ultimately the meaning and the argument behind Dystopian fiction?s treatment of
language. The lost veracity of language points to a lost meaning and a lost
freedom in human society. The control of language by the hypothetical states
allow their controlled discourses to contain freedom, thought, dissent, history
and even material reality itself. In an era of ideological extremes – Fascism
and Communism ? the dilemma was powerfully relevant. Resting on the assumption
that the structure of language has a direct effect on the structure of thought,
Dystopian fiction is a critique of the dangers involved in ideology, where the
ideas ?dangerously fluid and malleable as they are ? overcome the human
element. Black can become white, freedom can become slavery. By rooting their
novels in contemporary issues, they also approach the frightening semiotic
question about discourse and truth, image and reality, and leave us wondering whether,
as O?Brien puts it, sanity really is statistical. [1] Nineteen Eighty-Four,
p.282 [2] Brave New World, p.60 [3] Nineteen Eighty-Four,
p.161 [4] Ibid. p.44 [5] Brave New World, p.25 [6] Nineteen Eighty-Four,
p.282 [7] Brave New World, p.205 [8] Ibid. p.229