REMEMBRANCE VERSUS REINVENTION: MEMORY AS TOOL OF SURVIVAL AND ACT OF DEFIANCE IN DYSTOPIAN NARRATIVES
REMEMBRANCE VERSUS REINVENTION: MEMORY AS TOOL OF SURVIVAL AND ACT OF DEFIANCE IN DYSTOPIAN NARRATIVES

Summary/Abstract: This paper will explore some of the most memorable dystopian narratives of the last century (from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to Kurt Wimmer’s Equilibrium) in order to establish the extent to which the obliteration and / or rewriting of the past is employed as a tool of manipulation and control and its recovery becomes essential for those who strive to preserve their individuality and independence of thought and action. The features shared by protagonists such as Bernard Marx, Winston Smith, Guy Montag, Offred, and John Preston include an uncomfortable awareness of the discrepancies between actual historical events and the version accepted and delivered by the establishment and faith in the importance of individual and collective memory and the need to recover and protect the narratives of the past. Indeed, the most notable common coordinate of their various acts of rebellion against a regime whose principles they can no longer accept entails an obsessive fascination with books, the very items which the totalitarian societies envisaged by most authors of dystopian fiction regard as dangerous and consequently strive to ban and eradicate. Far from focusing exclusively on acts of defiance, the paper also aims to identify and discuss the instances in which certain protagonists employ memory manipulation strategies akin to the ones promoted by the establishment and thus become responsible for their own brainwashing. The ultimate aim of this analysis is to outline the various responses to more or less oppressive systems and to assess memory’s potential in the preservation of identity and actual survival.

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