Totalitarian Novels

In George Orwell’s 1984, the regime is dedicated to power. The Party ensures that its members obey through pain and torture, as shown when O’Brien tortures Winston.

Orwell explores the possibility of a regime influencing human nature by controlling history and reforming language to limit the range of ideas its subjects can contemplate. Although the novel does not provide hope to the characters, the reader is inspired to courageous resistance against such a regime.

The regime in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is dedicated to ease. The world state is maintained by attempting to fulfill all sensual human desires, thereby precluding any aspiration to nobility or virtue. John the Savage rebels against the banality of the society into which Mustapha Mond and Bernard Marx have dragged him.

Huxley describes a world in which science has provided the ability to engineer children in test tubes to suit them to specific castes. The ubiquitous drug Soma suppresses ambition and aggression by providing euphoria without any side effects.

Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon fictionalizes the experience of an old Bolshevik revolutionary after Stalin’s rise to power. Through his arrest and interrogations, Rubashov regrets the deaths on his hands and his role in creating a new generation of cruel Bolsheviks who are dedicated to the leadership of the party rather than the ideals of the revolution.

Despite his regrets, Rubashov has corrupted himself to the point that he eventually doubts his righteousness, willingly confesses to his sham crimes, and accepts punishment from the Party.

C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength depicts the infancy of a totalitarian regime. Tyranny is averted through divine intervention manifested through the friendship, education, and faith of a small company led by Fisher-King.

Lewis exposes the dangers of substituting scientific expertise for wisdom and bureaucracy for politics as the ruling impulses of a nation. Mark and Jane Studdock discover the importance of marriage, family, friendship, and faith.