Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell: Utopian ideals and dystopian worlds

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the transformation of utopian dream to dystopian reality through an analysis of Yevgeny Zamyatin?s We (1921), Aldous Huxley?s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell?s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell present a prophetic vision to make a warning against a future totalitarian dictatorship by displaying the desperate mood of the protagonist who struggles to preserve his identity and individuality yet ultimately fails in his attempt.The thesis begins with the analysis of utopian ideals which are based on equality and solidarity among people in the illuminating light of Thomas More?s Utopia. For this purpose, the Introduction part elucidates utopia and utopian characteristics as a literary genre starting with More?s Utopia with the help of the ideas of critics. Then, it seeks to discuss the characteristics of utopian and dystopian fiction and how utopian ideals are changed. In the first, second and third chapters the eclipse of the utopian ideals is introduced in three dystopian novels; We, Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. These chapters discuss how utopian ideal of solidarity is replaced with uniformity of individuals to turn them into identical citizens, who are under constant gaze of an omniscient and omnipotent ruler. So they depart from individualism and freedom. The future totalitarian states in these three novels control the consciousness and imagination of man through manipulating a highly developed technology for surveillance and torture. In these technological worlds, people are designed to serve the demands of the state through a strict control of their genetic qualities. The dystopian character who does not have an identity is desperate for his individuality and emotions. Moreover, restriction on language and distortion of both history and literature add more to this despair and pessimistic mood of the dystopia. The themes which can be seen as utopian ideals in More?s Utopia are reversed, with dystopian reality and transformed into a dark vision through the annihilation of imagination and emotions in We, Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four.This dissertation is therefore primarily organized around these topics, to show that utopia and dystopia mingle with each other and it will demonstrate and exemplify that eradication of emotions, imagination and individuality in utopias of these three authors? works merely create dystopian dark worlds.