Worlds of Freedom and Unfreedom: The Totalitarian Imaginaries of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Gay Hunter and Antoni Słonimski’s Two Ends of the World

Abstract

This paper analyses the visions of totalitarian futures in two works written in the interwar period, namely Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Gay Hunter (1934) and Antoni Słonimski’s Two Ends of the World (1937). In both novels, the rise of Fascism, supported by the use of advanced technologies, is shown as directly responsible for the destruction of the known world and for the suppression of individual and collective freedom. While addressing the rise of totalitarianism, both authors also envision humanity’s return to a more primitive state, however, for different purposes. This paper, therefore, explores the intersections as well as differences in the authors’ perceptions of modernity, progress, civilisation and primitivism, as crucial to their extrapolations of humankind’s destiny.