Atwood’s and Orwell’s novels share the fundamental idea that control of language and thought are crucial to dystopian novel. George Orwell’s ‘1984’ was written after World War Two building on people’s fear of the political stability of the world. His novel includes the all-powerful Big Brother, which monitors and controls Oceania, where the novel is set. Margaret Atwood’s delve into control of thought and language is through religion. Her novel set in the near future religious state, Gilead, in North America. The inspiration for the two dystopian novels comes from the election of conservative power, Thatcher and Regan, in the western world, and the general fears that civilisation had in the 1980’s about declining birth rates and the dangers …show more content…
In most dystopian novels there is some sort of revised language that is enforced upon the people to alter the past and support the regime that is ruling. A critic stated that “Language is one of the key instruments of political dominations, the necessary and insidious means of the ‘totalitarian’ control of reality” , this is supported in ‘1984’ with ‘newspeak’ and ‘The Handmaids tale’ having religious influence on the way that people converse to one another. Examples of newspeak in ‘1984’ come from when Winston is rewriting documents within the Ministry of truth, or as it is shortened by newspeak to ‘Minitrue’. Orwell has used compound words such as ‘plusgood’ and ‘unlight’ to ‘make all other modes of thought impossible’ . This therefore shows how the language reduction is simplified and how Ingsoc has done this to restrict how people ‘express’ their emotions or thoughts. Other forms of language control that is apparent in ‘1984’ is that words have been created and removed in the development of Newspeak. Any Standard English word, or oldspeak in 1984, could be made negative. ‘Cold’, for example, has had the affixes of un- and plus- to give greater emphasis. So uncold means ‘warm’ and pluscold means ‘very cold’. These words, and others such as crimethink are manufactured by the corrupt regime to instrument control in ‘1984’. In ‘The Handmaids tale’ the Gileadean regime implements a religious based language which is only known to the audience when the Offred first meets Ofglen ‘Praise be’ and ‘Which I receive with joy’. This language is ceremonial and has religious undertones, and this confines the way the handmaids expose themselves as before the rule came into system women and others could speak however they wanted too. Maryam Kouhestani said that ‘The official language seeks to reject and repress the previous language and replace it with Biblical discourse’ . The critic supports