Time+And+Spatiality

In the novel __1984__, by George Orwell, one can investigate the issue of time and spatiality. The issue of spatiality addresses the idea that people tend to relate what they see, read, or hear, whether fiction or not, to their surrounding culture. The novel causes the readers to create this “Thirdspace”, a Michael Foucault theory, which is an area that is created in a person’s mind of this grey area between reality and fiction, “ a creative recombination and extension that builds on a Firstspace perspective that is focused on the ‘real’ material world and a Secondspace perspective that interprets this reality through ‘imagined’ representations of spatiality. A Thirdspace, therefore, is an investigation into a multiplicity of ‘real-and imagined places’. (1996: 6)” (James 2). Media works such as __1984__ tend to blur the line between reality and fiction, thus causing people to develop a sense of discipline and resistance sprung from paranoia of the reality and fiction completely mixing. Orwell does this by painting a vivid and horrific picture of the possible near future. He does this by making the setting, or time, in the year 1984 which was not too far off from the year of publication, 1949. Also, he uses scenarios, in which, the reader is able to get their head around. For instance Orwell uses technology, in the novel, as an evil control over the peoples and this, to the people of 1949, was not too out of reach due to the fact that they, just as we now, watched technology progress rapidly. The novel relies on how people interpret the fictional utopia that is the setting for the novel. Orwell uses the concept of time and modernity to develop and obscure a utopian society, which causes us people of society to create an undesirable thirdspace, which then causes the people to try and prevent this dystopia from happening in the real world. The novel highlights this point that people react and act to media, history, etc. by stating twice, “ Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past” (Orwell 35). This implies control of the history, media, etc. ensures control of the future, because the past helps a person to form future goals. So, if the past was idyllic, then people will act to re-create it; if the past was bad, then people will act to prevent such circumstances from recurring. The novel affects our current setting and spatiality through the reactions of the public to the novel’s setting and modernity through the theory of spatiality. 1984 is, “…a work that helps establish the “primary coordinates,” or cognitive paradigm, from within which emerges the figures and concepts—notions of the state, the collective, media, politics, power, and finally of utopia itself—that organize the understanding of, a paradigm that in many ways still holds today. Precisely because they are influential public interventions in their own moment, narrative utopias make particular demands on their later readers” (Wegner 3). In a few words, the setting of the novel can be interpreted as a literary utopian society which has affected our way of thinking today by giving a realistic picture of the world (state, media, politics, and power) amerced with utopian principles. 