GOING NOWHERE reflections on dystopia in literature and architecture Marnicq Roebben

63 Pages·2013·8.2 MB·English

GOING NOWHERE
reflections on dystopia in literature and architecture
Marnicq Roebben

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
DEMONIC POSSESIONS 3
children driven by delusional fears and post-apocalyptic prayers
for detumescence
NUMBING OURSELVES 9
new media, technology and drugs
ANIMAL IMAGERY 13
a surrogate for nature and the fabulous critique
THE ROLE OF THE FEMALE GENDER 16
and the emancipatory power of a book
OVERPOPULATION 20
homo-eroticism, cannibalism and lentil soup
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COLLECTIVE 23
becoming self-conscious
STRUCTURE OF THE CITY 26
the relation between the city and its inhabitants
IMAGE LIBRARY i
GUIDE xxviii
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES xxix

GOING NOWHERE
reflections on dystopia in literature and architecture
1
INTRODUCTION
The major theme of this series and text is dystopia; it is a research
on dystopian literature and architecture. As an introduction, I will
define the word dystopia and in order to do this word I shall be-
gin by defining its absolute opposite: utopia. Utopia can be seen
as both the most perfect place, but at the same time as a non-exist-
ing one. It is an ambiguous place because it is both perfect and un-
reachable. It originates from a play on three Greek words: 'eu' (good),
'ou' (not) and 'topos' (place). This indicates that utopia itself is a place
which can only be found in dreams: perfect, yet not existing. Dystopia,
however, is its opposite and therefore the most imperfect place, which
could be plausibly reached. In literature it often serves as a warning for
a future we never hope to reach, often a critique on government policies
or what they could lead to: the nightmarish scenes we all fear. We can
also see how utopian visions, when they fail to reach their goals, can lead
towards a dystopian society. Within the failure of utopia itself, which is
inherent to utopia, we find dystopia. And so the idea of utopia, that
is unachievable, cannot exist without a dystopian counterpart, which
can manifest itself in reality.
For this research, I carefully selected novels which seemed
the most relevant to my take on dystopian literature. I based my selec-
tion on sub-themes that interested me, such as overpopulation, con-
trol over the people, collectivism, individualism, fear and the role of
the female gender. I limited my selection once more, in order to keep
the novels relevant to the images I will provide. These books, as per
coincidence, happened to be published within a fifty years time frame.
This period stretches from the Interbellum to the sixties, although
none were written during the Second World War. After restricting my
original selection, the following novels remain:
Brave New World (1931) by Aldous Huxley
Swastika Night (1937) by Katherine Burdekin
Anthem (1938) by Ayn Rand
Ape and Essence (1948) by Aldous Huxley
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding
The Wanting Seed (1962) by Anthony Burgess
Make Room!Make Room! (1966) by Harry Harrison
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With this research I only offer my artistic view and I do not
claim to be an academic specialised in literature or architecture.
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DEMONIC POSESSIONS
children driven by delusional fears and post-apocalyptic prayers for
detumescence
In this chapter we will interpret two books: William Golding's Lord of
the Flies and Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence. Lord of the Flies tells
us a story of a group of children, all boys, who survived a plane crash
and are on an island to take care of themselves. Ape and Essence tells
us of a scientist who is on a re-discovery expedition of North-America
(more specifically Los Angeles, the City of Angels) in a post-apocalyp-
tic world.
The uninhabited island of William Golding's novel offers the
stranded children a chance to create their own society with its own
social structures. At first rather democratic, it slowly deteriorates into
a militaristic society led by a group of hunters. Its democratic nature
is represented by a conch. Anyone who holds the conch is allowed to
speak freely without being interrupted by any other kid. There are two
characters are attached to this form of democracy, who keep hang-
ing on to their principles until the very end, Ralph and Piggy. Ralph
is elected leader and installs the conch as a tool of democracy. Piggy
advises Ralph at all times and is used as a metaphor of the intellectual
class of society. In the beginning when this democracy is still vibrant
the colours of the conch are vibrant as well; later on when democracy
falls and eventually shatters into pieces, its colours fade. The progress
of democracy is to be followed through the conch's changing colours.
As the children spend their days and nights on the island
without any parental supervision, their fantasy produces delusional
fears. These control the rest of their time spent on the island and con-
tribute largely to the fall of the democratic nature of the juvenile island
society. At first these fears make them see things. The boys imagine
they see and hear a beast. The beast, that they have created, becomes
their obsession. The group of hunters on the island start hunting their
imaginary foe. The leader of their pack is Jack Merridew, a rather vio-
lent lad who lays the foundation for their new primal pseudo-religious
structures. He hopes to keep the beast on a distance by spiking the
head of the first pig he killed as a ritual offering. This monumental
pig's head, was named the Lord of the Flies. This is a literal translation
of the Greek Beelzebub, a Greek representation of Satan. The Lord of
the Flies is a first step to their new Satanic pseudo-religion on the is-
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land. Jack's militaristic society (one which opposes Ralph's democrat-
ic society) and pseudo-religion is dedicated to hunting, keeping the
beast away and feeding Jack's ego. The beast takes several forms on
the island. It is represented as a 'snake-thing', 'beast from water' and
'beast from air'. As a 'snake-thing' the beast refers to the serpent of the
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Garden of Eden, another demonic representation.
“'Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!' The blue-
white scar was constant, the noise unendurable, Simon was crying out
something about a dead man on a hill. 'Kill the beast! Cut his throat!
Spill his blood!'… The beast was on its knees in the centre, its arms
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folded over its face... 'That was Simon... That was Murder.'”
Simon was the first and only boy on the island who could see
through the others kids' fears. He found out that the beast was simply
a delusion of their mind, triggered by their fears. One of these triggers
is a dead parachutist, reminiscent of a war going on in the adult world.
After having seen the parachutist, Simon runs down the hill to warn
his companions of what these fears have driven them to. Ironically at
the moment he arrives he gets killed by the same children he tried to
warn. Simon is mistakenly seen as the beast and gets ritually slaugh-
tered. The children yell out the same words as they would when killing
a pig: “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”. Simon had an
enormous disgust of the Lord of the Flies; the pig's head even made
him hallucinate, telling him the truth about the beast and predicting
his own death: killed by his own friends.
“'Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt
and kill!' said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the oth-
er dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. 'You
knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason
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why it's no go? Why things are what they are?'”

Simon is a peculiar character within the story. His character
is often compared to that of Jesus Christ in the Bible. He is kind and
takes care of the smaller kids as he feeds them, and his death resem-
bles Christ's crucifixion. However, Simon might refer less to Christ, but
more to his apostle Simon Peter (also: Petrus or St. Peter), which is
already indicated by his name. His death ends with him yelling some-
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thing about a dead man on a hill, just as Simon Peter have yelled about
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the crucified Christ on the hill of Golgotha. Golding's novel shows an
analogy with certain Biblical elements, like martyrdom. Simon re-
ceives a Saint's status because of his martyrdom and because he repre-
sents an antidote for the irrationalism of the other boys. This antidote
might have been the solution to both the short-sightedness of Piggy
and Jack's temper. Simon offers the other boys salvation on the island.
Instead of accepting his reasoning and his offer of salvation the boys
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kill him. Simon's death also refers to Pentheus's death in the ancient
Greek Euripedes tragedy Bacchae in which Pentheus gets torn apart
by his own mother in an orgy, mistakenly seen as a wild animal, as
a beast. Both analogies suggest that Golding had a passion for both
Christian and Greek mythology.
“The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the
conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.
Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt travelled through
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the air sideways from the rock... the body of Piggy was gone.”
Piggy comes across as a knowledgeable character, as the
metaphor of the proto-scientist. His, and only his, reasoning is empir-
ical and logical. When it comes to the beast, however, he is not able to
perceive the beast in all of us, unlike Simon who knows the beast was
simply a delusional creation of our fears. Even after participating in
the killing of his friend Simon, he denies having been part of it. He tries
to rationalise everything so he does not have to see the beast within
us. It was the beast within him, and his friends, that killed Simon. Pig-
gy's role as the proto-scientist shouldn't be ignored. His death also ref-
erences the adult's world. As parliamentarian endeavour on the island
fails and democracy falls, the conch shatters. The conch gets smashed
by the fierce Jack and his new pseudo-religious society, it falls off the
cliffs into the ocean and smashes into a thousand white pieces onto a
rock. At the same time, Piggy gets pushed off the same cliff and falls
onto the same rock. His death is synchronised with the crashing im-
pact of the conch. Piggy has lost his right to speak and he has lost his
life. Clearly it is reflecting on the impossibility of an intellectual class
to exist outside of a democracy or rather if it does not have the right to
speak up.