George Orwell and H.P. Lovecraft created hopeless worlds in their stories. These hopeless worlds were led by totalitarian rulers who are very similar in nature.
1984 which was written by George Orwell is a story about an oppressive totalitarian society in Oceania led by an unseen entity named Big Brother. Big brother is basically an overlord who always has an eye on you no matter what. Big Brother uses spies, recorders, children who will spy and tell on adults, they rewrite history and use the thought police, which spies on people via their thoughts through telecasts which are in every room of every house and apartment. These methods take away all freedoms from its citizens. The main character in this book is Winston. This protagonist is obsessed with the idea of overthrowing the government but is at the same time knows in his heart he is doomed. He does things that will sabotage his idea of rebellion. He buys a diary and writes down with Big Brother in it, knowing that will bring really bad consequences. He gets involved with Julia, another free thinker, and starts a relationship with her, having an affair that is illegal. He reads a book written by Goldstein, the leader of the rebels, even though he knows that reading it would get him in big trouble. Then he gets involved with O'Brien who he likes only because he has a welcoming face. It turns out O'Brien is an agent with the Thought Police. Ultimately, Winston and Julia are entrapped and are arrested by the Thought Police. They are tortured and forced to meet with their worst fears in Room 101 and they ultimately betray each other. While Winston is being tortured, he's begging for forgiveness for all his crimes, O'Brien says, "We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about." Then when Winston left room 101 he was utterly broken. He becomes a lover of everything Big Brother is to continue to survive even though he is a simple shell of a person.
The short story of The Call of Cthulhu and the series that followed it explains that Cthulu is a octopus/dragon like god and he's one of the Great Old Ones, living in the darkest and most remote place. He is responsible for the humans. He can control them. He has his own army but he doesn't' even need it because he has all the control and power. He watches every move. Humans have no option to rebel because he's all powerful. If you think ill of him, he will know. You have to obey him without question; be a slave or be killed. He is everlasting and can regenerate. He is inadvertently awakened by some investigators and is released onto the earth to enslave and control mankind.
Though Big Brother is obviously not a monster, both it and Cthulhu exhibit the same personality. They both rule the world of humans with an iron fist. They use different methods but with the same result. In the same way that Cthulhu is everlasting, so is Big Brother. Big Brother has set up a government where free thinking and any other freedom cannot exist. Big Brother is then creating an environment where only it can truly exist. They ultimately both create a hopeless world where a person can do nothing but wait and hope for death. A world where it is literally futile to fight back.
1984 which was written by George Orwell is a story about an oppressive totalitarian society in Oceania led by an unseen entity named Big Brother. Big brother is basically an overlord who always has an eye on you no matter what. Big Brother uses spies, recorders, children who will spy and tell on adults, they rewrite history and use the thought police, which spies on people via their thoughts through telecasts which are in every room of every house and apartment. These methods take away all freedoms from its citizens. The main character in this book is Winston. This protagonist is obsessed with the idea of overthrowing the government but is at the same time knows in his heart he is doomed. He does things that will sabotage his idea of rebellion. He buys a diary and writes down with Big Brother in it, knowing that will bring really bad consequences. He gets involved with Julia, another free thinker, and starts a relationship with her, having an affair that is illegal. He reads a book written by Goldstein, the leader of the rebels, even though he knows that reading it would get him in big trouble. Then he gets involved with O'Brien who he likes only because he has a welcoming face. It turns out O'Brien is an agent with the Thought Police. Ultimately, Winston and Julia are entrapped and are arrested by the Thought Police. They are tortured and forced to meet with their worst fears in Room 101 and they ultimately betray each other. While Winston is being tortured, he's begging for forgiveness for all his crimes, O'Brien says, "We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about." Then when Winston left room 101 he was utterly broken. He becomes a lover of everything Big Brother is to continue to survive even though he is a simple shell of a person.
The short story of The Call of Cthulhu and the series that followed it explains that Cthulu is a octopus/dragon like god and he's one of the Great Old Ones, living in the darkest and most remote place. He is responsible for the humans. He can control them. He has his own army but he doesn't' even need it because he has all the control and power. He watches every move. Humans have no option to rebel because he's all powerful. If you think ill of him, he will know. You have to obey him without question; be a slave or be killed. He is everlasting and can regenerate. He is inadvertently awakened by some investigators and is released onto the earth to enslave and control mankind.
Though Big Brother is obviously not a monster, both it and Cthulhu exhibit the same personality. They both rule the world of humans with an iron fist. They use different methods but with the same result. In the same way that Cthulhu is everlasting, so is Big Brother. Big Brother has set up a government where free thinking and any other freedom cannot exist. Big Brother is then creating an environment where only it can truly exist. They ultimately both create a hopeless world where a person can do nothing but wait and hope for death. A world where it is literally futile to fight back.
These stories both show the danger of a world in which the government or a ruler has too much control. The rulers in these stories control all the people, killing everyone's individuality. Living means nothing since the people are not enjoying anything.
To most the word apocalypse means a cataclysm or catastrophe of epic and all-encompassing extent; a disaster so momentous that it tears the very fabric of reality asunder. But the true meaning of apokalypsis in the original Greek is to reveal. We think of Revelation as an event in time, a break that occurs and signs the end of times; but it is in essence a change in your own state of being, an awareness of the true nature of the false reality that you are living through. It is the moment when you realize that the world you knew is in fact nothing more than a prison cell.
ReplyDeleteTo Orwell and Lovecraft, this moment of revelation, is central. The coming to awareness, or awakening that transforms the central character from a person who believes in his own knowledge. Winston Smith muse:
He was safe, everything was all right. He fell asleep murmuring ‘Sanity is not statistical,’ with the feeling that this remark contained in it a profound wisdom.
Lovecraft's characters are all too often academic men; adventurers, researchers, men with deep knowledge of forbidden and arcane lore, yet all are reduced to insensate lunatics by their confrontations with the unnameable. Confounded in their knowledge and haunted in their dreams.
In a similar way, Winston Smith believes he is “the last man in Europe." By this, implying that everyone else, lacking consciousness and awareness of themselves and the nature of their realities, are perhaps zombies or automatons, but certainly less than Men.
Smith, along with Lovecraft's many doomed protagonists, believes the answer lies in a book. For Smith it is The Book, the blasphemous and apocryphal tome written by archheresiarch Emmanuel Goldstein, pretentiously titled The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. For Lovecraft The Book is simply The Necronomicon of the Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred. Knowledge of the contents of these books brings awakening but also certain doom.
To Smith, O’Brien says “We shall meet again in the place where there is no darkness,” echoing 1 Corinthians: For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. A promise of revelation, but who, or what, is to be revealed. The price for hidden knowledge is transformation, abdication and obliteration of the self. As Nietzsche warns, “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
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