1984: What To Compare It To (OCR A Level English Literature)
Revision Note
What To Compare It To
For Component 2, you will study at least two whole texts from the chosen topic area, and at least one of these must be from the core set text list. For the second text, you can either study the other core set text, or another text from a list of suggested set texts. The two core set texts are George Orwell’s 1984 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Given that 1984 explores the key themes of power, control, identity, technology and human nature, there are numerous examples of dystopian fiction that could be used for comparison. A detailed comparison with the other core text, The Handmaid’s Tale, will be explored here, along with a comparative summary of other texts:
Examiner Tip
The second task in Component 2 is the comparative essay, and it should include an integrated comparative analysis of the relationships between texts. This means that you are required to explore contrasts, connections and comparisons between different literary texts within the topic area of dystopia, including the ways in which the texts relate both to one another and to literary traditions, movements and genres. The best responses pick up on the prompt words within the quotation given in the task and then select material accordingly. In this way, by sustaining a coherent, question-focused argument throughout, comparison becomes a technique through which the texts can be used to shed light on each other.
For the following suggested comparison, you will find:
The comparison in a nutshell
Similarities between the ideas presented in each text
Differences between the ideas presented in each text
Evidence and analysis of these similarities and differences
Examiner Tip
It is better to choose two principal texts to form the basis of your response and allow references to others to appear briefly as literary context. If you try to write in detail about too many texts, you will struggle to produce a coherent, detailed and sustained argument.
1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale
Comparison in a nutshell:
This comparison provides the opportunity to compare imagined near-futures in which totalitarian governments have systematically stripped their citizens of rights, individuality and identity, while developing an atmosphere of mistrust and surveillance.
Similarities:
Topic sentence | Both Orwell and Atwood depict a government in which the state holds absolute control over every aspect of its citizens’ lives | |
Evidence and analysis | 1984 | The Handmaid’s Tale |
The Party of Oceania tries to restructure the way people are allowed to think about their world | In Gilead, the regime tries to control not only the lives but also the thoughts of its subjects | |
The citizens of Oceania are indoctrinated into an alternative version of history that fits with the Party’s political narrative | Handmaids are indoctrinated in the Red Centre, where any form of resistance is violently repressed | |
Orwell’s protagonist, Winston Smith, lives in a world of constant surveillance, via telescreens, the Thought Police and a network of spies | Being watched, or the threat of being watched, is ever present via the “Eyes”, with the fear of being deported to the Colonies or hanged used as a way of suppressing any actions or thoughts of resistance | |
Winston, as the protagonist, not only has to relinquish the past, but is instrumental in his role at the “Ministry of Truth” in re-writing the past to suit the Party’s political agenda | Offred, as the protagonist, is forced to relinquish all knowledge of her past in order to accept the new status quo | |
Winston actively tries to find out more about the real past, and seeks out information and objects from the past, which ultimately leads to his downfall | Similarly, Offred refuses to forget her past, using her memories and story-telling both as a method of survival and as a subtle form of resistance | |
Winston’s memories are unreliable and hazy, as he has no photographic or written evidence of either his own or society’s past | Offred sometimes struggles to hold onto her memories as she has no photographic or written evidence that they ever were real | |
Winston and Julia find out about a secret revolutionary organisation, known as the Brotherhood, although it is unclear whether this organisation is real or a means to trap the couple | The idea of active resistance is also present in the novel in the form of the Mayday group, although the reader does not experience this directly |
Topic sentence | Both Orwell and Atwood explore the power of language as a means of control | |
Evidence and analysis | 1984 | The Handmaid’s Tale |
The government in 1984 controls its citizens by altering and reducing the English language to its most basic form, which it calls “Newspeak” | The government of Gilead controls its citizens via the denial of access to language | |
The simplification of language and the destruction of words serves to eliminate concepts that might lead to resistance or disobedience | The Handmaids are not allowed to form friendships, and conversations are restricted to pre-prescribed greetings and sayings | |
Any form of alternative thought to the party’s ideology is classified as “thoughtcrime” | The removal of the handmaids’ names is a further reduction of their individual identities | |
Winston outwardly conforms to the Party’s regime, but begins to keep a secret diary for his thoughts – language represents hope, although Winston is aware he is doomed from the outset | It is only through Offred’s inner dialogue that she is able to resist and survive – language represents hope | |
In Orwell’s 1984, the fear of not just speaking out but even thinking against the party is a further method of control | In Gilead, words are taken from the Bible and used for oppression | |
In both novels, language is changed into an instrument not for communication, but to repress resistant voices |
Differences:
Topic sentence | While both Atwood and Orwell use a central character to convey their novels’ dystopian societies, The Handmaid’s Tale is narrated in the first person by a female protagonist, whereas 1984 is narrated in the third person about a male protagonist | |
Evidence and analysis | 1984 | The Handmaid’s Tale |
Orwell presents his dystopia from a masculine perspective | Atwood feminised the dystopian genre by making her storyteller a woman | |
Winston Smith’s name comes from the Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and the surname Smith is the most common surname in the English language:
| The reader becomes aware of how women are being oppressed and exploited from the outset of the novel | |
The world of Gilead is presented to us via the feminine perspective of “the” handmaid | ||
Winston Smith reads and writes continually, as he is employed to destroy historical records and to re-write the “truth” in the form of Party propaganda:
| Offred is largely ignorant of the wider political situation or the world beyond Gilead, as her access to information is severely limited | |
She is relegated to the political and societal sidelines and confined to a narrow domestic sphere | ||
Orwell appears preoccupied with institutional politics and military tactics, and the instruments of government and control | Offred’s narrative focuses on the intricacies of her daily life as she looks for small ways in which to resist Gilead | |
There is ultimately no escape for Winston Smith, who is brainwashed and broken into the system | For Offred, the ending of the novel offers the possibility of escape, and is therefore deliberately left ambiguous |
Topic sentence | Although Gilead has a similarly oppressive structure to Oceania, the two novels draw upon different contexts and project different visions of the future | |
Evidence and analysis | 1984 | The Handmaid’s Tale |
Orwell’s novel is set in a fictionalised London and was published in the context of the bleak, post-war period of the 1940s | Atwood focuses on voicing the political, social and environmental anxieties of late 20th-century America | |
The totalitarian state in Orwell’s novel is committed to keeping Oceania in a state of perceived perpetual war, possibly dropping bombs on its own people to convince the populace of this fact | While violence, or the threat of it, is ever present in the novel, Gilead is concerned with internal control, rather than external domination | |
Through the third-person narrative and lengthy explanatory passages, the reader has easier access to a broader perspective, but less empathy with the protagonist | The first-person narrative forms greater intimacy and empathy with the protagonist, who although flawed, is believable |
Comparisons with other texts
The following list is not exhaustive, and the wider you read, the more connections and comparisons you will have to draw upon in the exam. Some of the following examples are taken from the prescribed text list, while others are suggestions for comparison.
Text | Summary | Key comparisons with 1984 |
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1931) – set text list | The novel examines a futuristic society, called the World State, which centres around science and efficiency – emotions and individuality are conditioned out of children at a young age |
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The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard (1962) - set text list | The novel explores an environmentally nightmarish future in a world overwhelmed by rising sea levels and extreme solar radiation |
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The Children of Men by P.D. James (1992) – set text list | The novel imagines how the world would respond to a global fertility crisis |
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We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1920–1921) | The novel centres on the uniformed inhabitants of One State, who live in glass buildings and are given numbers rather than names |
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The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (1955) | The novel describes a fundamentalist Puritan society that considers any form of human, plant or animal abnormality to be blasphemous and to be eradicated |
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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953) - set text list | The novel presents an American society in which books have been personified and outlawed, and “firemen” burn any that are found |
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The Circle by Dave Eggers (2013) | A dystopian story of mass surveillance based around the internet |
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