Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

What's the opposite of 1984?

16:25 / 08.02.04

Can anyone recommend me a book which portrays a world which is the polar opposite to that of 1984 i.e. where there are no restrictions whatsoever, and no-one is accountable. A book which powerfully demonstrates the difficulties of having too much freedom.

16:28 / 08.02.04

Preferably fiction.

18:20 / 08.02.04

Lord of the Flies?

05:15 / 09.02.04

'120 days of sodom' maybe? i haven't read it yet(the library's copy has been nicked)so i can't be sure, but from what i know of it sounds like it might be the kinda thing you're referring too.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

14:51 / 09.02.04

Brave New World?

17:18 / 09.02.04

Have you read Brave New World? Rigid caste system, eugenics, government dope and a population narcotized by bread and circuses: the coercion is psychological and social pressure, but it's as ironclad a society as Orwell's boot in the face.

120 Days Of Sodom seems closer to the mark, in depicting a group of people with the freedom to take their most debased desires beyond any societal limits--but it's not a paradigm of absolute freedom: there are torturers who are absolutely free, and victims who are absolutely imprisoned.

Still, it's a useful companion piece to 1984 in the same way that Morrison's The Filth is a useful companion piece to The Invisibles--it's 1984 through the looking glass, 1984 as told by O'Brien.

Larry Niven's short story "Cloak of Anarchy" shows how a group of people in a heavily-regulated society react when legal agency is suddenly removed from a small area...

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

07:58 / 10.02.04

From the reader's privileged perspective, sure, but the denizens smugly believe they have achieved Utopia. They are free of responsibility.

Okay, shit suggestion.

13:41 / 10.02.04

They are free of responsibility.

...because the State has relieved them of it, sure. It's an interesting and a valid take, but I think it falls outside the remit of this thread--"the problems with having too much freedom."

The French existentialist writers loved to kick this around--their characters would often be paralyzed by the openness of their options, and unwilling to take up the responsibility of guiding their own destinies. There's a quote I'm misremembering--"the horrible burden of knowing that men are free," or something like that. For some reason I think it's Camus...

Actually, Camus isn't a bad place to start, either--although his antiheroes tend to be caught between their knowledge of their own freedom and societal pressures to behave in a certain fashion... viz. THE STRANGER.

Andre Gide's novella "The Immoralist" is excellent, too, showing how complete freedom and the loss of moral absolutes--the ability to judge one's own actions or the actions of others--can lead to absolute paralysis.

14:15 / 10.02.04

I haven't read it but could Huxley's The Island apply? I only know it's an Utopian novel.

What about Sartre's "No Exit?" (Could be that's the one JF is quoting.)

15:05 / 10.02.04

I looked it up: it is indeed Sartre, but it's from The Flies--and it's "the bitterness of knowing men are free." The same play also asserts that "human life begins on the far side of despair" (we begin to understand why the authors of AN INCOMPLETE EDUCATION snark that "existentialism is less a philosophical system than it is a bad mood").

I've not read Huxley's ISLAND either, but in synopsis, it appears to be BRAVE NEW WORLD given a Buddhist twist: there are the same eugenics, control of breeding, breakdown of the traditional family unit, government-issued drugs ("moksha," in this case), a caste system (based here not around genetic engineering, but around rigorous psychological testing and profiling, which determine each child's educational track and future occupation).

There's a constitutional monarchy, and a lot of guff about ego-deconstruction, but it all carries the heavy stink of Authority: those who are identified as potential future criminals are taken away for "treatment"--criminality having been rather conveeeeeeeeniently explained as being the result of an endocrine imbalance!

No word on what would happen to someone who, say, refused treatment, though. Presumably no one would ever do such a thing, because they all inherently recognize that it's for the Greater Good.

Uh-huh.

That Huxley's Utopia is essentially a less-coercive version of his Dystopia illuminates certain things. That one should never let Aldous Huxley babysit one's kids, for instance.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:37 / 13.02.04

I think almost all Bret Easton Ellis would fall into this category. Especially Less Than Zero and American Psycho...

14:03 / 13.02.04

Agree with Flyboy - Ellis can get a little tedious, however.

What about Ballard? Okay, so his characters aren't entirely free, but they are usually negotiating (trailblazing) unknown/repressed psychological territory.

18:52 / 13.02.04

4891.

Sorry, i'm a twat. I just had to do that.

21:05 / 13.02.04

where there are no restrictions whatsoever, and no-one is accountable

Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time is an anarchist utopia.

16:38 / 25.03.04

I was thinking of J.G. Ballard, as well. High Rise, The Drowned World, The Crystal World, et al. certainly take place in a world in which almost total personal liberty exists. I don't think, however, that the effects of total freedom are the primary focus of the books. Others may disagree. Regardless, they're worth a look, if you want to explore the issue in a literary context.

Come to think of it, you might also want to read some Rousseau and Hobbes for two different semi-literary but philosophical views on the subject. (Apologies if that's too obvious a suggestion.)

20:03 / 25.03.04

Yeah, I'm going to go along with Ballard as well, particularly The Unlimited Dream Company. In which a disaffected aviator walks out of a crash in the south London suburbs as something quite different, as this odd type of god, who then goes on to re-imagine an English dormitory town as a version of paradise, as this existentialist, psychedelic, almost Christ-like figure trying to liberate everyone, who in the end gets the treatment you'd think. Atleast for a bit.

The trouble with books that pre-suppose the idea of having " too much freedom " is that it usually means " someone's going to have to take charge. " But by definition, if you live in a free world, then there have to be rules, specifically one, that if everyone's free you have to let them get on with it, as long as they're not trying to impose their authority on anyone else, and vice versa.

120 Days Of Sodom, Naked Lunch, etc, aren't really so much about freedom as such, more just power run wild.

Whereas The Unlimited Dream Co... well I'd give it a go.

Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality

23:58 / 28.03.04

You might also want to have a look at some of Ursula LeGuin's books. I'm thinking specifically of The Lathe of Heaven, which is essentially about the problems of an individual having absolute power - and thus absolute freedom. Her take on this is informed by Taoism and seems rather alien (i thought) to a Western reader. The conclusion is essentially that a person with absolute freedom really has no choices at all.
There is also "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia", which is set in an anarchist 'utopia', although it stops well short of absolute freedom.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

01:48 / 29.03.04

Also on Ballard, "Rushing to Paradise"- a kind of reworking of Lord of the Flies. Or his story "The Biggest Theme Park In The World".

01:56 / 29.03.04

Michael Moorcock, The Dancers At the End of Time series.

Posits a distant future in which people have infinite power to indulge their every whim. Things get a bit dull.

08:12 / 29.03.04

Call me crazy, can you have too much freedom?
Read V for Vendetta.

03:29 / 30.03.04

I would second the Moorcock books... they're a bit silly, but it's the only thing I can think of that involves a situation with unlimited freedom and the problems resulting. (Even if those problems are mostly self-centeredness and selfishness)

wembley can change in 28 days

09:15 / 30.03.04

Jack brought up Camus, so I'll throw in his play Caligula. Not a "book", per se, but it's something along the lines of what you're asking. Mind, it is about one person's freedom at the expense of that of many other people. But still well discussed in many long monologues.

17:48 / 30.03.04

Donna Tart's "Secret History."

18:56 / 30.03.04

I still think the best suggestion is Lord of the Flies.

Piggy has the conch! Piggy has the conch!

21:24 / 30.03.04

The trouble with books that pre-suppose the idea of having " too much freedom " is that it usually means " someone's going to have to take charge. " But by definition, if you live in a free world, then there have to be rules, specifically one, that if everyone's free you have to let them get on with it, as long as they're not trying to impose their authority on anyone else, and vice versa.

This is one of the central themes of The Disposessed, which is an examination of both the failure and success of an anarchist society.

sdv (non-human)

18:39 / 31.03.04

impossible question - with freedom comes responsibility.

I the supreme - augusto roa bastos. (a mediation on the uses of powere and immunity)
strugatski Bros - hard to be a god.
m. duras - the sailor from gibraltor.

08:06 / 01.04.04

Echo JustAnotherVictim's thought of Le Guin's The Dispossessed but I guess it isn't a perfect fit. Quite a lot of her short stories too would dip their toes in that water.

You might find A Case of Conscience by James Blish interesting. In it, a Jesuit astronaut /scientist encounters the suarian folk of the Planet Lithia, who live a life that seems incredibly free of our earthly proscriptions of behaviour, and has to come to terms with what this means for Earth Culture, and religious codes in particular. They are free of original sin but are they "evil"? I found it stimulating.

08:52 / 01.04.04

Peter Pan?