| Nineteen Eighty-Four is George Orwell’s most influential work, and can be rated as the world’s most famous dystopian literature as well as anti-totalitarian political allegory novel. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell’s solemn prophetic tone lays out a dark future of mankind, which makes the reader tremor. Since the publication of the novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four has received different interpretations from different perspectives and on different levels by many critics both at home and abroad. Guided by the theories of alienation, this thesis will set to analyze the manifestations of alienation revealed in this novel on different levels.In Nineteen Eighty-Four, manifestations of alienation mainly display on three different levels. The first one is the alienation on culture level. In the fictional Oceania, people lose their ability to do self-reflection and to criticize reality; language’s function in expressing thought transfers into a kind of force to repress people; education becomes a means to hinder man’s development and a tool for the ruling Party to maintain its ruling position; mass culture’s function is also alienated. The second one is the alienation on interpersonal relationship level. In Oceania, interpersonal relationship is indifferent and estranging. What’s more, the original subject-subject interpersonal relationship also transfers into subject-object relationship and the unequal relationship of ruling and being ruled. The last one is the alienation on science and technology level, which firstly manifests in the social security crisis and secondly in the deprivation of men’s freedom by scientific and technological inventions. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell not only presents an alienated world to readers but also attempts to warn us later generations to be cautious about alienation. For the fact that alienation in modern society is increasingly prominent, so the novel’s cautionary implication has significant meaning in building a harmonious and healthy society. |
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