George orwell - t.s.eliot

GEORGE ORWELL

n 1984 Orwell creates a dystopian novel, i. e. a fictional world in which he describes a nightmarish organization called Ingsoc, English Socialism. This expression contains a bit of irony, because Great Britain - strictly linked to the freedom of expression and liberalism - in this novel is governed by a totalitarian socialism. This party is an evolution of the previous totalitarianism; also Ingsoc has a fascinating leader, the Big Brother, but it has got new devices to control people.

The most useful ones are the Telescreen, the Thought Police, and mostly Newspeak. The Telescreen is an instrument, set into all houses, that can broadcast and record simultaneously. You can dim it, but you cannot turn off the Telescreen: you have to see the broadcasting prepared by the party and when you are visible to the instrument your actions are recorded. In this society the privacy is cancelled: you could be surveyed by the police patrol, but the most frightens one is the Thought Police. This new form of control can read in your inner thoughts and they can value if you are agree with Ingsoc or not. If you differ from the party's theories, you are cancelled.

Newspeak, as the Thought Police, deals with the human mind. It's a new form of language that has to be used by the members of Ingsoc: Newspeak, according to party's policy, wants to cancel every possible option to communicate ideas different from Ingsoc's point of view. This purpose will be achieved by erasing every word and every conceit that could create "heretical" thoughts and also the meanings of sensitive words - like freedom - are changed into harmless ideas while other words - like honour, science, justice, religion - are simply banned.

Moreover, while Nazism's and Stalinism's using of abbreviations and contracted forms - such as Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop - were often unconscious, the Ingsoc is aware of the use of telescoped words and phrases. The name of every organization, or body of people, or doctrine, or country, or institution, or public building, was regularly cut down into a single easily pronounced word with the smallest number of syllables that would preserve the original derivation.

In order to prevent people from free thinking, the vocabulary is divided into three parts: the A vocabulary consisted of the words needed for the business of everyday life, the B vocabulary contains words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes - they intended to impose an advisable mental attitude upon the person using them - and the C vocabulary was supplementary to the others and consisted entirely of scientific and technical terms. Also the grammar and the syntax are remarkably restricted to control all the possible shades of meaning, so restricted that with our kind of communication we cannot understand Newspeak.

Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum."

(George Orwell, The Principles of Newspeak, an appendix of 1984)

In this ultimate version, Newspeak will not permit every thought dissimilar from Ingsoc's policy; with this form of communication you cannot talk about heretic thought, because the language isn't fit for these ideas.

In this novel Orwell makes a deep reflection on language: he thinks that language is only an empty container that contains and express the conceits of the human mind, so if you reduce the words and the possible meanings you could diminish the ideas linked to them. Indeed, in Orwell's opinion language can be considered an instrument of political power; those who can alter language can also shift the liking of people, parties, industries. Moreover they can reduce or increase some detailed meaning range in order to weak or reinforce the ideas he cares about.

T.S.ELIOT

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

n this passage of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - published in 1917 - T.S. Eliot deals with one of the most discussed themes of his period - deeply influenced by the consequences of World War I - i. e. the incommunicability of mankind. In these lines Prufrock - the protagonist of the poem - walking through the squalid streets of a modern city escorted by a companion, reveals his inner thoughts such as his opinions about his efforts to approach to women and the value of communication.

His way of living is characterized by the indecision about all the aspects of his life. The choice of what he has to wear while he is going out, or his dreams about a marriage proposal to a lady, or some moral dilemma - especially the "overwhelming question (line 93) - are so deeply analyzed by Prufrock that he resolves his proposals in a detached refusal of every action which could change his situation.

In Prufrock's opinion also the language contributes to make his eventually choices difficult. His negative and incomplete experience such as his attempt to talk with women, or his useless meeting "In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo (lines 35-36) , or his date under the dooryards would have been worth if he could express completely his feelings, but "It is impossible to say just what I mean! (line 104) , i. e. the communication between two people always lead o a misunderstanding. To avoid this possibility Prufrock decides not to express his inner thoughts, as when he is falling in love with a lady. But this decision makes the character of Prufrock more isolated than before. Paradoxically, the attempts to reduce his moment of communication - and the incomprehension linked to the language - in order to cancel the possibility of different meanings in his speech contribute to increase the distance that separates other people from him.

He tries to discloses his soul to his companion, either because he is perhaps talking to his alter ego, to another side of himself, or because he knows that every man is isolated from the others by an equal destiny of incommunicability, and therefore he's talking to nobody.

This situation, describing a middle-aged, self-conscious, slightly cowardly man that reveal his feelings only to a un-named person - that probably does not know him - is compared by T.S. Eliot to the Canto XXVII from Dante's Inferno, in which Guido da Montefeltro, a damned, accepts to unveil his real self to Dante because he believes that Dante will never return to the world. However, whereas between Dante and Guido da Montefeltro there is a complete communication, Prufrock cannot express completely his point of view with his privileged listener because his moral paralysis does not consent to formulate and act his own ideas.