George Orwell ve Thomas Pynchon eserlerinde tekno-politik paranoya

ABSTRACGT While the roots of paranoia date back to the very early stages of life, paranoia as a term did not occur until in the Greek civilization about five centuries BC. The connotations of the term, however, have been expanding from time to time ranging from mental illnesses, psychological troubles, delusional thoughts and to factual threats. The progress in technology whose roots start from the Industrial Revolution made paranoia further controversial due to the complexities it has brought with itself. While technology (including the media) is primarily under the state figures or politicians' hegemony, it is undeniable that they are utilizing technology according to their own ends, which ultimately lead to fear, uncertainty and paranoia. Among many other literary authors, George Orwell and Thomas Pynchon are two great literary figures having made an incredible contribution to examine and uncover how politicians manipulate technology via misleading the others, hiding truth and spreading out fear and propaganda which is the prime objective of this study. The present study is divided into three chapters in which each chapter is sub-divided into three sections. The first chapter offers a panoramic sketch of paranoia in which definitions, origin of the term together with its connotations are depicted in the first section. The history and development of paranoia in general and particularly in literature is the main stance of the second section while characterizations of paranoia are IV studied in the third section. Chapter two is dedicated to George Orwell's political outlook through which the author's contribution to literature, including his biography, style and major works as well as principal themes are studied in section one. Both of Orwell's world known works Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are critically analyzed from a political perspective in section two and three successively. The core of this chapter is to observe how a society can be put into a severe state of exploitation, terror and paranoia under a totalitarian reign whose key means is the misusage of technology in doing so. An analytic study of Thomas Pynchon's literary canon is the focal objective of chapter three. Section one offers a panoramic attribute as to the life, style, prominent works and themes of the author. The last two sections of the thesis deal with two of Pynchon's most celebrated novels The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow through which the author's pessimistic outlook regarding the impact of technology on the modern society under totalitarian system is highlighted. The core of the present thesis is to shed light on how the world has been entangled into a spider net-like state of insecurity, vulnerability, scrutiny and paranoia through the highly advanced omnipresent technology under the unlimited hands of political or despotic regimes from both Orwell and Pynchon's perspectives. The study ends, thus, with a conclusion. Key Words: Paranoia, technology, totalitarianism, George Orwell, Thomas Pyncho