That Hideous Strength and 1984, Part 3

Some differences and what they mean

Thus far I have written mostly about the similarities between THS and 1984, and there are a great many. Lewis and Orwell both foresaw the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century, enabled like never before. Both recognized the role of information, stories and narratives in enticing people to accept acts both tyrannous and evil, and how those seeking power would wield the power of the press to manipulate the people into not only accepting but desiring the stripping of their freedoms. Further, both recognized the nature of power is to use others as means, and highlighted how the servants of power are always themselves exploited to serve the ends of their masters.

Yet there are differences, and not just the space angels, although that is rather key, isn’t it?

The world of 1984 seems a somewhat stable equilibrium. Orwell was possibly right; the actual USSR broke down around 1989, but then it was not a global norm of how governments ran, just one of two big communist states. It isn’t entirely clear how well China matches Orwell’s model, but they are still a going concern. So contrary to some commentators on Orwell, “Evil prevailing for a long time” as depicted in 1984 is neither unrealistic nor particularly uncommon¹. Maybe in five years or so Oceania will break down, but that is not an entirely forgone conclusion.

The world of THS isn’t at the 1984 point yet, but the threat that it could be is real. Support for the work of NICE is wide ranging across countries, as Mark notes when he considers fleeing the UK for the Americas. Resistance still exists, but it is not clear that it can triumph without the help of the angels. Those holding out are scattered individuals and small groups, generally not supported by the weight of the state, nor entirely coherent on why they resist, while the bulk of institutions are more or less officially on the side of the NICE.

This difference reveals a thread of similarity between the two works, as well as between the authors’ time and ours. Both explain, explicitly and implicitly, why the worst get on top. In short, those who seek power over people are those who love power, not people. As the amount of power increases, the more resources those who love power are willing to expend on getting it, and as a result they out compete those with less interest in power for its own sake. Those who care for other things than power tend not to spend resources on power only to not wield it. People who are only interested in tending their own gardens do not generally invest in giant farm tractors. While it is not impossible for someone to want both power and the good of the people, and then manage to claw up the hierarchy to wield power without corrupting themselves, it is clearly not the most likely outcome.

The stability of Oceania is secured because the Inner Party exists only to maintain power; the members who make it that far being driven only by the desire to perpetuate the Party and wield power thereby. All other concerns, personal and public, are subjugated to the use of power for its own sake.

The goals of the individual NICE members also include power, but become more solely about power as one enters the more inner rings. At the very root are those with no desires but to wield total power over a dead universe.

Which brings us ultimately to the biggest difference in the books: whether or not evil wins out. 1984 famously concludes with Winston having all the humanity tortured out of him and loving Big Brother. THS concludes the drama² with Merlin channeling the powers of the big five space angels to make the NICE into essentially the the tower of Babel, releasing the animal test subjects upon their tormentors, causing the NICE members to generally turn on each other in their panic (those that don’t get wrecked by wildlife). Merlin then nukes Edgestow, and disappears into the afterlife³.

This conclusion is somewhat… unsatisfying… to some.

I don’t really want to argue that it should be; Lewis is a better writer than I am certainly, and the fact that I find many of his story endings a little unsatisfying might say more about me than him. Moreover, I am quite confident that over 50% of people who read the book will kind of agree with me without my arguing anything at all. Let me just take a stab at what is lacking, then I will get back to arguing why I think THS and 1984 are actually a lot closer in their view of the end than people might realize.

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So why is THS’s resolution of the NICE threat kind of awkward?

Firstly, there is very little action on the part of our main characters to make it happen. Quite literally, they are almost entirely uninvolved. Mark plays a small role during his redemptive arc where he conspires with the hobo⁴ (which is a delightful set of scenes), resulting in Merlin’s successful infiltration of NICE, but Mark’s involvement is unintentional and just works out that way.

The entire Merlin story arc itself works out without the intervention of the main characters. Only Ransom is relevant, and Merlin awakening, seeking out Ransom, playing password and joining the team happens whether or not the other characters exist at all, despite the others going off to find Merlin as he awakes. At no point does one think “Boy, good thing so and so was there! Otherwise they would be in trouble!”

Not that Merlin is a bad character or useless to the story. He offers many contrasts between the more harsh past and the present, really highlighting a lot of interesting cultural aspects and expectations. The problem is that he is then a demi-deus ex machina to solve the problems without any real input from anyone else. Pretty soon after his introduction you realize there was basically nothing that could have gone wrong to ruin things for the protagonists from that point on.

What could have been done differently? Well, a few things, even if we stick with the main idea that Merlin is going to be the mystical wrecking ball that ruins NICE.

1. Mark could get more involved. If the Head is the conduit for the dark angels to communicate with NICE, what if it also serves as a point of protection, dampening Merlin’s powers? Mark might have sabotage the Head, a thing he was previously so terrified of that it blasted his brain, before Merlin can really act. Perhaps Mark attempts to place a bomb only to be confronted by a self-acting head that attempts to cow or tempt Mark into giving up and joining evil; Mark heroically rejects this and acts in a self-sacrificial way (but lives).

2. Some work is actually necessary to find Merlin and/or convince him that the St. Anne⁵ side is the right side. Lots of options here other than playing “Ransom knows the right answers to three questions.” Maybe the not-the-Pendragon good guys need to convince Merlin through their own behavior, either by word or deed, possibly sacrificing e.g. a hand ala Tyr. Perhaps they need to show Merlin the deprecations of the NICE. Maybe they need to save him from the NICE. Anything more than “Look for Merlin, but he runs off and then goes exactly where they wanted him to go anyway.” The tension there is cute, but again, you are left thinking that if they all stayed home that night the result would have been the same.

3. The St Anne team could have to do something while Merlin is wrecking face, or to prepare him to wreck face. Really, what would make the most sense is for the good guys to travel to Edgestow to rescue some good people who are about to get killed en masse⁶, before Merlin finishes at the NICE. Edgestow is definitely getting the Sodom and Gamora treatment, so while many people have already fled there could be a good side mission for the good guys to try and save someone. Instead of just hanging out at home and eating dinner.

That brings me to the second big problem for me: all the human characters are so passive that the book really offers nothing in the way of proactive recommendations to those who heed its message. Part of the recommendation is certainly “don’t get involved in this sort of thing,” and part is “advocate against it.” But what if that isn’t sufficient? Is the recommendation “Hang out with the demi-god Ransom until Merlin wakes up, then let the angels pump him up and point him at the enemy?” That doesn’t even work in-universe, as they expend Merlin. If 75 years later another NICE style problem emerges, because the dark angels still rule the Earth remember, even if there is another Pendragon ready to go, what do they do? Are there dozens of ancient druid-wizards ready to go in little tombs with “Break Headstone in Case of Dark Angels” inscribed on them?

I mean, I get that they can’t resolve the dark angels ruling the Earth issue. That is way beyond the scope of the characters (other than maybe Ransom) and it wouldn’t make sense in so far as the world of the book is supposed to be our world, the fallen one, with all its problems. That resolution has to happen at the End of Days, not the end of the story.

Yet the threat resolution is entirely down to “Whew, it is a good thing all these super powerful beings solved stuff for us while we did nothing.” One of the St. Anne characters, MacPhee, even directly says that all they did was sit around, feed the pigs and grow vegetables, and this goes unanswered. It is amusing to think Lewis is pulling off an extremely early example of lamp shading here, but damn… is that actually what he is doing? Just handwaving away the fact that the main human characters we spend all our time with are just hanging out and being nice people, and that’s all that’s necessary to see that the world’s problems are solved?

Now if you were a very religious sort like Mr. Wright, you might not find that to be a problem. If humans can’t fight evil, whether directly demonic or human evil abetted by the demonic, then yes, I suppose you do just hang out, keep your head down, and pray for the best while you wait for gods or angels to get things done.

Yet, that seems very… well the opposite of “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Lewis perhaps missed a very good opportunity here to address when and how good men should rise against evil. Surely not all evil is the result of dark angels against whom the common man is helpless. When should the good people of Britain say “Enough!” and rise from their gardens to confront the evils around them? THS leaves us with “Well, never. Just wait for Merlin, or whomever, to come save you. You can’t do anything, and moreover, it is unnecessary for you to do anything.”⁷

How depressing.

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Where was I … oh yes, I promised a similarity! Well, contrary to many people’s take away from 1984 that the future of the world is the famous boot stomping on a human face forever, we are actually seeing the long end of the Orwellian Empires throughout the book. We are told by O’Brian that the low material state of the people, both Party members and proles, is intentional and instrumental: people who are on the edge of desperate poverty are below the threshold for rebellious thoughts. The structure of the state consciously depresses innovation in anything not militarily relevant, destroying all surplus, and this has been going on for decades.

At the same time, we see ever increasing shortages of goods, decreases in the chocolate rations for example, that the Party works hard to cover up. We see infrastructure crumbling, hardly maintained since the early years and nothing new being built. We see birth rates and family formation cratering, with the government attempting to grow the people it needs and otherwise drawing from the proles to create the mid level Outer Party Workers.

In other words, we see a civilization in unchecked decline. The Party cannot manage to stabilize an equilibrium for goods production and distribution that fixes the availability of goods at some optimal level; instead capacity is ever shrinking. Eventually the Party will run out of resources necessary for control, and the empire will shrink. Presumably the other competing empires face the same issue.

So in Orwell’s work, the individual cannot triumph over the evil of totalitarianism, but the seeds of its own destruction are sown widely and will eventually bring it down. Importantly Winston Smith resists anyway, even though he is doomed to lose in the end, which makes the ending both more sad and more satisfying.

The great tragedy of 1984 is that more people don’t resist. The proles have the power to overturn everything, but they just hang out and keep their heads down for the most part, and don’t rise against their oppressors. Even the Outer Party members could act and accomplish things, but fear effectively keeps them in line, allowing those very small few who act to be more easily crushed.

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Let us get back to the beginning of the stories, or really the beginning of THS and the middle of 1984 that describes the before times. Let us consider again how Lewis and Orwell foresee the rise of totalitarianism in the world.

I previously touched on the differences of how Orwell and Lewis see the use of power by our tyrants, but how the power is gained is of interest.

Orwell’s Party seems to have gained power in what might be called a “developing nation” method, akin to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia: overthrown governments, turmoil, blood in the streets, and total state power taken by the group that stands atop the bodies of their enemies. There is little question that the old regime is dead and the new regime is in power because it took it. Orwell no doubt had in mind his experience in the Spanish Civil War and the then on going communist revolutions and civil wars in China and other parts of Asia. I don’t know how aware he was of the revolutions in Cuba and South America when we was writing 1984, but those seem to fit his vision.

Why does the Orwell model seem to cleave to the less developed nations as opposed to the developed western states? Primarily I think because the difficulty of overthrowing the established government, the activation energy of revolution if you will, is much higher in a richer, more developed nation-state. Less developed states are often marked by incomplete control of their central governments, such that it is easier for regions to rebel entirely, or for a centralized government to be attacked in the capital with little help forthcoming from without. In the early 20th century there was also a notable tendency for less developed countries to have governments with rather low legitimacy in the eyes of the people, and if your citizens already don’t like you much they are much less likely to oppose rebellious elements.

At the same time less developed nation-states tend to have what is referred to as “closed orders”, where power is handed down within a closed group with few outsiders able to break in. This makes quiet, peaceful attempts to take over power extremely difficult for those outside the power structure.

THS I think more accurately predicts how totalitarianism, or simply tyranny, is likely to come to the west: cloaked in science and handing control to those who claim the desire and ability to make society better. This is important, as the western developed countries have a much higher activation energy for rebellion, making taking over through brute force attacks on the government very costly. The higher legitimacy of the functional western nation-states’ governments create a lot of problems for would-be revolutionaries, and the governments are better able to defend themselves in the first place. At the same time, the open order of the developed nations means it is easier for outsiders to get in on the power games of the state, and once inside, expand their power through rising in the hierarchy, creating and placing allies throughout the hierarchy, or just expanding the powers of the state and capturing some of those new positions.

The trick then, as Lewis illustrates, is to convince the people they want to give you more power, playing the long game of slow, subtle accumulation. Every crisis is an opportunity to grow power a little more, but long term investments in societal shaping must always be made. Turn science from a process to a cult to ensure that all right thinking people must agree with you. Control the media to make sure your narrative of reality is seen as the correct one. Gain control of schools to make sure every new generation has been taught that things would be better if your people were in power, and use the credentialing system to ensure only those students who learn that lesson get to have prestigious positions. Be sure that anyone who wants to rise in the world does so through your cult. Eventually you will be able to convince the populace to disarm themselves so that you can better protect them, to let you control speech and license journalists so that you can better educate them, to let you control their bodies so you can better protect them from disease. When you have people who cannot defend themselves, cannot think for themselves and no longer even own their bodies, you can do pretty much whatever you want.

So you see why the ending of THS is somewhat frustrating to me. We westerners are seeing the very rise of evil that Lewis predicts. Canada might already be too far down that path to save, and who knows about central Europe. Should we all just keep our heads down and hope angels take care of it for us, or should we actively push back even though it likely means our destruction?

I suppose if Canadian Merlin rises from the tundra, bedecked in maple leaves and riding a moose, to smite Trudeau and his cronies I will feel a lot more comfortable that Lewis’ book has good recommendations. As it is, he seems to be giving advice to children: Be good, say your prayers and let the adults handle this; you are too small to deal with these problems yourself. Although THS offers an excellent look into the day to day problems of society, from the dead bedrooms to government corruption, there is hardly a hero, despite being a fairy story that demands one.

Orwell’s characters might fail and be crushed to dust beneath the boot, but they still tried. Knowing they were doomed from the start, they still had faith that life was worth living, and that the state was not all there was. They expected blood, sweat and tears, and did it anyway.

Which is why Orwell’s hero is named Winston.

1. I might write up a rejoinder to Wright’s essay, but frankly it is a bloody mess of self contradiction. Reading it feels a lot more akin to going through bad freshman level essay exam responses than seeing actual insight or even a coherent counter argument.

2. The denouement goes on a bit more with the reuniting of Jane and Mark, much as the Lord of the Rings only ends when Samwise returns home, marries and realizes the Hobbiton Dream, but the NICE drama is wrapped up thusly.

3. I am not making that up. I am not entirely certain why the entire town of Edgestow needed to be leveled, even after my third reading of the story.

4. “Tramp” in the story, but like other old words such as “slut” American English has changed the meaning to a sexual connotation of “loose woman”. That tendency really makes you wonder what the hell was going on with American sexual proclivities.

5. The good guys all live at the manor at St Anne’s.

6. The book does mention that many people leave Edgestow, many of them presumably good people that get little messages to leave from e.g. their car saying “Get out,” but also that there are still people there when it is nuked that are not bad.

7. Unless you live in Edgestow, then you had better skip town or be proper fucked.