THE PROTAGONIST’S PURSUIT OF HISTORY: THE VITAL IMPORTANCE OF A RECORD OF THE PAST
pg 12 – if you don’t then you cannot differentiate between present and past, cause and effect, or lies and truth, each protagonist is eager to obtain and hold on to a genuine record of the past, a past the totalitarian regime would like to distort or deny completely.
pg 12 – In order create or obtain such a record, the protagonists in We, Nineteen eighty-four, and the Handmaid’s tale decide to keep a diary,
– In brave new world, Fahrenheit 451, and nineteen eighty-four the protagonists pursue what each considers the most important books from the past:Shakespeare and the Bible.
– It is through these diaries or these books that the protagonist wants to break the isolation the dictatorship has created by cutting off man from woman, parent from child, friend from friend, the present from the past, and the world within from the world outside regime.
DYSTOPIA AS A NO-MAN’S LAND BETWEEN SATIRE AND TRAGEDY
pg 13 – the writer offers militant criticism of specific aberrations in our own, present social-political system by pointing out their potentially monstrous consequences in the future, The function of the message is that of a warning, an exhortation.
“Should you not recognize these specific aberrations in your present, and should you allow them to go on unchecked [..] you will no longer be able prevent the development of the horrifying nightmare system of London 651 AF, Oceania, or Gilead, in which the protagonist’s tragic fate will have become simple inevitable” – Dystopian Fiction East and West Terror
pg 14 – What does it mean to be human? Is there a point at which we could be made to lose our humanity?
pg 15- Dystopian satire focuses on society […] it has a primarily social-political message, a didactic intent to address the Idea Reader’s moral sense and reason as it applies to the protagonist’s – and our own – place in society and in history
THE PROTAGONIST’S WINDOW ON THE PAST: TWO TIME-PLANES
pg 15 – It is crucual not only that we identify the difference between his time and ours buts also that we recognize that these two time-planes are joined in a cause-effect relationship.
N.Q They refer sometimes to the past in the future/ present day of publishing
pg 15 – Brave New world. – 1930 they were faced with the challenge to distinguish between two alternatives: use the machine to serve humanity, or enslave humanity in the service of the machine.
– 1984 published in 1940 point is that the adversary’s condoning of Stalinism as a representative of true socialism is based on the Adversary’s readiness to worship the God of Power.
“Doth it please thee to oppress that thou shouldst despise the work of thy hands, and shine upon the counsel of the wicked?”(Job 9-11, 3).
pg 31 – Trial and retribution takes place in dystopian fiction. In we, 1984, Fahrenheit 451 the narrative is “framed” by two trials: the trail and punishment of a subversive witnessed by the protagonist at the beginning, and the protagonist’s own trial and punishment at the end.
pg 31 – In dystopian fiction the protagonist’s trial results no the post-postponement but in the denial of justice, its deliberate miscarriage. […] an individual whom is courageous enough to stand up against an elite ruling. In this society trials can have only one result; NO ACCUSED IS EVER ACQUITTED
31 – the protagonists do not fulfill the fate of the tragic hero, who is able to sacrifice himself for the good of the community
pg 32 – Liberation comes in tragedy as a result, after the the catastrophe. In satire the catharsis consist of another kind of recognition, and i suggest that it is the sense of relief that comes from a revelation accomplished by the force of reason.
pg 31 – We are asked to scrutinize the historical forces that led from his society’s past to the nightmare society in his present.
“Marxism predicted and tried actively to further a development culminating in an ideal utopia that know no political or economic coercion; the state has withered away, each person co-operates freely in accordance with his abilities, and all his needs are satisfied “- Popper, The poverty of Historicism, 73 – 74
emancipated from reality.