Abstract
One of the defining features of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is its portrayal of a future engulfed in perpetual warfare. Oceania, we are told, is at war with Eurasia (or is it Eastasia)? There are newsflashes reporting ‘glorious victories’ on remote fronts, while rocket bombs fall regularly on London and enemy prisoners of war are hanged in the city’s parks. The people are weary, shabbily dressed and undernourished. Constant war propaganda is needed to justify the universal mobilisation that the ruling Party imposes on its members and, to a lesser extent, the whole workforce. Winston Smith is a civilian, but his day begins with compulsory physical jerks in front of the telescreen, with a female instructor resembling the traditional sergeant major bawling out recruits on a military parade ground. Later Winston will attend the daily ritual of the Two Minutes Hate. His peaceful, apparently humdrum existence as a civil servant is completely circumscribed by the atmosphere of war.
‘Smith!’ screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen.
‘6097 Smith W.! Yes, you!’
(George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four)1
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Notes
G. Orwell (1954) Nineteen Eighty-Four (Harmondsworth: Penguin), p. 33.
H. James (1922) ‘The Great Good Place’, in The Author of Beltraffio, The Middle Years, Greville Fane and Other Tales (London: Macmillan), pp. 195–231.
Y. Zamyatin (1972) We, trans. M. Ginsburg (New York: Bantam), p. 6. Subsequent page references in the text are to this edition.
M. Morris (1966) ‘Introduction’ to W. Morris, Collected Works, vol. 16 (New York: Russell & Russell), p. xxviii.
S.E. Bowman (1958) The Year 2000: A Critical Biography of Edward Bellamy (New York: Bookman Associates), p. 112.
E. Bellamy (1966) Looking Backward 2000–1887, ed. R.C. Elliott (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), p. 154. Subsequent page references in the text are to this edition.
K. Kumar (1987) Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Blackwell), p. 157.
W. James (1924) Memories and Studies (New York and London: Longmans, Green), p. 273. Subsequent page references in the text are to this edition.
F.W. Taylor (1913) The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper).
D. Craig (1973) The Real Foundations: Literature and Social Change (London: Chatto & Windus), pp. 143–67.
D.H. Lawrence (1933) Women in Love (London: Martin Secker), p. 241–2. Subsequent page references in the text are to this edition.
H.G. Wells (1908) First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life (London: Constable), p. 169.
A. Huxley (1964) Island: A Novel (Harmondsworth: Penguin), pp. 152–3. Subsequent page references in the text are to this edition.
See e.g. C.H. Gray (1994) ‘“There Will Be War!’: Future War Fantasies and Militaristic Science Fiction in the 1980s’, Science Fiction Studies 21.3 (November), 315–36, and D. Seed (2012) ‘The Strategic Defence Initiative: A Utopian Fantasy’, in Seed (ed.), Future Wars: The Anticipations and the Fears (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press), pp. 180–200.
E. Callenbach (1977) Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston (New York: Bantam), p. 7. Subsequent page references in the text are to this edition.
U.K. Le Guin (1975) The Dispossessed (New York: Avon), p. 77. Subsequent page references in the text are to this edition.
M. Atwood (1985) The Handmaid’s Tale (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart), p. 222.
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© 2015 Patrick Parrinder
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Parrinder, P. (2015). War Is Peace: Conscription and Mobilisation in the Modern Utopia. In: Utopian Literature and Science. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137456786_9
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