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Summary OCR English Literature A-Level: Essay on Freedom in Dystopian Texts (A Clockwork Orange and 1984)
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A Comparative Essay on A Clockwork Orange and 1984 written at A* Level based on the OCR exam.
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Oscar McIlwham PS5‘Freedom is constantly restricted in Dystopian Literature’
Atwood claims, ‘Dystopias serve as warnings… portraying a world where
freedom is curtailed.’ Orwell’s ‘telescreens’ (Ninety-Eighty Four, 1949) and
Burgess’ ‘Ludovico Technique’ (A Clockwork Orange, 1962) are two
examples of clear restriction of freedom within Dystopian Literature. Both
of these texts display the restriction of freedom by totalitarian
governments in order to underpin their control. They limit freedoms in
three main ways: psychological freedom, physical freedom and the illusion
of freedom.
As A Clockwork Orange’s government looks to ‘kill the criminal reflex’ of
Alex de Large: the novels protagonist, so does 1984 in Winston’s assertion
that ‘thoughtcrime is death.’ These two clear examples present how
Dystopian Literature constantly targets that of limiting psychological
freedoms of the individual. Winston is made to believe, ‘2+2=5’ purely
because ‘the Party says so,’ while Alex ‘is made into something other than
human,’ by his torture. Burgess’ central tussle within the novel explores
the importance of free will: hence removing from his protagonist to
emphasise its inherent value: ‘the freedom to choose is the big human
attribute’ (Burgess, 1965). Contextually, the Ludovico Technique stems
from the 20th century psychologist, B.F Skinner whose work on ‘operant
conditioning’ would have had heavily influence on Burgess’ creation his
method of torture for his protagonist: the conditioning looking to punish
the agent in order to increase the chance of change. While this lies as a
direct form of psychological limiting of freedom, Orwell does this slightly
more subtly through the slogans of the party: ‘war is peace, ignorance is
strength, freedom is slavery.’ These slogans, while central in limiting the
freedom of the populace, establish to the reader from the very outset that
we find ourselves encapsulated in a society which is warped in its views
on norms. Bloom notes that the party slogans are ‘pivotal in perpetuating
the totalitarian rule of the Party,’ in what Kalabari sees as the ‘systematic
erosion of the individual’s autonomy.’ Orwell writing in a post-World War
Two society, would have recognised the potential dangers of totalitarian
governments, being witness to the horrors of both the Nazi and
Communist Party in his fighting in the Spanish civil War. In his essay, ‘Why
I write,’ he notes that, ‘every line of serious work that I have written since
1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism.’
Historian Hobsbawm notes that this period was marked by ‘the looming
spectre of totalitarianism and this pervasive sense of anxiety which it
created.’
While the psychological limitation of freedom’s might be more subtle or
nuanced in Dystopian Writing, that of the physical freedom’s is often
much clearer to see. While Orwell’s ‘telescreens’ clearly present the lack
of freedom people have to privacy and their own actions within their own
homes, Burgess’ diegetic seems to portray a world where anyone has the
freedom to do what they want: ‘there’s not no attention paid to earthly
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