Justice In John Ginzburg's A Brave New World

As children growing up, especially in the “land of the free”, we expect the world to be a fair and just place. Commit a crime and you face punishment, commit no crime and you live freely. In the eyes of children the world is simple – black and white. However, even in America, the world is not an evenhanded place. Everyday innocent people go to jail and criminals walk free. The justice system is not perfect and that is a reality children learn as they evolve into adults. Nonetheless there are periods of history in which the injustices that occurred are unfathomable and irreconcilable to even cynical observers. These injustices range from slavery and genocide to political purges, but they all share an air of incredulousness for us now. Yet, what …show more content…
When accused of being a Trotskyist for not dismissing the writings of a “Trotskyist” co-worker, Eugenia first experiences outrage and she “shouted and stamped (her) feet at” such ludicrous accusations. Her anger and frustration, which does not diminish with time, is a testament to her borderline naïve belief that her party was beyond corruption and that justice should and would prevail. She remains consistently confused at being charge with “relaxation of vigilance” which turns to “collaborating with enemies of the people” and only snowballs further from there as the corruption in the system grows. Her passionate rejection of these charges not only shows her dedication to the logic she based her entire life on as a professor, but also her unwavering loyalty to the ideals of communism. She would have died for her party “without the slightest hesitation” and she refused to sign any confessions that would condemn her allowed her “the blessing of a clear conscience the knowledge” that she had not condemned anyone else. This is not to say she does not become more cynical when it comes to the government as she goes through her incarceration, but that she holds to her morals which allows her to hold on to small pieces of sanity and identity that can often become lost in the confines of cells or the hard labor in the …show more content…
Although, George Orwell put his life on the line to fight in Spain, got shot in the neck, watch his friends get arrested, and had to flee the country as a wanted man, he still in the end was able to return to “the England (he) had known in (his) childhood”. Thus, in a way he was still an outsider to the situation. His family and way of life were not really at risk to the same extent as those in Russia and so Orwell’s understanding and explanation of the war is not as convincing and important as Ginzburg’s point of view. Eugenia Ginzburg almost lost everything as a result of Stalinism. She was ripped away from her family and forced to spend years in prison and then a labor camp. While in prison she was tormented on the “conveyor belt” which was an “uninterrupted questioning by a changing team of examiners” complete with “days without sleep or food”. Not to mention the time she spent in punishment cells getting frostbite or all the tortures to be found in labor camps. And she suffered all of this with undying loyalty to the ideals of communism, while Orwell relaxed in London and wrote anti-communist novels. He was able to go out and buy luxuries when on break, while she never had a single reprieve from hell except in the rare package from her mother and the books lent to her at one prison. By having a very direct and high