Totalitarian Novels: 1984 and Pain
The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Hillsdale College
4.6 • 621 Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2025
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan introduce the course "Totalitarian Novels."
Totalitarian novels depict regimes that exert complete and pervasive control over the lives of their subjects. George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Arthur Koestler, and C.S. Lewis imagine the terrible possibilities of unchecked modern tyranny. Join Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, and Hillsdale College students in this exploration of 1984, Brave New World, Darkness at Noon, and That Hideous Strength.
The course includes four lectures and four conversations, each about 30 minutes long. It is structured with one lecture about each book followed by a conversation between Dr. Arnn and the students about themes from that book.
In George Orwell’s 1984, the regime is dedicated to power. The Party ensures that its members obey through pain and torture, as shown when O’Brien tortures Winston.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan. |
| 0:13.6 | And I'm Juan Dabalos. We are going to a new course today, Totalitarian Novels. Lecture 1 today is on 1984, Payne. |
| 0:22.1 | Yeah, and this is a course with Hillsdale College President Larry Arne. It's a course he teaches to undergraduates on campus, and so we |
| 0:27.2 | tried a little bit different format with this course. Dr. Arn teaches us four different books, |
| 0:31.8 | 1984, Brave New World, Darkness at Noon, and that hideous strength. And he provides us an analysis of each book |
| 0:39.5 | on its own, and then has a conversation with his students from that course for each book. So you'll get |
| 0:45.3 | Dr. Arne, and then the next lecture will be a conversation with his students about 1984, then a lecture |
| 0:51.3 | on Brave New World, a conversation with students about Brave New World, and so on. |
| 0:55.1 | I really like this format, especially with Dr. Arn, because I think that's where he teaches best. |
| 1:02.2 | I remember sitting down in his seminars as a graduate student, and the conversation with him was |
| 1:09.4 | always rich, |
| 1:11.2 | and I think learning novels sometimes |
| 1:13.7 | that's when you learn best. |
| 1:15.6 | When you sit down, |
| 1:16.7 | you think about the themes that are being discussed in the course, |
| 1:19.8 | and you ground them, of course, |
| 1:22.5 | you have to ground your answers into text |
| 1:24.3 | because I think sometimes in conversation formats you miss that, but it's when |
| 1:29.1 | you get to really bring out all the elements and the story when you get to talk about it with other |
| 1:34.5 | people. Yeah, that's right. Dr. Arne is very good at describing the events and especially the |
| 1:38.9 | importance of the themes in these books, and he does that in the analysis lectures, but he really comes alive when he gets |
| 1:46.6 | to guide someone through learning as he does with these students. And I'll note that these students |
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