The Dystopian Novel

The dystopian novel has a very short pedigree, emerging at the turn of the twentieth century with H.G. Wells’s novels, The Story of the Days to Come and When the Sleeper Wakes, both published in 1899. In the decades to follow will appear the triumvirate of dystopian novels—Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)—all uniquely modern in their diagnosis of and prognostications for Western civilization. But more importantly, the dystopian genre is a distinctly twentieth century phenomenon, a symptom of an era undergoing rapid change, and of a world that seemed on the verge of self-annihilation. The threat was not unfounded either, for the cornerstones of the modern experience—mass production, technological acceleration, world war, and totalitarianism—irrevocably changed the nature of society, and established something approximating the World State, as envisioned by Zamyatin and Huxley, through global commerce and communication.

Unlike its progenitor the utopian novel, dystopias illustrate a future world of chaos and madness, often operating under the guise of a rational state. Lacking Renaissance faith in human reason, progress, and man’s capacity to create a world of peace and justice, these novels question human nature and civilization. However, what distinguishes Huxley’s novel from the others is the fact that his own anxiety is not motivated by contemporary totalitarianism, but increasing capitalization and cultures of excess. In his comparison of Brave New World with Nineteen Eighty-Four, social critic Neil Postman wrote:

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

While all dystopian novels alert the reader to an irrational future, Huxley did not believe—as Orwell and Zamyatin did—that existing dictatorships, like the Soviet Union, are palpable signs or pathogens of that future. Rather, the ingredients for disaster are already present in capitalized culture. Indeed, the virtues of his World State, “Community, Identity, Stability,” the perversion of which Huxley demonstrates through reproductive technology and behaviorism, are the same for all bureaucracies; democratic governments are no exception. The irony, of course, is that these virtues are meant to ensure productive efficiency and universal well-being. As the character Mustapha Mond explains, the shift from the past state to the future demanded the subordination of knowledge and truth to comfort and happiness, a transition which must, necessarily, suppress individuality. Only in blissful ignorance can the people be ruled.

And yet, how can there be “bliss” without freedom? Can man be made to forget that he is human? These are problems with which all three novelists were primarily concerned, but only Huxley finds the threat developing in our own society and our own efforts to conform to it. Thus, the dehumanization of Brave New World occurs not when freedom and happiness are deprived, but when they are supplied in overabundance. In that regard, capitalism is a powerful instrument.