Abstract
This thesis aims to explore power dynamics and resistance in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Nineteen-Eighty Four (1949) presents a dystopian society ruled by a totalitarian party. Things Fall Apart (1958), on the other hand, depicts the values and traditions of African tribes overturned by Europe’s colonial invasion. Both of these works depict power dynamics operating behind the relationships between the oppressors and the oppressed. In particular, these power relationships observed to occur in both works are of domination and submission, which can be seen to occur from manipulation and influence through internalization and stereotypes, coercion through violence, the establishment of hierarchy through authority and reinforcing the interest of the powerful through the panopticon and terror. In this thesis, I will be using political and postcolonial theories as a solid foundation towards my research. In the first chapter, I will define what power is and how it is formed in both works. For this purpose, I rely on Hannah Arendt’s discussion of power in On Violence. I will analyze three main groups in power in both literary works. The first and second organizations of power are represented by the tribal power and the European colonial power in Things Fall Apart. And the third organization of power is represented by the inner party in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the second chapter, I will analyze how the oppressors maintain their power through techniques of power. These techniques of power that I am going to discuss will be physical or mental methods implemented by the oppressors to prolong or keep their power intact. I will be taking an eclectic approach in theory to probe and explain into this chapter. The literary theories used in this chapter will derive from authors such as Michael Foucault (panopticism), Homi. K Bhabha (stereotypes), Robert J.C Young (internalization) and Hannah Arendt (authority, violence, terror). All of these theories will be used as an essential key analysis towards understanding the submission of the oppressed in these two works. In the third chapter, I will examine the instability and limit of power in both of these works. I will draw on Arendt (the instability of power), Bhabha (ambivalence) and Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism (boomerang effect) to explain this. Lastly, in the fourth chapter, this thesis will examine how resistance operates in both works. For my analysis of resistance, I will turn to James C. Scott (Theory of Resistance). I will analyze Winston Smith’s and Julia’s resistance towards the inner party in Nineteen Eighty-Four. And I will explore the resistance occurring on the African tribes and against the colonial power in Things Fall Apart. The significance of this research is to raise the awareness of power dynamics to the reader and to discover possible types of resistance already written in literature.