1984 and the Truman Show

A utopia is a seemingly perfect world, with happiness, honesty, equality, and peace. Although in the novel, 1984, by George Orwell, and the film The Truman Show, directed by Peter Wier, the readers and viewers are presented with a negative utopian society. A negative utopian society is a perfect world that somewhere has gone wrong. The controllers in the novel and film succeeded in achieving complete control and power, which was their attempt to make the ideal society. Each controller has a different threat, in 1984 it is association while in the film, The Truman Show, it is separation from the outside world.

In George Orwell's 1984, the ruling body, known as the Inner party, gains complete control over the people in their country. In all the homes, apartments, business offices, and town squares, there are telescreens. The telescreens give the ruling body the ability to invade the people's privacy, and create fear into their lives. The ruling body of 1984 is afraid of unionization between the people and their ideas. They believed that if people got together and talked about their ideas about the parties, they would realize that their way of life had not always been like this, ruled by the Inner Party. The Inner Party controls everything that the people in their society does, thinks, says, and acts. Winston Smith, the main character of this novel, begins to realize that he has thoughts from his past and that the government had not always been so controlling. Winston believes, "your worst enemy...was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom...The most deadly danger of all was talking in your sleep. There was no way of guarding against that." (Orwell, 56) Winston is always on the search for someone to share his thoughts and hatred of the "Inner Party." The government is afraid that if the people got together they would realize that their power is not strong. Their power