1984 #1

In George Orwell’s fictional novel 1984, a text-to-text connection to Heart of Darkness is portrayed through Orwell instigating an utopist society in the recollection of Winston Smith’s experiences. As Winston identifies the “Two-Minutes Hate” (Orwell 11) as a period of momentary anger towards Goldstein, the speaker describes the reaction of the workers as

“At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant of ‘B-B!...B-B!...B-B!’ over and over again… a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms (16).

The group’s reaction correlates with Conrad’s description of the natives in Heart of Darkness. Since Conrad associates the natives as savages, a connection is made to Orwell’s 1984 since he illustrates the group’s reaction as “savage”, and “stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms”. The dehumanizing characteristics Orwell illustrates about the group relates to how Conrad also described the natives in a dehumanizing way.