Last month, as hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington to protest the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the novelist Margaret Atwood began getting a string of notifications on Twitter and Facebook. People were sending her images of protesters with signs that referenced her dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
“The Handmaid’s Tale,” which takes place in near-future New England as a totalitarian regime has taken power and stripped women of their civil rights, was published 32 years ago. But in recent months, Atwood has been hearing from anxious readers who see eerie parallels between the novel’s oppressive society and the current Republican administration’s policy goals of curtailing reproductive rights.
上個月，當數十萬婦女齊聚華府抗議川普總統就職之際，小說家瑪格麗特．愛特伍開始在推特與臉書上收到一系列的推文通知，人們將抗議者手拿標語牌的影像傳送給她，這些標語內容都與她的反烏托邦小說《使女的故事》有關。
《使女的故事》在32年前即已出版，書中將時間設定於不久的將來，敘述新英格蘭的極權政權在掌權後剝奪婦女民權的故事。但愛特伍在最近幾個月一直聽到焦慮的讀者們表達的心聲，他們認為小說中的壓迫社會與當前共和黨政府剝奪生育權的政策目標間，有著令人毛骨悚然的雷同之處。
In 2016, sales of the book, which is in its 52nd printing, were up 30 percent over the previous year. Atwood’s publisher has reprinted 100,000 copies in the last three months to meet a spike in demand after the election.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” is among several classic dystopian novels that seem to be resonating with readers at a moment of heightened anxiety about the state of American democracy. Sales have also risen drastically for George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984,” which shot to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list last month.
這本書已經52刷，2016年的銷量比前一年成長了30%。為了滿足美國大選後暴增的需求，愛特伍的出版商在過去3個月裡又印了10萬本。
有幾本經典反烏托邦小說似乎與此際對美國民主狀態憂心忡忡的讀者產生了共鳴，《使女的故事》正是其中之一。而喬治．歐威爾的《動物農莊》與《1984》的銷量亦大幅成長，後者上個月更一舉衝上亞馬遜暢銷書排行榜的榜首位置。
Other novels that today’s readers may not have picked up since high school but landed on the list were Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel “Brave New World” and Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel “It Can’t Happen Here.”
Interest in “1984” surged last month, set off by a series of comments from Trump, his press secretary, Sean Spicer, and his adviser Kellyanne Conway, in which they disputed the news media’s portrayal of the crowd size at his inauguration. To many observers, Conway’s remark that Spicer had not lied about the crowd size but was offering “alternative facts” evoked Orwell’s vision of a totalitarian society in which language becomes a political weapon and reality itself is defined by those in power.
而今日讀者高中畢業以後可能就沒再看過，卻登上排行榜的其他小說還有—阿道斯．赫胥黎的《美麗新世界》，以及辛克萊．路易斯在1935年出版的小說《這裡不會發生那種事》。
川普、白宮新聞秘書史派瑟及川普的顧問康威，針對新聞媒體就川普就職典禮觀禮人數規模報導所發表的一系列言論，上個月也激發讀者對於《1984》的濃厚興趣。對許多觀察人士而言，康威所發表的史派瑟未在觀禮人數規模上撒謊，而是提供「另類事實」的言論，令人想起歐威爾對極權社會的看法，亦即語言在社會裡成為一種政治武器，現實本身則由當權者來定義。
Of course, it is not the first time that readers and pundits have invoked “1984” to criticize a government. It is such a standard trope that Orwell’s name has become an adjective.
“It’s a frame of reference that people can reach for in response to government deception, propaganda, the misuse of language, and those are things that occur all the time,” said Alex Woloch, an English professor at Stanford University. “There are certain things this administration is doing that has set off these alarm bells, and people are hungry for frames of reference to understand this new reality.”
這當然並非讀者和學者專家第一次援引《1984》來批評政府。這本書是個如此標準的比喻，而歐威爾的名字也已變為一個形容詞。
史丹佛大學英語系教授艾力克斯．沃洛克表示：「它是個人們可觸及的參考框架，可用以對政府的欺騙、宣傳、語言濫用做出反應，且這些都是經常發生的事情。這個政府正在從事的某些事情已觸發這些警報，人們渴望利用參考框架來了解這個新的現實。」
說文解字看新聞
文／Alexandra Alte
川普時代的來臨讓不少美國民眾對前景深感不安，對於難以預測的未來，他們希望能在書本中找尋慰藉與方向，而反烏托邦小說更是引起他們的共鳴，一時洛陽紙貴，銷量大幅飆升。
dystopia此字源自烏托邦（utopia），希臘語字面意義為「不好的地方」，指的是充滿恐懼醜惡、不得人心的極端惡劣的社會型態，主要特徵有極權、社會不公以及對自由的剝奪和社會管控。
反烏托邦一詞經常跟極權主義totalitarianism聯繫在一起，形容詞是totalitarian，當名詞時為「極權主義者」，由代表「全部、所有」的字首total跟表示形容詞或名詞的字尾arian所組成，意思同於totalistic、undemocratic、despotic、dictatorial。例句：US Former president George W. Bush once said the Shia and Sunni extremists were different faces of the same totalitarian threat.（美國前總統小布希曾說，什葉派與遜尼派極端分子是同一極權主義威脅的不同樣貌。）
此外，動詞片語strip somebody of something指的是「剝奪某人的某物」之意，跟另一片語deprive somebody of something意思相近。
