“Of course i’m happy”: an analysis of Animal farm (Orwell, 1945) and Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury, 1953) dystopian modernity

• Autor(a) principal: Gonçalves, Davi Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: letrônica
• Texto Completo: https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/letronica/article/view/26605
• topic: Animal Farm (ORWELL; 1945); Fahrenheit (BRADBURY; 1953); Dystopia.; Animal Farm (ORWELL; 1945); Fahrenheit (BRADBURY; 1953); Distopia.; Animal Farm (ORWELL; 1945); Fahrenheit (BRADBURY; 1953); Distopia.

Utopia and dystopia, providing readers with diverging possibilities future, have always given them tools to rethink society. This is so because, even though texts are inserted within a context, they are also empowered with the possibility of shaping new contexts – literature is informed and informs reality, working as a receptacle and as a response to social and political turmoil. Bearing that in mind, this study aims at making out how Animal Farm (ORWELL, 1945) and Fahrenheit 451 (BRADBURY, 1953) react to the epistemes with which we, as readers, come equipped. What both novellas demonstrate is that there is the possibility of accepting or the possibility of fighting – as long as we become aware that the latter option is a feasible one. Addressing issues such as that of subjects’ alienation and/or of their lack of critical abilities to interact fruitfully with one another as to change their condition, these narratives are a glimpse of the political arena whereto literary discourses might be taken. After all, to think politically about literary productions might be a choice, but the fact that literature per se is a political institution is not.