Recurring Rebellion

So long as life draws breath, suffering and the battle to end it, will remain. This suffering stems from the conscious attempt to enforce stability on a flawed and disorganized reality. As a result, a conflict is perpetuated, one between order and chaos. Life in its many forms instigates various strategies to attain victory in this battle, to be the sole uniform order with controlled and calculable chaos at its behest. It makes the mind wish to be a ruler, a master of the world, a god among the godless, or to be a servant to a god, an agent of the greater good, a perfect cog in a perfect machine.

These aspirations, rooted and preserved by the innate dissatisfaction of inadequacy and the inability to truly realize them, are the foundation on which dystopias are both formed and maintained. They are an illusion of grandeur, a sullied promise warped to try to manifest itself into the constraints of their world, and, inevitably, a long-lasting tragedy doomed to failure.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, exemplifies this tragedy via the civil strife and disobedience which is pervasive within its cast of characters. Despite the relentless pursuits of the Party to eliminate and control deviance, almost every single named character participates in some form of insubordination, even the ones that completely believe in their government. This innate lack of complete conformity is also prevalent in other dystopic works of fiction. 

We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Plague, by Albert Camus, Tender is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica, and Terra Nullius, by Claire G. Coleman, are great examples of how common this defiance is in dystopian works and how impossible it is for their governments to fully control the reality they are met with.

One might argue then that the constraints of fiction, the desire to make an entertaining story, or the need to generate conflict to uphold the narrative, are the primary cause of why these commonalities of consistent rebellion are present. 

However, real-world versions of these dystopian governments, in the form of totalitarian and authoritarian states, also have this problem, and The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, “Social Revolution and Authoritarian Durability”, by Jean Lachapelle, Steven Levitsky, Lucan A. Way, and Adam E. Casey, and “On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters”, by Yevgeny Zamyatin support this theory.

For example, in their “Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) data set” Chenoweth and Stephan “analyze 323 violent and nonviolent resistance campaigns between 1900 and 2006” from around the world (6). The sheer number of campaigns recorded in this data set spanning more than a century provide indication that civil disobedience, and the more extreme version of it in the form of resistance campaigns, are ubiquitous rather than a rarity, at the very least in the modern world.

Taken further, Zamyatin’s “On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters” even espouses the argument that, “Revolution is everywhere, in everything. It is infinite. There is no final revolution, no final number. The social revolution is only one of an infinite number of numbers: the law of revolution is not a social law, but an immeasurably greater one. It is a cosmic, universal law . . .” (107). This indicates that even outside of his characters and the fictional setting that is depicted within it, he believes the prevalence of rebellion to be constant and unavoidable in nature (Zamyatin, We 153).

In the realm of fiction, as stated above, this is also no rarity. Of course, Zamyatin’s work We promotes this idea, for in spite of all the main characters being captured or re-indoctrinated into the dystopic government regime at the end of the book, “chaos continues to rage . . . with roaring, corpses, wild beasts, and . . . a large number of numbers who have betrayed reason” all fighting back against it (197).

Similarly, The Plague has people throughout the pandemic breaking the law to try and escape the town, Oran, despite the risks and societal consequences of doing so (105). This lawbreaking also paradoxically does not waver later in the book, with the narrator even stating that “several more attempts to escape took place at the very moment when the statistics were most encouraging” (272).

The consistent attempts to escape, overthrow, or disobey their governmental authority figures from those outside of power seem, at the very least, to be understandable to an observer, even with its apparent futility. Tender is the Flesh, though, shows a different side of deviation. Marcos, the main character of the story, is an administrator for the human meat trade who made “rules that people would have to comply with long after he’d disappeared from the world,” and regardless of his misgivings about participating in cannibalism, he felt pride and justification in the restrictions he helped make and enforce becoming permanent. Yet, when push came to shove and his circumstances changed, he broke his own laws, and used his contacts in his position of power to evade punishment (162).

Bizarrely, these type of actions, breaking laws and outright rebelling against one’s government, are both numerous and nonexistent in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as “nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws . . .” (9). Consequences for nonconformity, however, are just as rampant in the government of Oceania as any other dystopia, and the most widespread punishment comes in the form of disappearances, otherwise known as being vaporized. And, since there are no spoken laws, every citizen is always on the metaphorical chopping block irrespective of whether they wholeheartedly support the party or not.

Sometimes these disappearances can be predicted, like in the case of Syme, who Winston Smith, the main character, thought would be vanished and, in the end, did vanish (70, 171). Others, nevertheless, catch the citizens off guard. When Winston gets caught for sedition one of his fellow workers, Ampleforth who is also captured, sees him and is “mildly startled [exclaiming] . . . ‘Ah, Smith!’ . . . ‘You too!’” (264-265). Winston does not seem surprised by Ampleforths presence, but later, he sees Parsons walk into the holding cell he is in, despite him thinking that he “would never be vaporized” (70). As a result, “Winston was startled into self-forgetfulness [and shouted] ‘You here!’” before he could stop himself (266-267). 

As a matter of fact, the prevalence of this punishment is so pervasive in Oceania that it seems to be almost a required phase that every member of the Outer Party must go through at some point in their life. In short, this lawless crusade against the undesirable knows no bounds as rules create order and without them, chaos reigns.

Chaos reigning may seem counterproductive towards control, but when faced with a world full of it, leaders must find a way to incorporate it into their structure of power without having it overwhelm their order. The things that are utilized to keep chaos and order that governments do not want at bay while allowing their order and acceptable amounts of chaos to go free are multiple types of internal and external pressures. “Social Revolution and Authoritarian Durability” elaborates on one of the primary external pressures that keep governments in power, outside threats, and, more specifically war:

The violent conflict triggered by efforts to radically transform the domestic and geopolitical status quo generates an enduring perception of existential threat that enhances elite cohesion and contributes to the development of political-military fusion, powerful coercive institutions, and to the destruction of alternative centers of societal power. These revolutionary legacies help to inoculate revolutionary regimes against elite defection, military coups, and mass protest—three major sources of authoritarian breakdown (567).

This kind of strategy is reflected in fiction in both Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Plague. Nineteen Eighty-Four’s tactic is one of physical conflict and mental obfuscation, where “Oceania was at war with Eastasia: [and according to the Party] Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia” regardless of being allies with Eastasia and at war with Eurasia in the past (211). This serves to turn the chaos and hatred outward on external threats, while also showing that the Party are the moral arbiters of truth for the populous and no one can stop them. 

The Plague’s policy is less intentional, as the narrator describes that because of the unforeseen, external stimulus of the pandemic, there was “No longer [any] . . . individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all” (167). Aside from the differences in the intentionality behind these choices, they still contribute to the maintenance and perpetuation of the elite’s power, as they make the disordered masses follow the order of the government.

Internal pressures are also utilized to preserve these states as well. A common real-world version of this can be seen in The Origins of Totalitarianism with two authoritarian states, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany:

In the Soviet Union . . . revolutions, in the form of general purges, became a permanent institution of the Stalin regime after 1934 [and] . . . In Nazi Germany, a similar tendency toward permanent revolution was clearly discernible though the Nazis did not have time to realize it to the same extent (390).

Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Oceania takes a parallel approach to this with the creation of Newspeak which is meant “to narrow the range of thought [so that] . . . thoughtcrime [or any other deviance will be] . . . literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it” (60). To add onto this, they have “Already [broken] . . . down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution [having] . . . cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman [so much so that] No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer” (306). With no one being safe to confide in, the citizens are forced to either suffer in silence or risk turning against the Party. This keeps the populous scared and unable to form mass movements, but it also leads to the inevitability of deviant behavior emerging as people crumble under the consistent pressure.

This byproduct of maintaining power, however unfortunate for the governments in control, inevitably results in the possibility of rebellion in some capacity. This is especially the case when the regimes decide to confront reality, as “both Hitler and Stalin held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability . . . a dual task which at first appears contradictory to the point of absurdity,” and yet it is done all the same. With a more thorough examination as to why this is done this paradox makes more sense, for the ruler “must establish the fictitious world of the movement as a tangible working reality of everyday life, [while simultaneously preventing] . . . this new world from developing a new stability; for a stabilization of its laws and institutions would surely liquidate the movement,” thus stopping the very dream that they gained power to achieve (Arendt 391).

Reality striking an authoritarian regime is not the only way they destabilize enough for rebellion to occur, though. Terra Nullius shows how anomalous events perpetrated by an individual’s actions can shift the once effective methods of mitigating defiance to a catalyst for its increasing ferocity without the rulers realizing it until it is too late. Jacky, the main character, runs away from his servitude and becomes idolized by those still in captivity, leading many to follow his example and try to escape. Most of these end unsuccessfully as “. . . they fought when they should have run, ran when they should have hidden. These mistakes, the recaptures leading to torture, the men, women, and children, jail – they did not seem to dampen the drive to rebellion. Every violent death that had before bred fear, now made the humans who witnessed it more angry” and more willing to fight back against the injustices brought upon them (210-211).

Zamyatin says something similar in “On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters” where he declares that “The law of revolution is red, fiery, deadly . . . And the law of entropy is cold, ice blue, like the icy interplanetary infinities . . . Dogmatization in science, religion, social life, or art is the entropy of thought” and this entropy leads to a lack of understanding and ability to confront the imperfections of reality (108).

Inside each individual lies a spark, one that flickers and burns the world around it to keep itself alive. To control and diminish the effect of these sparks, dystopian governments utilize the tools at their disposal, water, an internal pressure, and frost, an external pressure, to isolate and extinguish the inevitable flames that arise. In spite of their attempts, the imperfections of reality shine through, and eventually something anomalous happens, like oil slicking the ground or too many unburnt sticks lying around, and the embers of revolution are fanned once more. Efforts to stop its growth that worked before now only give it more power, the water makes the flames mobile, and the cold brings those seeking warmth into the fold. Thus, a wildfire, revolution is born. 

Whether or not they succeed, pain and suffering well up inside everyone involved, and the sullied promise given by dystopian societies is once again broken, shown for the hollow illusion it truly is.