Aesthetic Legitimacy for the Dystopian Environment in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Abstract

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) contributed to the appearance of strong feelings of dislike against the type of oppressive, totalitarian regime, through the impact the novel had upon an enormous number of readers. The interest of the public in the image of the controlled individual by an almighty state remains high, even though Postmodernism, with its permissiveness, has generated the diversification of literary forms, technical inventions and, in the sense of reception, changes in taste and mentality. George Orwell imposed the most revealing description of a dystopian environment, surpassing the phenomenon of definitive human degradation under the assault of irrational cruelty. Orwell’s fictional world has aesthetic legitimacy, even though there were critics that noticed the presence of a single narrative voice. The author created a parable developed with Kafkian means, an irrational fictional world, but, paradoxically, passionately read by the public for its cruel, revealing realism and memorable scenes. The novel fails to reach the aesthetic absolute, it does not illustrate a remarkable constructive performance, but confirms a major human problem and existential tension, creating the impression of thorough analysis of humanity. The difficulty of writing is the metaphor of the irrationality of the world and the book is a transparent product, through which we follow the mechanism of terror in full operation.