Controllo mentale tesina

“La carriola”

Si tratta di una novella di ambientazione borghese. Il protagonista, un avvocato di successo e

richiestissimo, sta tornando da un viaggio in treno e nel dormiveglia si vede vivere, ovvero si

riconosce come altro da sé. Il treno è simbolico, e indica il fluire del tempo. Questa crisi di identità

si acuisce ancora di più sulla strada verso casa, finché il protagonista giunge sotto la porta di casa e

vede sulla targhetta il suo nome e cognome e la sua professione. In quel momento capisce che sotto

quella forma che la società gli ha dato si nasconde il vuoto, che non ha mai vissuto veramente. Ma

egli non può fuggire totalmente dalla forma e dalle convenzioni sociali. Non gli resta che accettare

quella sua forma. Per sopportarla, però, dovrà inventarsi dei momenti in cui dare libero sfogo a

questo altro da sé. La novella termina con la descrizione di uno di questi momenti: l'avvocato

afferra la sua cagnetta per le zampe posteriori e le fa fare la carriola, facendole compiere otto o dieci

passi nel suo studio. Dal punto di vista narrativo è interessante l’incipit della novella che è

fortemente enigmatico. C'è una descrizione che potrebbe far pensare ad una donna, ma che in realtà

si riferisce alla cagnetta, spaventata dal comportamento deviato del padrone. Il mondo ha imposto al

protagonista una maschera: costui è, infatti, obbligato a mostrarsi una persona affidabile, precisa,

colta, sicura di sé, delle proprie capacità e possibilità. Il protagonista ci spiega che ogni sua forma,

ogni sua maschera è una forma di morte, perché è comunque una maschera. Pirandello, nello

scrivere questa novella, intende comunicare che la pace è solo nella follia, che è il sovvertire tutti

gli schemi. In questo brano è presente, infatti, la visione di vita pirandelliana, che si caratterizza da

una realtà di uomo che non vive, ma interpreta una parte; è inoltre pervasa dal pesante incombere

di una maschera che non si può togliere perché è vincolante per la riuscita della nostra vita, e che ci

porta a un senso di angoscia e solitudine.

George Orwell

Life

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell,

was an English novelist and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound

awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in

language and a belief in democratic socialism. Considered perhaps the 20th century's best

chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical

journalism. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the

allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945), which together have sold more copies than any two books

by any other 20th-century author. His book Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his

experiences in the Spanish Civil War, is widely acclaimed, as are his numerous essays on politics,

literature, language and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest

British writers since 1945". Orwell's influence on popular and political culture endures, and several

of his neologisms, along with the term Orwellian—a byword for totalitarian or manipulative social

practices—have entered the vernacular.

1984

Plot

The novel is about a future England, called Airstrip One that was included in a totalitarian system including North

America, South Africa and Australia. This system is ruled by the Party and controlled by the Big Brother. The novel is

divided in three parts: 1. description of the protagonist Winston Smith 2. description of his love for Julia and the

happiness of this relationship 3. the Winston's imprisonment and torture by the Thought Police and the final lost of his

moral and intellectual integrity. Through this novel Orwell shows a sense of lost and the idea that all emotions and

values belong to the past. Infact the protagonist Winston Smith is the last man to believe in human values in a

totalitarian time. Orwell uses the commonest English surname, Smith, to suggest his symbolic value and the name

Winston to evoke Churchill's patriotic appeals for "blood, sweat and tears" during the Second World War. Winston is

middle-aged and physically weak so he hasn't the traditional characteristics of the hero. He works at the Ministry of

Truth and he wants to maintain a spiritual and moral integrity so when he was alone he writes on an old diary trying to

remain sane in a such disorienting world. In the first and in the second part of the novel Orwell expresses his views

through Winston so the protagonist of the novel and the narrator seem like one. In this novel Orwell mixed various

genres and styles, putting together documentary realism with parody and satire. And the book became increasingly

pessimistic and violent in the last part which is about Winston's final defeat. The novel set in a squalid London and is an

anti-utopian novel because it shows possible future ideal societies that ridicule existing condition of society. Orwell

described a terrible future under the constant control of Big Brother: there isn't privacy because there are some

telescreens watching and hearding everything people do and say. Love is forbidden and the country is always in a state

of war. The Party controls the press and language and history and introduces a new official language called Newspeak,

whose lexis is so limited that people find it impossible to express their ideas. Any form of rebellion is punished with

prison, torture and liquidation. With this novel Orwell doesn't offer consolation but expresses his sense of history and

his simpaty with the millions of people murdered in the name of the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century.

The Dangers of Totalitarianism

1984 is a political novel written with the purpose of warning readers in the West of the dangers of

totalitarian government. Having witnessed firsthand the horrific lengths to which totalitarian

governments in Spain and Russia would go in order to sustain and increase their power, Orwell

designed 1984 to sound the alarm in Western nations still unsure about how to approach the rise of

communism. In 1949, the Cold War had not yet escalated, many American intellectuals supported

communism, and the state of diplomacy between democratic and communist nations was highly

ambiguous. In the American press, the Soviet Union was often portrayed as a great moral

experiment. Orwell, however, was deeply disturbed by the widespread cruelties and oppressions he

observed in communist countries, and seems to have been particularly concerned by the role of

technology in enabling oppressive governments to monitor and control their citizens.

In 1984, Orwell portrays the perfect totalitarian society, the most extreme realization imaginable of

a modern-day government with absolute power. The title of the novel was meant to indicate to its

readers in 1949 that the story represented a real possibility for the near future: if totalitarianism

were not opposed, the title suggested, some variation of the world described in the novel could

become a reality in only thirty-five years. Orwell portrays a state in which government monitors and

controls every aspect of human life to the extent that even having a disloyal thought is against the

law. As the novel progresses, the timidly rebellious Winston Smith sets out to challenge the limits of

the Party’s power, only to discover that its ability to control and enslave its subjects dwarfs even his

most paranoid conceptions of its reach. As the reader comes to understand through Winston’s eyes,

The Party uses a number of techniques to control its citizens, each of which is an important theme

of its own in the novel. These include:

1) Psychological Manipulation

The Party barrages its subjects with psychological stimuli designed to overwhelm the mind’s

capacity for independent thought. The giant telescreen in every citizen’s room blasts a constant

stream of propaganda designed to make the failures and shortcomings of the Party appear to be

triumphant successes. The telescreens also monitor behavior—everywhere they go, citizens are

continuously reminded, especially by means of the omnipresent signs reading“ BIG BRO TH ER

IS WATC H ING YO U ,” that the authorities are scrutinizing them. The Party undermines family

structure by inducting children into an organization called the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and

encourages them to spy on their parents and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party. The Party

also forces individuals to suppress their sexual desires, treating sex as merely a procreative duty

whose end is the creation of new Party members. The Party then channels people’s pent-up

frustration and emotion into intense, ferocious displays of hatred against the Party’s political

enemies. Many of these enemies have been invented by the Party expressly for this purpose.

2) Physical Control

In addition to manipulating their minds, the Party also controls the bodies of its subjects. The Party

constantly watches for any sign of disloyalty, to the point that, as Winston observes, even a tiny

facial twitch could lead to an arrest. A person’s own nervous system becomes his greatest enemy.

The Party forces its members to undergo mass morning exercises called the Physical Jerks, and then

to work long, grueling days at government agencies, keeping people in a general state of

exhaustion. Anyone who does manage to defy the Party is punished and “reeducated” through

systematic and brutal torture. After being subjected to weeks of this intense treatment, Winston

himself comes to the conclusion that nothing is more powerful than physical pain—no emotional

loyalty or moral conviction can overcome it. By conditioning the minds of their victims with

physical torture, the Party is able to control reality, convincing its subjects that 2 + 2 = 5.

3) Control of Information and History

The Party controls every source of information, managing and rewriting the content of all

newspapers and histories for its own ends. The Party does not allow individuals to keep records of

their past, such as photographs or documents. As a result, memories become fuzzy and unreliable,

and citizens become perfectly willing to believe whatever the Party tells them. By controlling the

present, the Party is able to manipulate the past. And in controlling the past, the Party can justify all

of its actions in the present.

4) Technology

By means of telescreens and hidden microphones across the city, the Party is able to monitor its

members almost all of the time. Additionally, the Party employs complicated mechanisms

(1984 was written in the era before computers) to exert large-scale control on economic production

and sources of information, and fearsome machinery to inflict torture upon those it deems

enemies. 1984 reveals that technology, which is generally perceived as working toward moral good,

can also facilitate the most diabolical evil.

5) Language as Mind Control

One of Orwell’s most important messages in 1984 is that language is of central importance to

human thought because it structures and limits the ideas that individuals are capable of formulating

and expressing. If control of language were centralized in a political agency, Orwell proposes, such

an agency could possibly alter the very structure of language to make it impossible to even conceive

of disobedient or rebellious thoughts, because there would be no words with which to think them.

This idea manifests itself in the language of Newspeak, which the Party has introduced to replace

English. The Party is constantly refining and perfecting Newspeak, with the ultimate goal that no

one will be capable of conceptualizing anything that might question the Party’s absolute power.

 Urban decay The London that Winston Smith calls home is a dilapidated, rundown city in

which buildings are crumbling, conveniences such as elevators never work, and necessities