Ignorance=Manipulation, Power

Comment on New York Times article 'Born and Raised in a North Korean Gulag' by Choe Sang-Hun

Dystopian novels such as We and 1984, tend to criticize governments and societies during the 20^th century, as might many novels, through the characterization of motifs such as repression, dehumanization, freedom and truth in fictional totalitarian governments. While reading the article from the New York Times about North Korean Shin Dong Hyok, and  one can see the motifs portrayed in these dystopian novels.

The article, published in 2007, talks about the life of North Korean boy Shin Dong Hyok, and his experience as a political prisoner in a North Korean prison camp’s torture compound. He was constantly exposed to executions, one of which was of his own mother and elder brother, who were hanged and shot by firing squads. In Communist North Korea, Labour Camps, or Gulags, were the home for thousands of convicts, criminals and political prisoners. Conditions in these Gulags are inhumane; elders and children would be beaten and tortured, and some also killed. But for people like Shin, this life is the only one they are aware of, thus assuming everyones lives this way.

Ignorance is power and manipulation. This argument is completely valid for Shin’s experience, and that of many other North Koreans and perhaps thousands of people around the globe who have lived under totalitarian governments. Shin Dong Hyok himself says so; he had never heard of Pyongyang, South Korea, China, America or even the North Korean leader Kim jong II. As Shin, people in North Korean Gulags are bound to ignorance; manipulation of truth. The hidden reality. Shin describes that he thought it was natural for him to be in a camp because of his ancestors’ crime, “I never thought it was unfair”. By hiding the truth, the North Korean Government was making sure that people would no longer believe or imagine the possibility of any type of external world, thus avoiding any revolutionary thoughts against the communist system, or even just the thought of overpowering the guards within the compound. This is closely linked to the manipulation of Truth described in Orwell’s novel 1984, where the State, whose leadership lies in Big Brother, is constantly ‘destroying’ the past, hiding the reality of facts. The main character of the novel, Winston, works in the Minister of Truth, and is responsible of revising historical records so the Party is always correct. As mentioned, by doing this, the Party is able to maintain absolute control over its people, avoiding any revolutionary thoughts. In 1984 this is also conveyed by the degredation of language into Newspeak, which is a simpler version of English.

Moreover, throughout the article, Choe Sang-Hun describes the treatment received by prisoners in these camps. They are also very similar to the torture done to Winston in Part III of Orwell’s novel. Yoon Yeo Sang, president of Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, says that labour camps in North Korea are one of the “most brutal form of human rights abuse”. People in these camps are “deprived of their ability to have the most basic human feelings, such as love, hatred, and even a sense of being sad or mistreated”. At the same time, Guards are told to “not treat prisoners as humans”. In Big Brother’s State, the proles are treated in that manner. They are not considered as humans, and are treated as a very inferior working class. Furthermore, prisoners who did try to go against the guards and try to escape, were interrogated and tortured in underground cells. Shin had to live this horrible experience after his mother’s attempt to escape. Tortures would include strip and hung the prisoner by the arms and legs and holding them over hot charcoal, leaving them with permanent scars and recurring nightmares. In 1984, the torture chamber in the Ministry of Love, or Room 101, is where the Party subjects a prisoner to his own nightmare, fear or phobia. In the novel, O’Brien says “the thing in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world”. Winston is tortured with rats, forcing him to betray Julia and believe everything O’Brien and the Party tell him. In North Korean Gulags, this also occurs in “revolutionizing zones ”, focused on “re-educating”prisoners. Those who survived long enough to complete their sentences were released; just like Winston.

Finally, another link between the article and the dystopian novels I have read so far, is the dedication to Propaganda, slogans and portraits of their leaders. As Sang-Hun describes in the article, in most of North Korea, camps and villages are decorated with “Communist slogans and portraits of Kim Jong II”. In ‘We’ and ‘1984’, the same thing occurs. Cities are filled with portraits of the Benefactor and Big Brother respectively, and Party Slogans such as “Big Brother is watching you” and “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength”, in Oceania (1984).

The connections I have found between the articles and the novels have made me realize how the totalitarian governments described in dystopian novels such as ‘We’ and ‘1984’ have existed throughout our history in governments like the Communist Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and still very horribly in Communist North Korea. What most impressed me however, was Shin’s final words in the article, who sometimes “wished he could return to the time before he learned about the greater world, without knowing that we were in a prison camp, without knowing that there was a place called South Korea”. As discussed in class, Ignorance is power and manipulation.

Manipulation of Truth - What is Truth?

Since we were children we have been taught that we must say the truth, also believing that whatever we are told, we have read or studied in books or enciclopedias is the truth. But what is truth anyway? Who gets to say if something is true or not? In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, the concept of truth and the manipulation of it is one of the most important topics presented, making the reader reflect on what might truth actually be. And believe me, as a reader I have been terribly puzzled.

First of all, I will try to work on the definition of truth. The Aristotelian explanation of truth is “To say something which is that it is or of something which is not that it is not”. Correspondence theory, one of the three main theories of truth, states that the truth of a proposition depends if it corresponds to a fact; it must first be proved by evidence or an individual’s valid opinion”. For example, the proposition “Snow is white” is true if and only if in fact snow is white; leading us to the Pragmatic Theory of Truth, “truth is an agreement with reality”. Some might say that objectivity is essential while others might believe that truth is based upon people’s own beliefs, feelings and interpretations, thus is subjective.

Our presentations on truth in class helped me define in some sort of way objective and subjective truth, and how people can manipulate what one has always believed was true. Because we were argued against so much when presenting our arguments, sometimes we found ourselves explaining that we know things because we read it somewhere, someone taught us that way, etc, making us inmediately question the origin of such theories or statements. So, it all ends up being quite a mess (well for me it is), what in our knowledge, and life, is true? Is anything objective truth?.

With these presentations one could definitely see how between ourselves we tried to manipulate someone’s concept of truth, mostly scientific ideas and theories, and almost ‘destroy’ a universally known truth such as the conservation of momentum or the fact that we have lungs.

The manipulation of truth is also very well portrayed in Orwell’s novel 1984, where the the State is continually changing facts in order to eliminate any evidence of rebellion against the party. Winston is a member of this ‘conspiracy’; he works in the Minister of Truth, editing old reports, articles, etc, so that they would make sense once the State ‘changed the Truth’ in some manner. They are not only manipulating truth, but also hiding it, for their own political benefit. Furthermore, in Part III of the novel, Winston truth is completely shifted when O’Brien makes him believe that 2+2=5. Everything that Winston, and also the people in the State, have been taught, is completely turned upside down in a matter of seconds. Not only with math, but also with language, truth is manipulated in 1984. Because of Newspeak, words are being also constantly removed from their vocabulary, thus leaving things with no true meaning, maybe making them not true at all. For example, the aim of the State is to develop such a simple language so that the imagination of revolution is impossible, thus revolution or anything like it won’t be true anymore.

This whole idea of truth has become an enigma to me since it is very difficult to find a definition for it. However, I do feel that objective and subjective truth are both equally valid, also leading me to believe that truth can be easily manipulated since it might depend on people’s on interpretation of things, and persuasion and manipulation, especially in our society are easily achieved. 

Simple vs. Complicated

As said in my previous entry, in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, George Orwell discusses the decadency of both our civilization and our language. For our activity in class, we mainly focused on the decadency of the written english language. As Orwell suggests we should aim for a simple language, and try to eliminate those bad habits we have become accostumed to such as pretentious vocabulary, metaphors, jargon, foreign words, and even long sentences.

The activity carried out in class was to modify four speeches given by some important politicians, such as John F. Kennedy, George W.Bush and Martin Luther King. We had to rewrite the speeches in a very simple way, which is what Orwell suggests, or in the opposite way, full of pretentious vocabulary, metaphors, etc. I focused on rewriting those speeches that were intended to be changed into Orwell’s “ideal language”, thus had to cut out sentences, remove any type of metaphors, etc.

At first I thought that what Orwell suggested was ridiculous, and that the way in which we expressed ourselves was fine, believing that by writing in that manner we described things more accurately. However, I have come to the realization that maybe it isn’t that way, maybe we can be even more accurate by finding precise words and writing in shorter sentences. We have been tought our entire life to describe things in that manner, ‘the more, the better; and the more complicated to understand, even better!’. This is the way I have written during my school years; essays, speeches, etc; writing a lot to explain one thing. Maybe it is time to start changing this; try to explain things so that people reading it can understand it easily.

However, if we are supposed to write only the essential, won’t writing (and reading) become a little too boring. We will only read the core, never the extra, the details, how people, authors, feel about that certain matter they are describing. The key to a good language in my opinion, is when there is a balance between the two, not too much but never too little. 

Keep it simple.

In ‘Politics and the English Language’, British writer George Orwell discusses the decadence of the English language and our civilization. Throughout this essay one can see Orwell’s desire for a simple language, one lacking metaphors, that uses short words and sentences, and that avoids pretentious words, like the use of jargon or foreign expressions. These ideas might have been the roots towards some of the motifs portrayed in his dystopian novel ‘1984’, where the State’s language ‘Newspeak’ is always removing words from its dictionary, making it simple.

Orwell suggests that the decline of language has political and economical causes, and is ‘not due to the bad influence of writers’, which is what people believe. However, he does reinforce that effects can become causes, explaining how our language becomes ‘ugly and inaccurate’ because our thoughts are foolish, but  at the same time, the ‘slovenliness of our language makes us have foolish thoughts’. Nevertheless, Orwell believes that our written english, full of bad habits, can be changed.

The arguments presented by Orwell are very similar to those portrayed in his novel 1984. Ostentatious and wordy language, achieved by the abuse of metaphors (dying metaphors), ‘false verbs’, pretentious diction and meaningless words, has led to the lack of precision in our literature. Writers can no longer express themselves easily and simply, and end up saying something completely different to what they originally intended to. The vagueness of English prose is the concrete melted into the abstract; more meaningless words, used to describe one thing. Orwell conveys his ideas on the decadence of the English Language in 1984. In the novel, the State develops ‘Newspeak’, ‘the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year’ by reducing and simplifying grammar and vocabulary. The totalitarian State described in 1984, creates ‘Newspeak’ in order to make it impossible for people to rebel against the party, since they wil have no words to describe freedom.  The idea is then ‘get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations’, using the fewest and shortest words.

The difference between what Orwell conveys in his essay and in his novel, is the totalitarian attitude behind it. In 1984, the simplicity of the language is to destroy the ideas of rebellion and freedom, imposing the party’s regime. Whereas, Orwell as a writer believes it is to reconstruct and improve our language, especially the written one.

In conclusion, the simpler the language, the better.

Don't judge a book by its cover

The Psychology of the Novel – ‘Thirteen Ways of looking at the novel’ by Jane Smiley

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover

As a reader, when I am looking for a new novel I usually pick up one that has an interesting title, a good overview and a nice captivating cover, which might even have colorful drawing or pictures. Judging a book by its cover? Certainly. Should we or should we not judge a book by its first pages or chapter, is the question, and maybe it is necessary, or it might not be. This is the main idea I grasped when reading Jane Smiley’s fifth chapter of Thirteen Ways of looking at the novel, ‘The Psychology of the novel’. The importance of the engagement and the relationship created between the reader, the author and the novel is essential for a novel to turn out well and make a reader achieve its goal and finish the novel he/she started.

Jane Smiley finds that the ‘basic subtance of imaginative literature’, the essence of it, lies in emotion, not reason, and although, once written, people will analyze, ponder, change, learn and know a novel, it will exist not as words but as “images with feelings attached to it”. As Smiley writes, “something in one form in the mind takes another form on the page, something in one form on the page takes another form in the mind”. The author and the reader both experience this pleasure while writing or reading page after page, the creation of a whole new world under their imagination.

After reading this chapter, one comes to the realization that one of most important things in a novel is the psychology of relationships. By psychology of relationships one refers to the social interaction between the author and the reader by means of a narrative voice, the teller. The reader must enjoy, feel comfortable and be drawn to the narrative voice and the characters of the novel. If an author is able to create this atmosphere and establish a relationship with his/her readers a ‘sense of friendliness arouses’, a sense of communication with one another. If the reader does not feel this, they will begin to question themselves whether or not to keep on reading. And believe me, it has happened to me, and it might have happened to you. We leave novels aside as soon as we feel we are not connected with the characters; we feel no closeness, but distance instead.

Sometimes, we never feel this connection and intimacy, but we cannot blame it on the author; it is not their fault that we cannot feel for the novel. Maybe we have different cultural background, or aren’t age appropriate, or perhaps we don’t feel comfortable with the social context of the novel. For numerous reasons we might leave a novel aside. But, as Smiley says, we might have to try to “get used to the novelist’s way of thinking and of expressing himself’. It is their novel, not ours. This incompatibility may take hundreds of pages to cease, in time for us to understand, learn and agree with the author, since anyways, a novel is their way to try to express their ideas and try to persuade us into their beliefs and theories.

This idea has also been proposed by Russian writer, Zamyatin, author of dystopian novel ‘We’. In his paper ‘On Language’, which I have discussed previously, Zamyatin outlines the importance of taking the reader into this fictional world novelists create, doing so by being able to reincarnate themselves into their own characters, period and milieu (physical or social setting). These aspects of a novel, as well as the narrative voice and perspective, are of absolute importance in developing the author-reader relationship. They also allow the reader create the novel in their mind, giving them a sort of ‘possession’ as Smiley sets it, since the reader gives it their own perspective and leaves to their imagination how they visualize what the author describes.

I am not a constant reader. I reader every once in a while, and only, as Jane Smiley has described, if the book grabs my attention and takes me to this fictional world. There is one novel which has definitely made me feel this connection, and that is Susan Hill’s ‘Strange Meeting’, a novel that narrates the platonic love (friendship) two british soldiers share due to their experience in the trenches during WW1. While reading this book, I was able to relate to each character, not because of the setting but by their character and emotions, both portrayed spectacularly by Susan Hill. And maybe innumerable novels have achieved in doing so, but this relies completely on the reader.

So, answering the question, should we or should we not judge a book by its cover? We should try not to. One never knows if the author might be able to persuade us into his/her beliefs and develop this reader-author-narration relationship and communication. We should try not to leave it up to a few couple of pages, but give it a try.