wrote Brave New World, which is a book I love. He depicts dystopian worlds that look at the bad consequences of consumerism in a word of mass media, mood altering drugs and psychological manipulation.
- George Orwell
wrote 1984 and Animal Farm. Also deals with theme of dystopia but in a world of war and constant surveillance. Totalitarian societies that do not allow for individualism.
- Haruki Murakami
wrote Norwegian Woods; haven't read his books but am aware of the themes he often looks at - loneliness, alienation, surrealism.
I chose George Orwell. He wrote two of my favourite books, dystopian novels are my favourite genre to read so would really enjoy trying to depict themes involved in his books.
After doing some background research into Orwell I became intrigued by his life; he uses his own life experiences so much for inspiration for his writings. For example:
- He fought in the Spanish Civil War for the Communists, and experienced first hand how they continually altered the press for their own benefit (when Orwell was a great believer in truth in language) he became very anti-stalinist. The theme of distorting press is one of the main themes in 1984.
- He wrote an essay about the class differences in Britain 'The Road to Wigan Pier', for which he went and lived up north in Yorkshire for months so that he could write from his own experiences and give an accurate depiction.
- When writing the essay 'Down and Out in Paris and London' he experienced living homeless and under the breadline so that he could properly research the poverty occurring in these two places.
Orwell also deals a lot with Soviet Russia and the corruption of Communism in his novels which I am very interested in. I did a lot of work about Soviet Russia last year for CoP but looking at it as a very utopian idea, before it went wrong - looking at all the striking art work that came out of the revolution. But with Orwell's work it would be viewing the topic from a very different perspective, when Communism went wrong after Stalin came into rule and made Russia a totalitarian state, brought in the cult of personality and lost all the initial principles of Communism.
Animal Farm looks at the journey Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky and Russia went through to become a Communist state and see where it went wrong, and how life was afterwards. But all depicted through the use of animals.
1984 looks at life under totalitarian rule, an exaggerated version of what Russia was like perhaps. Where the people are powerless against those in charge, they live in constant state of war and poverty, and nothing they do is private - individual thought is not permitted.
I think Orwell deals with some really interesting and graphic issues that would be fun to depict - there are a lot of strong, rather depressing themes and atmospheres running through the novels.
No comments:
Post a Comment