UNIVERSITY OF BRASILIA (BRAZIL)
Department of Literature and Literary’s Theories
Master Program in Literature
Luana Signorelli Faria da Costa
Totalitarian literature: realism and reality
Literary criticism of the degraded vision of humanity in the book
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), identifying realism as a mode of
literary representation, and understanding the different visions of
reality during war.
Research Line
Axis of interest
Guiding teacher
Criticism of Literary History
Actuality and problems of realism in literature
Ana Laura dos Reis Côrrea
Totalitarian literature: realism and reality*
Luana Signorelli Faria da Costa
Researcher at Universidade de Brasília (Brazil)
Ladies and gentlemen, congressmen and women, teachers and all those present,
good morning/afternoon at first. It’s with great pleasure that I made this dream come
true, standing right here in the Oxford, to disseminate my work. I thank irreparably all
the organizing committee of the event, which made my dream possible. My name is
Luana Signorelli, my surname is Italian, and my first name is Brazilian, so am I. I’m a
graduation student of Literature. My research line is Criticism of Literary History and I
study specifically actuality and problems of realism in literature. Nowadays I’m taking my
Master degree, but I know explain this very well, because the academic education
system between our countries is very different. I ask you be patient with me if I stumble
on a word, or if you do not understand me.
Anyway, I represent the literature on this interdisciplinary event. My work was
born to talk about three books about totalitarism, and the first thing my guider told me
was to be more focused. So, my work now intends to recognise the realism as a mode of
literary representation – not restricting myself only to the literary period of realism –
within a only book, Brave New World, written by the British Aldous Huxley. It would
be possible to consider it realistic, given an actual conception of world? For what
reasons? It must analyze the literary period of realism, as opposed to modernism in
which this book was conceived.
It’s important to emphasize that the construction of this narrative and answer the
crisis of the characters. The proposal here is to observe how is given the development
that leads which leads the characters to what Aristotle called catharsis, purging or even
purification1. It's main purpose represent an overview of the socio-cultural and political
influences that this work raises, even today, since it was a postwar experience and the
author faced hopeless – or not – an uncertain future, and practice of the writer reflected
the feeling of terror against the barbarism. In this hostile world in which Huxley lived,
the limit of the cyberculture, a new conception of being alive arises. Then, art is
*
1
All translations are the work of the researcher, including the theoretical books.
ARISTOTLE. Ethics to Nicomaco & Poetic. 4. Ed. São Paulo: Nova Cultural, 1991.
essential, because it shows what ideology hides. Moreover, art is able to determine the
self-development of the human when all the rest seems lost.
The art, to account reality, sometimes needs to transform it, even deforms it. The
realism of postwar points that. In that moment, realism was very difficult to be
achieved. It is common in this kind of art elements as disfigurement; escape from
reality; ideological, imagined and futuristic communities; real distopias. Fidelity to
reality in the artwork sometimes part of own betrayal of reality. Literature itself
demonstrates that – Huxley was able, as creating a science fiction, to represent society
exactly reflected, which ensures aesthetic efficiency and impacts to the present days.
The reality was aesthetically captured by Huxley, as his own experiences. It was a really
way to see the future capacity of community.
The characters are true representatives of an ideology. Above all, the ideology
demonstrates the relationship of the individual forms of power. The journalist
Marcondes Filho explains: “(...) it appears that ideology meant only one type of thought
concerned with the political question: who dominates society? And one that dominates
it, is dominated by whom?" (Filho, 1997, p. 19). The fact is that resistance is another
face of power.
The society of this novels lived in regime of urgency, the hiperorganization. The
world is uncertain and separatist, where one cannot face more concepts as univocals.
The truths now undergo for an ideological filter – the individual does not like, or
dislike, but feel exactly what they want he to feel. This society was the imperative of
psychological torture: emotions are induced and controlled in order to maintain a status
quo. I came from a country that lived the fear of military dictatorship, in the 60s. I
haven’t born yet, but I thought carry the memory who have. After, trying to outline the
problem, there was created a Truth Committee. It sounds fiction, but it was History, and
I tell you more: official truths were and still are easily manufactured, according to the
interests. In light of this knowledge, Marcondes Filho also mentions that "The very
statement 'one possesses the truth' can also be a form of domination. It can mean the
desire to impose this truth to others. Nevertheless, he truth cannot impose itself to
anyone. It appears by itself.” (Filho, 1997, p. 54). It was and is a power that was in
charge of thinking by the individual, who is charged only to work. And where is the
literature in the middle of this all?
The art (subjective, made by and for individuals) 2 in this society is transformed
into an object (final product to consumption; piece without being master). Also, the art
is ideological because it is handling techniques, worldviews, messages and
interpretations. The consciousness is owned by a ruling class, and their interest
maintains this situation, it doesn’t matter how hard it is.
The character that embodies this ideology in Brave New World is Henry Foster
himself, a distorted and degraded acronym for Henry Ford who, as a historical subject,
was responsible for the creation of the production model that best fits to capitalism. The
America had a recent history, was recently discovered, and this created a sound healthy
for industry. The whole society revolved around the production. This allowed higher
wages and lower selling prices, which is exactly our world today, actually. Please,
notice how this represents a huge persuasion and propaganda, because the social
environment was conducive – and still – for the growing of production. This happens
when language marries speech. Stálin led a true propaganda machine, to immortalize his
name.3
The internal contradictions of modern society reach their limit. Individualism
became a programmatic economy. Politics and ideology are vehicles for its
implementation. Manufacturing in series allows only reproduction, and eliminates the
creation: this is a decisive shift in the occidental thought. Differences are erased, and
individuals are uniformed. In our world nowadays, there is a critic inversion: there are
so many differences, but what is required of them is that they be standardized,
uniformed. So today, are there many cultures, but one humanity only?
In this decaying social structure, the subject tries to adapt, to adjust. At this
point, we need a new human type adapted. Darwin’s evolution theory is yelling here,
more than ever. A brave new world takes a new human type, and that is the vision of
humanity in this cyberculture. Gramsci calls them improved puppets4. In this society,
even the sexual function – the most intimate human relation – was changed: there was a
common interest to reduce birth rates, to spending less on learning and human
formation. It means, sexual instinct regulated, rationalized. It is extremely perverse,
violent, is a real violation of human rights. To the extent that it is accepted that society
2
According to Hegel, the movement of the Spirit is in and for itself. Available in: HEGEL, Friedrich.
Fenomenology of Spirit. 2. Ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1992. Part I.
3
ARENDT, Hannah. The origins of totalitarism. São Paulo: Companhia de Bolso, 2012.
4
GRAMSCI, Antonio. Americanism and Fordism. In: The prison notebooks – volume 4. Rio de Janeiro:
Civilização Brasileira, 2001.
is built on coercion. In Brave New World, there was a character named Darwin as well,
paparazzi that, yet in the book’s end, was impressed by John, the Savage. John looks so
primitive, so strange to Darwin that he did not did not recognise himself in the figure of
otherness – it was exactly what Marx – Karl Marx, the real and historical one, not of the
Huxley’s fiction – called alienation.
Thus, think literature in the world nowadays becomes a difficult challenge.
Those who appreciate literature can even be called mystics, the case of professor
Helmholtz Watson. Repair that Helm in german means helmet, it is, the maximum brain
protection against any objective, external idea that might influence or change that
mentality already pre-established. However, within that society the teacher was who
could better think. “The modern arrangement – capitalist – of human society had a
shape of Jano: an emancipatory face and other coercive.” (BAUMAN, 2003, p. 29).
Then arises a possibility: the thought, when it is very directive, ultimately
creates rebellion, revolution, and every individual has a great subversive scheme in
themselves. As Beatles already said: “You say you want a revolution, well, we all want
change de world.” And I ask you: what stop us nowadays? Everything changes when we
turn ourselves in real and realistic thinkers – and thinkers realize they are not favored by
the system and, therefore, they can more easily revolt against it. Brave New World is a
whole fiction about intellectual and existential conflicts, once it’s known that
consciousness generates thought. In a determined moment and in a determined
condition, John knew the importance of himself and he is frightening to realize his
potential, and at the same time he could not understand why it was forbidden to read
Shakespeare. I mean, I have my personal, national, memory of dictatorship, you guys
have Shakespeare, and A. E Housman:
“Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.”5
I mean, if it isn’t memory, I don’t know what it is. Continuing, John in Brave
New World is moved by art, which was enough to mess with his inner experience. He
realizes that he had received an invitation to enter even further the system. Try to
5
HOUSMAN, A. E. LXII. Terrence, this is stupid stuff. Available in:
<http://www.bartleby.com/123/62.html>. Accessed in: 17h May 2014.
understand his perspective: he leaves his original homeland, which was a colony, as was
Brazil once, and now he is not only in a civilized society, but in its limits: there is a
crisis. The individual freaks out, societies collapse.
In totalitarian society, there will always be a type that reproduces the dominant
ideology, unconsciously. Observe carefully, people nowadays are almost, practically
pure emptiness. The virtual community is walking forward or backward? People do not
express ideas, but merely reproduced them. Their memory is controlled or corrupted,
because they have been conditioned to think that ignore the truth is comfortable, easier.
But pay attention: play a speech does not mean to be adept of it. Worse than not being
aware of your condition is to have a false consciousness. Ideology is in people's minds
and in their imaginative capabilities. That is the role of the media today, especially
social networks. “The cultural industry is the most subtle form of totalitarianism; it was
made to meet the needs and tastes of a medium public that has no time to question what
they consume. " (Coelho, 1980, p. 11). Being invisible, there is the triumph of
totalitarianis, because no one realizes anymore that is living in a totalitarian regime.
Achieve a totality (totalitarianism) is to get the reduction that things are
themselves and that is enough. The aesthetic reflection is lost: the individual who
produces something do not recognize himself in what he produced. The systems avoids
any kind of subversion. Then why read Shakeaspeare still? Adapting books is also a
form of people assuming that they need to survive. The human kind itself is an evidence
of a past history, art and literature.
"Books were only one type of receptacle where we store, fearing forget many
things." (Bradbury, 2012, p. 109). The one who decorated books, was not only a human
being, was a receptacle of information. It's not like wearing a costume, but knowing it
decorated, in its essence, incorporate it and take it as part of themselves. One adopted
the identity of a book as it would adopt one's own child. Turn people into books is
admitting passages media; semiotics.
The human element should be not transformed into reducing machines, which
would be the maximum process of reification (transformation of man into a thing),
because thus the system would win again. Therefore, the change in the technique of
artistic representation is no longer written, but decorated now, and it is a way to save the
artwork. Men and women are the memories of themselves.
On the other hand, this work also analyzes very briefly a little of the George
Orwell's book, 1984. He was naturalized British and, also in the postwar, imagined a
futuristic community, similar to Huxley’s. The similarities are many. About the idea of
Big Brother, behind an immeasurable, invaluable control, there is a great emptiness – in
fact, no one is actually watching it – a true phantasmagoria. The world is a big
phantasmagoria. The important thing is to maintain the illusion, represent the power, so
that you can fear it. Perhaps, wouldn’t be this the function of art in the consumer
society? Keep the audience interested only during the necessary time to briefly entertain
you without your essence ever be captured? Once the vacuum is realized, possibilities
arise. In 1984, Winston is unworthy and begins to question his life, his routine and his
work, he knows his romantic partner Julie, and lastly put himself in a dangerous
situation.
Finally, Huxley was also an Englishman who witnessed the war, and to
overcome it he made use of licit and illicit substances in his real life, and also created
his distopia. The world in his book is not so admirable – it is created to function purely
in a manufactured laboratory, in which the same woman was the biological mother of
16 thousand people, and a child was already a mother. This book shows a society that
arrives at the extreme limit of barbarism. The emotions are replaced by pure
engineering. Is it genetic engineering a dream or nightmare? – as Mae-Wan Ho
proposed. In the real world, german economy has quickly arise postwar because the
Jews were tested, it is, the progress justify the use of immoral means, well as thought
Maquiavel, in the 16th-century. The greatest evil in the book is the rite of hypnopaedia:
unconscious brainwashing in which people were submitted amidst the passage from
child to adult, to have their conditioned behavior – to hate reading, flowers, nature. In
this society, the ultimate symbol of power is Ford (symbol of pure and mere
reproduction, typical of consumer society), compared to a God. The fact was that in this
totalitarian society, the existence of art becomes impracticable.
How then can we resist? Huxley’s book is important among other things because
it represents a raw truth, in the face of critical characters, who no longer were aware of
the reality around they. This book is also dangerous, since the artist becomes so selfconscious, his cathartic process was so great that he becomes a kind of psychic. Books
themselves make people different – the characters of this book really became what they
read. Word change de world, so I emphasize the importance of reading.
There will always be subversive minds in the world, and this is the true historical
contribution to humanity; literary people are the largest subversive, and without them
the human History would stop. It is the curiosity that moves humanity, a beautiful
aphorism that could be Wilde’s. The object of study of this work was to analyze how
Huxley found a way to transpose literarily a reality distorted that he experienced. Faced
with so many issues, is as central proposal here stipulate whether or not his work can be
considered realistic. The challenge is proposed. The problem of realism in these literary
works is central, because it’s only through the realism that they are so current and yet so
present in our contemporary society. That was my speech, thank you very much.
Bibliography (translated)
ARISTOTLE. Ethics to Nicomaco & Poetic. 4. Ed. São Paulo: Nova Cultural, 1991.
ARENDT, Hannah. The origins of totalitarism. São Paulo: Companhia de Bolso,
2012.
BAUMAN, Zygmunt. Community: search for safety in the current world. Rio de
Janeiro: Zahar Editora, 2003.
BRADBURY. Farenheit 451. São Paulo: Globo, 2012.
COELHO, Teixeira. What is cultural industry? Coleção primeiros passos. São Paulo:
Editora Brasilense, 1980.
FILHO, Ciro Marcondes. Ideology. 9ed. São Paulo: Global, 1997, Coleção Para
Entender, Vol. 1.
GRAMSCI, Antonio. Americanism and Fordism. In: The prison notebooks – volume
4. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2001.
HEGEL, Friedrich. Fenomenology of Spirit. 2. Ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1992. Part I.
HO, Mae-Wan. Genetic engineering: dream or nightmare? – turning the tide on the
brave new world of bad science and big business. 2 nd. Ed. : New York: The Continuum
Publishing Company, 1998.
HOUSMAN, A. E. LXII. Terrence, this is stupid stuff. Available in:
<http://www.bartleby.com/123/62.html>. Accessed in: 17h May 2014.
HUXLEY, Aldous. Admirável mundo novo. São Paulo: Globo, 2009.
______. Brave new world. New York: Bantam Book, 1958.
ORWELL, George. 1984. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009.