The Dystopian Visions of Orwell’s 1984 and Condie’s Matched, Essay Example

In George Orwell’s 1984 and Ally Condie’s Matched both authors present visions of respective dystopian societies. What arguably defines both of the dystopian societies portrayed in these works is that they are totalitarian societies. In other words, for Orwell and Condie, what is a truly horrific future society is one in which the individual possesses no free choice. Rather, dystopia is structured according to a prominence of government, and what makes this scenario so nightmarish, is that it prevents individual autonomy. The lead characters of Orwell and Condie, Smith and Cassia, experience firsthand the horrors of the totalitarian system, when they first realize that they are being controlled. Once this control is revealed to the characters, they understand that their lives are not how they envisioned: they are immersed in an ideology. The struggle of both characters is thus when they attempt to resist the structuring of their reality from the powers that be. This assertion of autonomy in light of a system that attempts to control every aspect of existence makes up the main conflict of both books. However, at the same time, Condie and Orwell’s protagonists can be said to differ in the main sense that they offer female and male perspectives on this dystopian society. While the essential struggle of both characters is the same, these two viewpoints present unique insights into what it means to lose one’s autonomy from both a male and female perspective.

Totalitarian societies in both novels are distinctive to the dystopian visions of Orwell and Condie. A totalitarian society is one in which the lives of its inhabitants are completely structured. This can be found, for example, in Orwell, with the continuous manipulation of politics, as the government states that the country is at war with Eurasia one week, whereas it is then allies with Eurasia the next. In Condie’s Matched, this totalitarianism is primarily explored through the notion of romance and individual love. The main character Cassia has her future partner arranged for by the society; however, after catching a glimpse of another, she begins to experience her own individual passion and love, which is a manifestation of her own unique subjectivity. Both Orwell and Condie explore the notions that such totalitarian societies function precisely by restricting such subjectivity – a dystopian world is one that is constituted by the pure restriction of what would be called in contemporary parlance, “human rights”. The person is no longer free to make existential choices – arguably, both authors therefore define what it means to be really human through their definitions of oppressive dystopian societies. In other words, what is most human is that which is directly opposed to such an arrangement of political and social life: human life is that which is comprised of contingencies, accidents and a freedom of choice. Such totalitarian societies in both novels basically attempt to eliminate the possibility of chance: they attempt to calculate everything beforehand for the human being. This is arguably consistent with ideas of modern technology: technology attempts to calculate and define, making predictability the highest virtue. For both Orwell and Condie, however, such predictability is the very antithesis of what makes human existence distinct.

At the same time, one of the crucial features of these societies for both authors is that the characters initially do not realize they are being thoroughly controlled. They play their roles in society at the outset, understanding that this is the norm. Smith, for example, works for a government agency, changing newspaper headlines to fit the party line, whereas Cassia is fully resigned to the fact that the society will select her partner. Accordingly, dystopian societies have the crucial feature of making one think that they are free, when they are really not. They create the illusion of existential choice. Both Smith and Cassia therefore undergo moments of enlightenment: they begin to understand that what they thought was real, is in reality a fiction created by the state itself. Their moments of recognition of ideological control are crucial to contributing to the realization of the overall oppressiveness of the societies in which they live. What makes such an account of dystopian societies especially terrifying is that it is applicable to precisely those societies where the leadership says that the individual is most free – from this perspective our freedom is nothing but an illusion.

The main difference between Orwell and Condie, despite their strong similarities, is that they present male and female viewpoints on the dystopian experience. Accordingly, Orwell’s Smith begins to question his society through a rational analysis of, for example, political corruption and historical revisionism. Smith is an intellectual within the apparatus, and possesses the significant task of revising historical documents. However, according to a gradual process of revelation, Smith comes to understand that such a continuous changing of the past hides the true past. It is this intellectual suspicion that leads Smith to radically question the system, breaking its laws, and eventually finding himself an enemy of the state, tortured at the hands of Big Brother. Thus, Smith’s particular understanding of the wrongness of the dystopian society in which he lives is the result of a rational desire to seek the truth.

For Condie’s Cassia, her moment of recognition is found in love. Cassia’s spontaneous love for someone, against the prescribed and arranged partnerships of the system in which she lives, helps reveal to Cassia the very limits of this system. Such a society, which plans every detail for its inhabitants, is suddenly questioned by the act of love: love is essentially excluded from this society. Accordingly, Cassia begins to realize that what she is being told does not correspond to her feelings. Cassia’s point of resistance to the system begins through a deeply personal experience of the lover for another. Whereas Smith’s love for Julia is also key to his mental liberation, there is a sense in which Condie’s presentation of Cassia’s love is even more oppressive, precisely because how she describes Cassia’s complete ignorance towards what love is, and moreover, that love is possible.

In this regard, it can be suggested that another key difference between the novels is that Condie’s dystopian society is even more oppressive than that of Orwell’s. Certainly, Smith is caught in a dreary existence, in which state control exists everywhere. However, Condie’s version is more radical, as even love is an entirely alien experience – such total control is also seen in the fact that the society in which Cassia lives also plans the exact moment of death of its citizens. Condie, in this sense, gives an even more inhuman picture of a totalitarian society, as this society is a more radicalized version of the elimination of chance and contingency. For example, in Orwell, history may change from week to week – that is precisely Smith’s job. In Matched, change is much more tightly controlled, through a system that attempts to completely eliminate love and plan death.

Accordingly, there is a great symmetry between Orwell and Condie’s visions of dystopian societies. Both authors primarily understand dystopian society as one in which human individuality is restricted. At the same time, one of the crucial features of such societies is that the individual does not even recognize that their society is oppressive. The major difference between the two works lies in how the main protagonists discover the source of their oppression: for Smith, it is primarily intellectual and rational curiosity, while for Cassia, it is the experience of the phenomenon of love. Because of the restriction of love in Cassia’s work, it can be said that Condie’s vision of dystopian society is even more oppressive than that of Orwell’s.  The underlying continuity between these two perspectives, however, is that it shows that the recognition of oppression can be the result of vastly different causes.