Features of Dystopia in P. Christen and S. Verdier’s Graphic Novel Orwell

This article analyses the graphic novel Orwell (2019) by French authors Pierre Christin and Sebastian Verdier from the point of view of its genre affiliation, i.e. a dystopia. The author aims to reveal the dystopian characteristics of the texts of this genre in the twentieth century and their transformation in the texts of the early twenty-first century. The author of the article presents an analysis of the graphic novel which examines the history, life, and conditionality of the life position of the writer George Orwell in relation to the reality of his most famous novel, 1984 (1948). In accordance with the aim, the author uses the analysis and synthesis of theoretical information regarding dystopia as a genre, as well as structural-typological and comparative methods as research methods. As a result of the analysis, the author reveals the following characteristics of dystopia in the biographical graphic novel about the life of the English writer: the image of the anti-humanistic society which Orwell lived in, his loneliness and detachment as a confrontation with the imperfect surrounding world filled with fear and despair, the writer’s fight with a totalitarian world order, and the opposition of violence and love. A distinctive characteristic of the graphic novel was the combination of Orwell’s image with the images of rebels from his dystopias which allowed the authors, P. Christen and S. Verdier, to present the English writer as a person struggling with an unacceptable world order with the help of literature. The authors of the early twenty-first century consider Orwell a prophetic figure and bring the writer to the foreground of their graphic novel, thus emphasising the continuity of his views in modern literature which also often shows dystopian features that characterise the instability of the present which we exist in.