Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)

József Hruby: Two "Last Men in Europe": A. Koestler's Darkness at Noon and G. Ornwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

66 end of the "treatment"

... The new Goad declines to lose a single soul, the loss of no sheep can be af forded, the fallen ones must be cleansed. The citizen becomes a particle of the state, his personal consciousness has been soaked up and the collective consciousness has been built in. Winston is not given the opportunity of redemption nor even the small comfort of dying with Iiis inner life intact. The Party takes its revenge: it will not allow its victims to die unrepentant. O'Brien, Winston's torturer, "teacher", and "saviour" uses brute force to drive home his point. In Darkness at Noon Gletkin can still argue. Iiis argumentation is dogmatic, clumsy and mechanical but at least he keeps trying. In Nineteen Eighty-Four O'Br ien can only give one answer to reason: violence. In Nineteen Eighty-Four there is no discussion of ends and means, right or wrong, there is no need to justify anything. Rubashov's dialogue becomes irrelevant. Af ter the "treatment" in Room 101, where "there is no death","

' Winston's fate is sealed. There is no way back and no way out. He betrayed Julia and, through her, mankind. He stumbles out of the Ministry of Love as a living dead, a hollow image of Ms previous self. It becomes horrible reality what Rubashov wrote in his diary: "We admitted no private sphere; not even inside a man's skull".

2*'

3 His idiotic smile is suggestive of his full recovery, he comes to love Big Brother. Those who are successfully cured are destroyed alive. V. S. Pritchett points out that, whereas in Darkness at Noon death is the eventual 97 punishment for deviation, in Nineteen Eighty-Four the punishment is lifeless life. The subjects of the totalitarian state cannot be allowed to retain the smallest awareness of their value, which can be the spark of resistance at any moment. Despite ail his moral, intellectual and physical defects Winston Smith is the last MAN. The Last Man in oo Europe... ° Nineteen Eighty-Four fights for man but loses the battle. The destruction of the family is also inevitable in totalitarism, where humanesses in only useless nostalgia. The family harbours all sorts of feelings, spontaneous affection. As it has been pointed out, the uncalculated is subversive. The family has hardly any place in a world based on hate. Emotional bonds inevitably developing and flourishing instinct is especially dangerous within the family, since it can shape and mould the family into a potentially stronger unit than the Party. What the regime can tolerate is a ghastly parody of the family, which serves the purpose of procreation and the raising of the offspring, but where the strongest influence is that of the Thought Police, and where ideology has replaced emotion and the family loyalty. Whereas in iDarkness at Noon the porter,