'Truth is dangerous in a dystopia' '1984' and 'The Handmaid's Tale' comparative essay
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Comparative and contextual study (H472)
Institution
OCR
Exemplar comparative essay between Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' and George Orwell's '1984' focused on truth in dystopian literature - includes valuable context, quotes and critics quotes - grade A*
'Truth is dangerous in a dystopia.' By comparing at least two dystopian texts,
discuss how far you agree with this view.
Truth is undoubtedly the enemy of many dystopian oligarchies and the primary deprivation
felt by the societies’ inhabitants. A resultant urge to discover truth often arises in key
protagonists, though whether this leads to their ultimate downfall or salvation, and if truth
is only dangerous to the leaders of the dystopian worlds or to those who seek it too, can be
debated.
Both Offred in Atwood’s “speculative fiction” (Atwood) ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and Winston
from Orwell’s “warning to mankind” (Bossche) ‘1984’ are desperate to find out the truth
behind the societies they are subjected to, as well as cling on to the small truths they
already know. In Gilead, ‘the bible’, which they use to justify the “monthly rape” (Cavalcanti)
‘is kept locked up’ and the identity of the people ‘in power’ is unknown. This theocratic
element was perhaps inspired by the Religious Right under Reagan and the subsequent
decline in women’s rights – for example, several states passed laws restricting abortion.
Offred ‘want[s] to know’ from the Commander what’s going on behind the scenes and
continues to meet with him to gain small pieces of information, simultaneously gaining
courage through these acts of rebellion. Interestingly, although theoretically this hunt for
the truth puts her in greater danger of being taken to the colonies, it arguably catalyses her
escape at the end of the novel, giving her the bravery to break the rules to see Nick, who
facilitates her breakout via the ‘underground female road’. Although, the truth is far more
accessible for Offred than Winston, as she still harbours memories from a time before the
rise of the dystopia, which she finds solace in throughout the novel. Orwell’s protagonist
treasures the fact that ‘two plus to is four’, one of the only truths he can trust, but knows
this small act will lead to his ‘vaporis[ation]’. The whole novel surrounds his desire for truth
in a place where ‘what the Party holds to be true is truth’ (a caricature of Hitler’s Nazism
and the spread of false propaganda, seen by the author just prior to writing the novel) and
leads to a tragic ending whereby he is tortured into believing the “objective truth” (Orwell)
of the Party, and is certainly going to be killed. Truth here seems to create alternate fates
for the characters, perhaps due to the greater absence of truth in Oceania and Winston’s
subsequent greater desire for it, causing him to become reckless in his trusting of O’Brien.
In Huxley’s Brave New World, truth seems to be less of a concern for many of the
characters, except John, for whom it certainly proves to be dangerous. This dystopia’s
protagonist, Bernard, is haunted by his inability to ‘fit in’, rather than any notion of truth.
This is due to the society’s key feature whereby ‘one believes things because one has been
conditioned to believe them’ so that ‘everybody’s happy now’. This discovery by the leaders
that ‘universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can’t’ removes
any danger for both the ‘World State’ and its inhabitants, as this engineered happiness has
made the truth virtually undesirable. It could be said that ‘truth’s a menace’ for Mond, as he
is one of the few who realises that this contentment is not real, but it is not a danger to him
– much like O’Brien knowing all of the truth behind the Party in 1984 but nevertheless
believing it to be the ideal system. However, one character who has not been programmed
to love life unconditionally is John. Throughout the novel, he seems to search for moral
truth, and upon discovering that “the Brave New World is no less primitive than the
reservation” (Beauchamp) and they resided in ‘false, lying happiness’, he becomes
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