by the
time Wells comes to write A Modern Utopia ( 1905), his work can be described as "formally
ambivalent at the most detailed level of linguistic usage. In addition to the common linguistic
habits of utopians overtaken by Wells, his own usage . . . translates the traditional problem
into his particular idiom of ambivalence" ( Bleich 1984, 96). 13 Finally, in the last phases of
his career, Wells had come to accept many of the utopian ideals he had earlier questioned,
including the desirability of a universal artificial language. The first-person narrator, in
presenting "The Dream Book of Dr. Philip Raven," tells how Raven in his dream state has
looked backward from far in the future. Among other things, Raven notes:

One of the unanticipated achievements of the twenty-first century was the rapid diffusion of
Basic English as the lingua franca of the world and the even more rapid modification,
expansion and spread of English in its wake. . . . It was made the official medium of
communication throughout the world by the Air and Sea Control, and by 2020 there was
hardly anyone in the world who could not talk and understand it. ( Wells 1933, 416-17) 14

Returning briefly to R. E. Foust ( 1982) point that dystopia reminds us that utopia can exist
only in the human imagination, dystopia often satirizes utopian practices directly. More's idea
of taking children from their parents and raising them communally, for example, is carried to
a chilling conclusion in Huxley Brave New World. Dystopias often attack the utopian ideals
of artificial languages, primarily because artificial languages, like utopias, are static--a point
that the dystopia resists. The unchanging nature of artificial languages may also form part of
dystopia's insistence that the reader take responsibility for action, by approaching such a
language on its own terms. Orwell's Newspeak remains the most effective such dystopian
attack. Newspeak exposes some utopian artificial language assumptions by reversing them:
state-sponsored oppression becomes the answer to the problem of how to spread the language
throughout the population--and how better to simplify communication than by limiting it?
Newspeak has become the most widely known fictional artificial language, such that
"Newspeak" itself and some of its Ingsoc terms have been wholly absorbed into Western
political vocabulary. Indeed, Berdichevsky laments that Orwell's "biting satire lent
ammunition to critics of all devised languages" ( 1984, 28).

Walter Meyers suggests that "the very pinnacle of success for the literary word-coiner is to
have his [sic] new term embraced by the users of the language at large. This has happened
several times through the intermediary of science fiction" ( 1980, 30-31). As an example,
Meyers cites Robert Heinlein 1942 story "Waldo," which gives us the term waldoes, for
mechanical instruments that duplicate arms and hands for dealing with dangerous materials
(32). George Orwell coined more enduring words in his last novel than any other writer in the
twentieth century. Although James Joyce has added richer terms to English, Orwell's have
permanently entered popular Western political vocabulary in a way that far fewer of Joyce's
neologisms have done. For example, the word Newspeak has become a catalyst that
immediately brings to mind visions of constant surveillance and brutal control. The term Big
Brother is equally

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powerful, conjuring a mental image of a totalitarian state that will stop at nothing to invade
our privacy and manipulate us for its own purposes. Even Orwellian has been enshrined as a
convenient label for any oppressive measure. Other words from Nineteen Eighty-four that
have entered English include telescreen, crimethink, doublethink, proles, and blackwhite. The
enduring popularity of Orwell's coinages affirms language as the keystone of dystopian
fiction. While no other dystopian writer has yet written a work that has spawned as many
neologisms, other authors in this study have produced new words (or created new meanings
for old ones) that have also become part of our twentiethcentury vocabulary. For example,
Burgess's ultraviolence crops up from time to time, although usually without clear indication
as to its origin, while Huxley's ironic twist to Shakespeare's phrase from The Tempest has
become a common term for satirically referring to any aspect of our immediate-gratification,
consumer-driven society that a speaker wishes to deride.

Some dystopian novels have adopted artificial languages, not as objects of satiric attack, but
for very different ends. Dystopias belong to the utopian impulse and make use of almost every
utopian image and technique. Orwell paints Newspeak as the Inner Party's most powerful tool
for achieving final control over Oceania. In direct contrast, Suzette Elgin presents Láadan as
the best hope for the women of Earth to end oppression. Láadan is even more fully detailed
than Newspeak, and is the only one of the dystopian artificial languages herein studied that
extends beyond the pages of its fictional birthplace in Native Tongue and The Judas Rose. A
brief glossary of thirty-five Láadan words is appended to Native Tongue. Under Diane
Martin's editorship, Elgin has also published A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan.
This volume contains notes on Láadan's phonology, a fourteen-lesson teaching grammar, and
a pair of dictionaries (English to Láadan and vice versa), as well as several morpheme-
bymorpheme translations of poems, prayers, stories, and songs written out in Láadan. 15
Beyond an incomplete (and squeamish) glossary to Burgess' novel, there are no Appendices,
dictionaries, or guides to understanding A Clockwork Orange's Nadsat or Riddley Walker's
Inlish--a fact some readers will bewail after struggling through the first few pages of these
novels! 16

The majority of dystopian writers consider artificial languages sufficiently important to play a
prominent role, but beyond that consensus few inclusive statements obtain. Of these four
dystopian artificial languages, it is interesting to note that Burgess and Hoban wrote their
fictions in their languages, while Orwell and Elgin used their created languages mainly as plot
devices. This seems counterintuitive, considering that Láadan is a complex, finished language
with its own rules of grammar and style while Nadsat and Inlish are actually little more than
twisted English vocabulary and grammar with sprinklings of Russian and fragmented
technojargon, respectively. Newspeak at least seems workable. That is, of the four artificial
languages we find in these dystopias, the two that could function outside the pages of their
fictions are only referred to, with occasional examples, while the languages that could not
function as real means of communication between speakers completely dominate the
narratives in which they are presented. There are more differences between these languages
than there are similarities.

The distinction between Alex, the women of the Lines, and Winston is that Alex and the
linguist women find expressive and philosophical freedom in artificial language, while
Winston preserves his individuality from Newspeak's

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mind controls. Alex's Nadsat is a generational slang, while Riddley's Inlish appears to be the
standard discourse for all members of his culture. Riddley is not conscious of the differences
between his language and that of the reader; Alex is aware of these differences and frequently
mentions them, but he does not think of Nadsat as an artificial language. It is, instead,
artificial to Burgess and the reader. Inlish is the only one of these languages to be used by an
entire society. Láadan is a secret language among women, and will remain so for generations.
Nadsat is only for teens, and Alex is growing beyond it as his story ends. Finally, of course,
the Party does not expect that the proles will ever use Newspeak and has no plans to inculcate
Newspeak among them.

Their freedom from the Party's legislated language is one reason why Winston trusts the
proles to bring about a better future. We see in the proles' language some clues that Winston
misses that might prove the proles worthy of his trust. The proles still use language creatively,
and they preserve older English words and definitions. The old prole with whom Winston
speaks cannot give the clear and insightful historical analyses Winston wants, but Winston
misses the fact that the old man's English is rich with dialect, colloquialisms, and the joy of
using old words. Hearing the old man aggressively define a "pint" in an age of the liter and
half-liter glass tells the reader, if not Winston, that the proles will hold on to their language, in
contrast to the Party members, who only speak listlessly of everyday living and maniacally of
Party orthodoxy.

Winston is aware of himself as a writer when he works on his diary. Alex, Offred, and
Riddley are conscious of their roles as storytellers within their fictions, and all of them
constantly question their telling. Offred apologizes for the agony of her story and of its
limitations:
I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in
crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. . . . Nevertheless
it hurts me to tell it over, over again. . . . I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid,
this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to bear it, as I will hear yours
too if I ever get the chance, if I meet you or if you escape, in the future or in heaven or in
prison or underground, some other place. . . . By telling you anything at all I'm at least
believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being. I tell, therefore you are. So I
will go on. So I will myself to go on. I am coming to a part you will not like at all, because in
it I did not behave well, but I will try nonetheless to leave nothing out. After all you've been
through, you deserve whatever I have left, which is not much but includes the truth. ( Atwood
1986, 267-68)

Winston similarly wills a readership--and, therefore, a future--into being as he opens his

diary: "To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different
from one another and do not live alone--to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot
be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother,
from the age of doublethink--greetings!" ( Orwell 1982, 20) A clue toward understanding how
Alex is changing away from his former vicious young self comes when he anticipates the
reader's revulsion at his descriptions of prison life: "[T]his is the real weepy and like tragic
part of the story beginning, my brothers and only friends. . . . You will have little desire to
slooshy [hear] all the cally [shitty] and horrible raskazz [story] of the shock that sent my dad
beating his bruised and krovvy rookers [bloody hands] against unfair like Bog in His Heaven"
( Burgess 1987a, 75). Again, Alex asks his reader's tolerance when describing his

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cellmates: "They were a terrible grazhny [filthy] lot really, and I didn't enjoy being with them,
O my brothers, any more than you do now, but it won't be for much longer" (84). It is
significant that Alex does not apologize for the crimes he has described in detail; while the
older Alex is becoming aware of his audience and is learning to cultivate that audience, he
does not feel guilt or remorse. His metaphor of youth (including his own) as a windup toy
(190) excuses, as far as Alex is concerned, the violence he has committed. In this sense,
Alex's narrative is significant for what it does not say as well as for what it says.

Riddley Walker often takes the reader's concerns into consideration, and he takes pains to be
clearly understood. In relating how Durster Potter is killed by dogs only minutes after having
insulted and attacked Riddley, the young man finds himself telling of what seems very much
like another attempt on his life by Durster. Riddley pauses in his narrative and then says:

I bes put the red cord strait here becaws looking back over what I ben writing it looks like
may be Durster ben shooting that arrer at me not at the black dog. I wont never know for cern
but I dont think he ben shooting at me. Jus like Id uppit bow at that black leader when I ben
fealing humpy I think Durster ben kean to hit some thing after getting flattent 1ce by me and
1ce by Fister. May be he thot coming suddn roun that ben he myt get his self a dog skin. Or
may be he ben looking to miss the dog and hit me I dont know. ( Hoban 1982, 67-68)

Surrounded as he is by conflicting interpretations and claims of narrative authority, Riddley

strives to present his story as objectively as possible. When he must allude to his own feelings
and intentions, he carefully labels them as such. Riddley does not pretend that his story is
conclusive--in fact he deprecates his narrative for not being comprehensive, asserting only
that he is "Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this
paper the same. I dont think it makes no diffrents where you start the telling of a thing. You
never know where it begun realy" (8). Nor does he know where the telling will end, only that
he will continue to tell as long as he is able to do so: "Parbly I wont never know its jus on me
to think on it. . . . Stil I wunt have no other track" (220).

The bewildering diversity of language roles may lead one to conclude that the theme of
controlling thought through language continues to inform dystopian fiction in English. But
how central is that theme? Can we conceive of a successful (i.e., grim, but aesthetically
pleasing) dystopian fiction that does not include the theme of language as the battleground
between oppression and resistance? I argue that language is so crucial to the dystopia that we
are justified in labeling it a generic structural element: without its inclusion, a fiction cannot
be considered a dystopia. Walter Meyers has proposed a definition that comes very close to
this argument, holding that "the relationship between dystopias and thought control is a
reciprocal one--dystopian languages do indeed involve thought control; in fact, if a society
promotes the control of thought or language, we judge the society, on those grounds, to be a
dystopia" ( 1980, 198).

Meyers's ( 1980) definition of dystopia hinges on whether languages are used within the
fictive dystopian society to control thought. For example, Nineteen Eighty-four is a dystopia
because Oceania's Inner Party creates Newspeak to control its citizens' thoughts. This is a
workable definition of dystopian fiction that explicitly considers language as the touchstone.
However, Meyers's

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definition does not consider language use in dystopian fiction beyond thought control,
especially the roles that language plays as a tool for resisting oppression. Language is central
to dystopian fiction beyond its deliberate use by oligarchs. It is possible to organize dystopian
language concerns into three basic types: conscious manipulation of language by oppressors
intended to control thought; conscious use of language by rebels as a means of resisting
thought control, and conscious use of language by the writer of the dystopian fiction. The first
and second of these types exist on a fictive level and are known to the characters, while the
third exists on a stylistic level and is known only to the writer and readers of the dystopia.
Meyers's definition comfortably encloses the first type of dystopian language use, but fails to
include the second and third types. For instance, under Meyers's definition, we cannot discuss
Elgin's Láadan novels as dystopian fiction, since the oppressive power group (men) does not
explicitly seek to control language. 17 Instead, Elgin clearly shows women creating and
spreading a language of their own as a means of winning freedom. Thus, it is necessary to
look for patterns of language use in these dystopian fictions. Having sorted out these patterns,
we may reconsider Meyers's initial definition and determine how effective it is, both as
written and as it might appear when thoughtfully expanded.

In Meyers's conception, thought control is the hallmark of a dystopia. Thought control

through language includes the suppression of literature or print of any kind. Examples of such
suppression range from the wholesale destruction and demonization of old literature in Brave
New World to the selective ban on feminist writings depicted in Native Tongue. Nineteen
Eighty-four shows us a government that has not explicitly banned literature but has ruthlessly
culled any books that it views as a threat. This is one instance in which the Party treats the
proles equally with all other citizens: "The hunting-down and destruction of books had been
done with the same thoroughness in the prole quarters as everywhere else. It was very
unlikely that there existed anywhere in Oceania a copy of a book printed earlier than 1960"
( Orwell 1982, 65-66). What literature has been permitted to survive is rendered meaningless
through a never-ending "revision" process. We may expand this idea of thought control to
include efforts by repressive power groups to limit or eliminate literacy as well. The Mincery
officials protect the Eusa story by keeping the populace illiterate, and the genetic engineering
practiced in Huxley's World State has produced two castes who can read only the most
elementary texts (Gammas and Deltas) and a third caste, the Epsilons, whose severely limited
mental abilities prevent literacy. 18 Once he has undergone the Ludovico Technique, Alex has
not been rendered illiterate--but when he tries to read, he discovers that affective literature
(the Bible) and even scientific works (a textbook on wounds and their treatment) are closed to
him, since he cannot endure the pain caused by his emotional reactions to these books
( Burgess 1987a, 142). We may question whether the government intended that nearly all
literature would be closed to Alex after his treatment (certainly including political
exhortations and opposition speeches), but this is the result, whether deliberate or accidental.

Dystopian states are rarely content to limit literacy without also seeking control over
interpretations and meanings of important documents. By keeping no recorded body of laws,
Oceania's Party has created a state in which it may define any action as a crime if it so
chooses. The Handmaid's Tale shows the Bible being locked away from everyone except the
Commanders, even though

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Gilead claims to be founded on fundamentalist Christian doctrine. The Commanders will not
permit the possibility of challenges to their readings of Scripture, since it is these readings that
form the ostensible basis for their power. Similarly, the Mincery is careful to maintain its
network of connexion men in all communities, since these men alone are permitted to "reveal"
the meanings of the Eusa shows--and only the Mincers themselves (plus a few of their
deputies) can perform the Eusa shows at all. Thought control through language is most
explicitly drawn in Nineteen Eighty-four. The Party cannot completely do away with language
per se, but English leaves too much room for multiple definitions, ambiguity, and delicate
shades of meaning. Therefore, the Party will do with English what they do with all their
enemies: English is slated for vaporization as surely as is Winston.

But while oppressive states engage in similar thought-controlling tactics throughout the entire
dystopian genre, we also discover some cognate strategies for resistance in which language is
the chief weapon. Just as Nineteen Eightyfour's Newspeak provides the most explicit example
of a dystopian state creating a thought-limiting language, the Láadan of Native Tongue's and
The Judas Rose offers the most obvious rebuttal, with the oppressed women fashioning a
language meant to broaden the mental and emotional horizons of its speakers and thus to
include the disenfranchised perspectives of women. Oppressed groups in dystopian fiction are
also prepared for the suppression of literature. The women of the Lines hide feminist
literature in order to preserve knowledge of what nearequality was once like and to remind
themselves why they struggle. Riddley's culture preserves stories and historical fragments
which, as Riddley's changing attitudes show, can undercut the Mincery's worldview--the best
examples being Hart of the Wood ( Hoban 1982, 2-4), and Why the Dog Wont Show Its Eyes
(17-20). The oral nature of Inlandic history and literature also empowers the illiterate
populace: their range of thought is limited only insofar as the Eusa story remains the culture's
central one. As Walker and Orfing's "new show" demonstrates, the Eusa myth is vulnerable to
other interpretations and readings than those of the Mincery.

Easily the most widespread depiction of resisting thought control through language is the
refuge many dystopian characters find in writing. Alex, Offred, and Riddley are fully
empowered narrators who control the shapes of their stories even though they control nothing
else. As Offred states: "If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. Then
there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left
off" ( Atwood 1986, 39). After hearing authority figures repeatedly ask "What's it going to be
then, eh?" Alex tells his story and asserts, "That's what it's going to be then, brothers, as I
come to the like end of this tale" ( Burgess 1987a, 191). What he says--literally, his telling--is
what the story has been. Riddley may have a thousand questions about the world around him,
but he knows how to tell his story and will not be rushed, even by his own desire to speak:
"Iwl write down the Eusa Story when I come to it" ( Hoban 1982, 2). In The Handmaid's Tale,
the power of Offred's narrative is undercut when Pieixoto appropriates it; thus, the novel ends
on a much more disquieting note, making its dystopian warning plainer. Riddley and Alex
maintain authority over their tellings, and we finish reading their stories with a sense of hope.
In every case, the first-person narrative personalizes the horrors of dystopian society, helping
us to understand life under such conditions more immediately than a distanced narrative could
do. A dystopia

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presented in abstract terms is much less terrifying than one focused on a single individual,
especially an individual who tells his or her own story.

Nor are these narrators the only rebels who find some intellectual freedom through writing.
Helmholtz Watson's poetry may not be particularly moving, but in the culturally sterile World
State, his verses have the power to damage conditioning and destabilize the social structure.
Helmholtz is physically and intellectually emancipated through his poetry: since exile to an
island will give him the time he desires to write and place him among the few like-minded
individuals in the World State, his punishment for writing poetry turns out to be the escape he
has longed for. Winston Smith's life is not saved by his diary-but then, he does not expect it to
be; the diary is a means of preserving his selfawareness until he is vaporized. It is significant
that Nineteen Eighty-four opens with Winston beginning his diary, for with this act he
knowingly takes the irrevocable step into active rebellion against the Party. Finally, the
women of the Lines cannot be said to write their own narratives in the form of texts. The
Preface to Native Tongue assumes that the narrative is the work of one hand, although the
manuscript is signed, "the women of Chornyak Barren House" ( Elgin 1985, 5-6). But
regardless of who is responsible for the narratives of Native Tongue and The Judas Rose, we
find the women of the Lines inscribing language onto society rather than onto paper or
electronic storage media. Their use of language is not intended as a means of mentally
escaping from oppression, but rather as a way to reconstruct society so that gender oppression
becomes impossible.

Of these six novels, those with first-person narrators-- A Clockwork Orange, The Handmaid's
Tale, and Riddley Walker--generally make a deeper impact on the reader. (I say "generally"
because no writer has yet duplicated the grim power of Orwell Nineteen Eighty-four.) In all
three first-person novels, the changes in language and culture are either experienced directly
through the narrator or filtered through that character for affective purposes. Two of these
present narratives in which we cannot comprehend the story until we grapple with the strange
argots in which they are written; Offred's narrative is written in standard English but
nonetheless difficult because of her shifting tenses, in which memory and current events
closely intertwine. Her constant attempts to retell poignant episodes (such as her first visit to
Nick's flat) are intriguingly complex. At a slightly farther remove, in Nineteen Eighty-four
Winston creates all our perceptions of his society (including Newspeak, which we see and
read about him using). Farther from that are Elgin and, last, Huxley, who use multiple
characters as first-person narrators (as in the Láadan novels) and multiple filters for an ironic,
detached third-person narrator ( Brave New World). Language in these dystopias is most
affective when the reader is immersed in it, with no alternative path into the narrator's mind.
The more distance between language and the reader, the less affective (and, possibly, the less
effective) it becomes as a dystopic tool. This is particularly true regarding Elgin's sparse use
of Láadan. We read much of this language's hoped-for impact, but we do not experience it
firsthand.

Neither Orwell nor Elgin could actually present their fictions in their invented languages: "It
is obvious, of course, that complete linguistic realism is impossible, especially in those works
in which, ideally, the reader should be reading conversation in a language created by and
known only to the author himself" ( Barnes 1975, 27). Neither Newspeak nor Láadan could be
used to present a coherent picture of a dystopian society. Newspeak is, by design,

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incredibly limited in its ability to communicate ideas, and while it could not narrow the range
of thought available to a speaker, it also simply could not support a work of fiction. Newspeak
is incapable of describing oppression or resistance, since neither concept exists in the
language. Nor could Láadan be used in a pair of novels founded on the inequality of male and
female use of language, inequalities that reinforce, and are reinforced by, oppression of
women. The goal of Láadan is to give women a language that can present their perceptions
accurately and honestly, under the assumption that English as it is now constituted is
incapable of doing so, having been co-opted by the patriarchy. Presenting Elgin's fictions in
Láadan would nullify her warnings concerning inequalities sustained in language, as
(presumably) Láadan does not preserve such inequalities--and, in the unlikely event that it
does, they would undoubtedly be reversed.

Orwell and Elgin must therefore create a feeling in the reader that their extrapolated
languages could fulfill the roles set out for them without actually showing the languages
doing so. Before addressing this issue, we must step back from language struggles as they are
presented within dystopian fiction and consider the author's conscious stylistic decisions,
which are known to both reader and writer, but not to the characters within the fiction. We
find a number of stylistic techniques and images used repeatedly within dystopian fictions by
multiple authors. The most common shared image, in terms of language, is the continuing
emphasis on thought control through various processes of behavioral conditioning. We find
conditioning a constant element in all these dystopias, but no matter how the authors construct
the concept, language lies at the heart. Easily the most complete picture of a conditioned
society is Huxley's Brave New World, in which humans are not only artificially created to
government specifications, but carefully conditioned from conception onward to assure their
smooth, happy functioning in whatever role they are meant to fulfill. Genetic manipulation
and sophisticated negative reinforcement, though, cannot create the perfect World citizen:
"For that there must be words, but words without reason. In brief, hypnopædia" ( 1947, 23).
However, despite the extraordinary care with which the State conditions its citizens, words--
even a few short verses, on the theme of solitude--are sufficient to thoroughly upset a class
full of Alphas and render their author suspect (153-54). The Ludovico Treatment, which Alex
undergoes, is far more brutal and can only be reversed by further psychological
manipulation--which the government authorizes, in order to use Alex as a pawn against a
flood of bad press in an election campaign. As bad as the Inner Party's constant surveillance is
the equally constant propaganda: "always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping
you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed--no
escape" ( Orwell 1982, 20). Gilead enforces its worldview by Scriptural readings and
"training," at least for the Handmaids, that resembles psychological concentration camps. This
training at the Rachel and Leah Center involves, among other horrors, twisted group therapy
sessions called Testifyings, at which Handmaids take turns revealing past "sins" and
excoriating each other for them. "At Testifying, it's safer to make things up than to say you
have nothing to reveal" ( Atwood 1986, 71). For women in the Láadan novels, conditioning
comes from birth, through an oppressive social structure and through mandatory public
schooling broadcasts, sneeringly referred to as "homeroom" and "the mass-eds."
RiddleyWalker

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Walker shows the populace conditioned by a carefully constructed myth, which is repeated
and reinterpreted at regular intervals by the Eusa Showmen.

All three types of dystopian language presuppose a conscious use of language, whether by the
writer alone or by the characters as well as the author. Thus, language does not oppress or
resist by itself, but must be knowingly manipulated to achieve the desired ends. Dystopia's
emphasis on conscious use forces us to confront language as a tool. The Inner Party, not
Newspeak, is the enemy of free thought in Oceania; the selective reading and literal
interpretation of the Bible for expedient political ends, rather than Scripture itself, are to
blame for the oppressive state of Gilead. This point may seem self-evident but has been
frequently overlooked, sometimes by dystopian writers themselves. In Orwell essay, Politics
and the English Language, he attempts to show how language is willfully used to stultify
communication and prevent clarity. Yet despite his own statement that speakers are wrong to
assume that "language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own
purposes," in the same essay Orwell also laments that "when the general atmosphere is bad,
language must suffer" ( 1975, 353, 364). When some government official uses passive
constructions in order to avoid taking responsibility for a blunder or atrocity, the English
language is neither the culprit nor the victim. Language is a tool that can cut both ways, but it
cannot cut at all unless knowingly wielded. Implicitly, dystopia asks us to confront our roles
in relation to current social ills, and it insists that we either take responsibility for addressing
such problems or resign ourselves to suffering the consequences.

By centering attention on language, dystopian fiction refuses to permit the easy escape of
simply dismissing repressive measures as "abuse of the language" (the stakes are far higher
than clarity or euphony when someone speaks of "ethnic cleansing," for example). Instead,
dystopia demands that we look beyond even the most egregious statements and confront their
speakers and, beyond them, the beliefs being espoused. Noam Chomsky urges us to get
beyond our concerns over the existence of such statements, which are "exaggerated in
importance," despite being held up "by Orwell and by a number of others [as examples] of
how language is abused, tortured, distorted, in a way, to enforce ideological goals" ( 1988,
615). Chomsky notes that these sorts of statements are "the usual topic that's discussed when
people talk about politics and language," but calls them "obvious to the point of banality . . .
mere terms of propaganda. One shouldn't take them seriously for a moment" (616). The point
is not to agonize over the language of obfuscation and oppression, but to recognize it, defend
against it and move on to confront the real issues of power and control behind the language.
Chomsky assures us that this process, which he calls "the faculty of intellectual self-defense,"
requires:

[nothing more] than ordinary common sense. What one has to do is adopt towards one's own
institutions . . . the same rational, critical stance that we take towards the institutions of any
other power. For instance, when we read the productions of the propaganda system in the
Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, we have no problem at all in dissociating lies from truth and
recognizing the distortions and perversions that are used to protect the institutions from the
truth. There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to take the same stance towards
ourselves. . . . A willingness to use one's own native intelligence and common sense to
analyze and dissect and compare the facts with the way in which they're presented is really
sufficient. (622-23)

-179-

Chomsky's point concerning our "native intelligence and common sense" reminds us that we
control our own language and our own thought--unless we permit others to take this control
away from us. Dystopian fiction continues to warn that there will always be power groups
who seek to dominate. Dystopia further alerts us of our susceptibility to the dangers of
thought control, especially as it is exercised through language. The horrors these fictions
present seem nearly insurmountable to the characters who suffer under totalitarian oppression
as well as to us. But this must be the case, since the dystopia repeatedly tries to expose trends
and events in our contemporary world that would have to develop unchecked for years in
order to bear such monstrous fruit. The power to prevent these grim societies, dystopia
argues, lies within our abilities if we will take the trouble to recognize the threats and act to
neutralize them. This message is fundamentally a hopeful one, a point that is often lost in the
misery associated with dystopia. As the twentieth century accelerates toward its end,
dystopian fiction remains the strongest literary advocate for the freedom of the individual will
through creative and unconstrained language.

Writing in 1967, Mark Hillegas asserted that "the force of the anti-utopian tradition has
virtually spent itself" (151). To paraphrase Mark Twain, however, reports of the death of
dystopian fiction have been greatly exaggerated. As long as power groups continue trying to
control the populace through our language, we will continue to find our most valuable tool for
resistance in that same language. Dystopia refuses to follow the easy path of utopian literature
and trade our freedom away for security and empty happiness. Like Humpty Dumpty in
Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass, we must come to understand that the struggle for
mastery of the world boils down to mastery over the word. Dystopia forces us to confront the
fact that if we fail to protect our thoughts, others will take advantage of our laxity and use our
own language to enslave us--"What's it going to be then, eh?" ( Burgess 1987a, 1). Painful
though dystopian fiction may be, its message continues to sound a clear note of warning: we
must claim mastery over the word. Nothing more is necessary to protect our freedom from the
Grand Inquisitors who are always with us; but as dystopia also starkly promises us, nothing
less will do.
NOTES
1. Walter Meyers asks: Why, one wonders, would one so aware of the paper-tiger aspects of
Newspeak as Anthony Burgess cut out a similar tiger of his own to menace the reader
with? All the strictures of Newspeak that he points out apply with equal force to the
"Workers' English" he appends to his novel 1985. Where Orwell's book cautioned against
domination by the elite, Burgess's novel warns against domination from the working
class--union leaders. Yet Burgess patterns his chimera on Orwell's. Neither would be a
significant threat either to our liberties or to our language. ( Meyers made this observation
to a quotation in 1980, 165, in note 20, the text of which is printed on page 222.)
2. Suzette Elgin's entire corpus comes to mind, as well as David Karp One ( 1953), Jack
Vance The Languages of Pao ( 1958) (see Meyers 1980, 166-69) and James Cooke
Brown The Troika Incident ( 1970) (see Meyers 1980, 194-97). The undisputed primacy
of linguistic realism, however, belongs to J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings. But
for the quirks of history, Benjamin Lee Whorf himself might be counted among these
authors. Meyers suggests that

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had things turned out differently, Whorf might have gone on to become one of the
pioneers of science fiction, rather than a linguist of note. At twenty-eight, before Whorf
began the linguistic work that would insure his reputation, he became troubled by what he
perceived as a conflict between science and religion. In 1924, under the impact of the
Scopes trial, he wrote a science fiction novel, The Ruler of the Universe, which was never
published. It pictures the destruction of Earth by a chain reaction caused by research on
atomic fission for military purposes, and may be the earliest use of that theme ( 1980,
159-60).

See also Rollins ( 1971).

3. Aldiss blames Hugo Gernsback. While often called the "Father of Science Fiction",
Gernsback work as a science fiction author and editor was uncluttered by literary skill.
Gernsback is nonetheless important for founding the first American science fiction pulp
magazine, Amazing Stories, which began publication in April 1926 (in Aldiss and
Wingrove 1986, 253). Aldiss discusses the influence of Gernsback's vision of science
fiction as a fundamentally didactic literature on pages 251-66. See also Parrinder ( 1990).
4. I am speaking narrowly of the dystopian tradition here, since many artificial language
schemes do advance linguistic solutions to social ills. "It has variously been posited that
artificial languages facilitate logical thought, eliminate ambiguity of expression, and
foster the brotherhood of man" ( Large 1985, vii). Berdichevsky claims that artificial
languages like Esperanto and Basic English would render impossible totalitarian
oppression such as that pictured in Orwell's novel ( 1988, 28).
5. For example, see David Halliday essay "On Atwood", in which he refers to "The
Handmaiden's Tale [sic]" as "pure Nytol" and "a book for intellectual vegetarians,"
deriding its use of "clichés" such as "the women being ground under the heels of a male
world" ( 1987, 51-53). Halliday speculates that "Perhaps the main character . . . is
Margaret Atwood and the book is really about college life at Victoria College. Is the
commander the quarterback of the football team? Are the Marthas cheerleaders? Have I
 missed the subtext?" (53). His one concession: "None of this matters if people enjoy
Atwood's book" (53).
6. See Deborah Tannen ( 1986, 1990) works on this topic.
7. While the dystopia is a literary genre primarily situated in the twentieth century,
deliberate efforts to aggrandize and hold power through manipulations of language
probably stretch back to the invention of language itself. Olivia Smith The Politics of
Language, 1791-1819 ( 1984) analyzes historical struggles over language as the key to
political power in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England. Smith discusses
efforts by William Cobbett, Thomas Paine, William Hone and John Horne Tooke to
redefine language away from the narrow, elitist views jealously protected by Parliament
and upper-class educational theorists into a tool for suffrage and wider political
empowerment.
8. Chomsky calls Nineteen Eighty-four no contribution and also not very well done[,] . . . a
really tenth-rate novel. . . . [Orwell] missed the main techniques of thought control and
indoctrination in the democracies. For example, in England and the United States we do
not use for control the devices he described, crude vicious use of highly visible power.
That's not the way thought control works here. It works by much more subtle and much
more effective devices. . . . Orwell completely missed this. He didn't understand anything
about it. So I think that 1984 [sic] is very much overrated. ( 1988, 630)
9. Huxley may have held a very different view of dystopian thought control, but he
appreciated Orwell's novel in a way that Chomsky does not. In his famous letter to
Orwell (dated October 21, 1949), Huxley praises Nineteen Eighty-four as a "fine" and
"profoundly important" book (in Smith 1969, 604). Huxley disagrees with Nineteen
Eighty-four's brutality and instead suggests that

-181-

the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving
their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that
the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a
world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The
change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. (605)

This last statement is unknowingly echoed by Chomsky, when he calls his propaganda
model a "guided market system" (Preface to Herman and Chomsky 1988, xii);
presumably, this "guidance" implies efficiency for media organizations with limited
resources, as well as for power groups wishing to disseminate information most
effectively.
10. Herman and Chomsky devote the second chapter of Manufacturing Consent ( 1988) to a
discussion of "Worthy and Unworthy Victims" (37-86).
11. Arnold E. Davidson's analysis of the academic conference finds that "the historical notes .
. . provide comic relief from the grotesque text of Gilead. Yet in crucial ways the
epilogue is the most pessimistic part of the book" ( 1988, 120).
12. The language exists nowhere else except, possibly, in further fictions. Burgess wrote a
stinging review, in Nadsat, of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (in which Kubrick's
 film is presented frame by frame, with the dialogue printed alongside). Alex himself
speaks and signs the review: "It was a Book he did wish to like make, and he hath done it.
Kubrick or Zubrick the Bookmaker. But, brothers, what makes me smeck like bezoomny
is that this like Book will tolchock out into the darkmans the Book what there like
previously was, the one by F. Alexander or Sturgess or some such eemya, because who
would have slovos when he could viddy real jeezhny with his nagoy glazzies?" ( 1973,
1506)
13. Bleich discusses the linguistic and generic difficulties of utopias in "The Novel as an
Unsuitable Form", the fifth chapter of Utopia: The Psychology of a Cultural Fantasy
( 1984), 55-62.
14. This is C. K. Ogden's Basic English, one of the artificial languages Orwell satirizes in
Newspeak ( 1982). See Chapter 3, as well as Berdichevsky's ( 1988) article.
15. Artificial languages have been used extensively in science fiction. Perhaps the best
example is Marc Okrand's Klingon language, originally developed to lend greater
plausibility to a few scenes in the film, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. After the
publication of The Klingon Dictionary, Okrand's language might have languished had it
not made some appearances in the television series "Star Trek: The Next Generation",
and hence become the nucleus of Klingon fan clubs--a phenomenon that now includes fan
conventions, a pseudo-academic journal (HolQeD), and a non-profit Klingon Language
Institute. See Davis ( 1994) article.
16. However, there is a Nadsat glossary appended to Sisk's thesis, which traces Nadsat's
words to their roots and gives the original word, usually Russian, as well as definitions
that are contextually more accurate than those in Stanley Edgar Hyman's glossary (found
in Norton's American paperback edition of A Clockwork Orange, 1963).
17. Implicitly, of course, the men do exercise this control, and they react swiftly when it is
challenged, as we see in The Judas Rose when the priests begin to fear that women are
rewriting parts of the Bible.
18. One wonders why the proles in Nineteen Eighty-four are kept even marginally literate,
since the Party has no plans to "convert" them to orthodox Ingsoc and does not expect
them to use Newspeak.

-182-

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