George Orwell-1984

"'If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever'" (230).1984 is one of the most famous dystopias ever written (along with a predecessor like Brave New World or a successor like The Handmaid's Tale). And with good reason -- this book is incredibly intense. Orwell's picture of the future describes the boot and its stamping of a human face in all the detail necessary to frighten everyone from the pessimistic misanthropes to the idealistic optimists. Which camp would Orwell himself belong to? Perhaps both. The book could only be written from the most profound conviction that such a future could indeed happen, a conviction motivated by societies where Big Brother already existed in large part when Orwell wrote the book. But 1984 has become a touchstone of our culture in the way that it functions as a warning. Can we prove the optimist in Orwell correct, and proceed to take the book's warning as a corrective for certain tendencies in our own society? We have survived the bloodiest century in human history without the final annihilation of nuclear war, and without the kind of Big Brother society envisioned by Orwell (although that is debatable). Frankly, that's not much of an accomplishment to brag about, and a fresh re-reading of 1984 for everyone on the eve of the new millennium might just help make a few things turn out differently.My comments so far have been based on the assumption that a book can change society. 1984 certainly takes itself seriously, and the possession of a book like Orwell's in the Big Brother society it depicts would be a thought-crime of the first order. At this point, I would like to say that a self-righteous society that ignores warnings like Orwell's in 1984 frightens me. Perhaps more so than Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia. Is this descriptive of Western culture at this juncture in history? If we do not have Big Brother as such, there might be other, more subtle things to worry about. As I was reading 1984, I was struck by many echoes of Foucault, and his theories of discipline. And Foucault makes it clear that he thinks power and discipline permeate all areas of society, whether totalitarian or democratic. In another parallel, I think that Orwell's idea of doublethink is not restricted by any means to the fictional society of Oceania. An example from the book deals with the Party's claim that the revolution happened to liberate the proles: "But simultaneously, true to the principles of doublethink, the Party taught that proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals, by the application of a few simple rules" (65). I see doublethink in the way that European powers colonized the rest of the planet, and in the continuing economic domination of poorer countries. I see doublethink in certain attitudes towards women, where the double standard is alive and well. These ideas raised by Orwell are more than a little disturbing, if all of the implications are examined.However, the book's lasting power lies not in all of this social theory, but rather the concrete details of its story. From the smell of boiled cabbage in the hallway of Winston's apartment building to the political architecture ensuring that the powerful stay in power -- the entire range of human experience is here. And Winston Smith is a strong centre for the novel. Like many dystopias, we don't find out how the main character becomes rebellious. Winston Smith is a thought criminal

when we first meet him, and his story is premised on that leap. We follow him in his job, where he alters history according to instructions. We follow him through a love affair with the woman named Julia, and it's a strange romance. Winston says to Julia, "I hate purity, I hate goodness!" (112). And possibly with good reason, if such virtues are associated with the Party and its attempts to channel sexuality into avenues less destabilizing to society. Winston and Julia still participate in the Two Minute Hate, another effective form of catharsis and social control.Unfortunately, the last half of the book is not very interesting. Yes, Orwell continues to use many fascinating ideas, and the images of Winston under torture are indeed horrific. But the story comes to a crashing halt. First, Winston reads chapter after chapter from a rather dry book of political theory -- and no one is terribly surprised when we find out that the author is not who Winston thought it was. And when Winston is under torture, the book also bogs down, dramatically speaking. Perhaps the story has become too familiar, but we know that Winston will break when confronted with Room 101. This Big Brother society is too well-constructed to break apart in the face of one man's resistance. I found my interest picking up again when Winston was released, and his meeting with Julia might be some of the best writing in the novel.Perhaps the strongest aspect of the last half of the novel is Orwell's blunt answer to the question of why. Winston has read a book describing how the Party stays in power, but he is plagued by the question of why. When he asks O'Brien this question, the answer is as blunt as could be imagined: power for the sake of power. And we are confronted, not with some abstract homily about absolute power, but the reality of complete and utter social power perpetuating itself, confident of its own immortality. There should be tears in our eyes at the ending, for different reasons than Winston's tears, as Winston sits in the Chestnut Tree, thinking about how much he loves Big Brother.It's 1984 in Airstrip One, Oceania (formerly London, England). Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth, altering old newspapers to reflect current versions of events--"All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as necessary". This work is vital to the Party, whose legitimacy depends on the "mutability of the past."Oceania is governed by Big Brother and the Party and the doctrines of Ingsoc (English Socialism): WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.However, Winston does not believe these things and he has a message for us, which he confides to the journal that he has secretly begun keeping, even though he knows it will destroy him: To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one , another and do not live alone-to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink-greetings!What is doublethink?: To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget then to draw back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself-that was the ultimate subtlety:

consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.But against the tenets of doublethink, Winston posits the following: "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."Winston becomes convinced that a young woman at work, a sash wearing member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, is a member of the Thought Police out to destroy him, but one day she stumbles & when he helps her up, she hands him a note that says "I love you". The two soon become lovers, "but you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow against the Party. It was a political act." As Julia understands: "Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria; because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship."Winston and Julia know their love is doomed and they are doomed because of it, but they make each other a promise: Winston: When once they get ahold of us there will be nothing, literally nothing, that either of us can do for the other. If I confess, they'll shoot you, and if I refuse to confess they'll shoot you just the same. Nothing that I can do or say, or stop myself from saying, will put off your death for as much as five minutes. Neither of us will even know whether the other is alive or dead. We shall be utterly without power of any kind. The one thing that matters is that we shouldn't betray one another, although that can't make the slightest difference Julia: if you mean confessing, we shall do that, right enough. Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They torture you. Winston: I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal. Julia: They can't do that. It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything-anythingbut they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you. Winston: No, no; that's quite true. They can't get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them. Now that he is committed to independence of thought and loving Julia, Winston musters the courage to approach O'Brien, who he is convinced opposes Big Brother and tell him: "We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some kind of secret organization working against the Party, and that you are involved in it. We want to join it and work for it. We are enemies of the Party. We disbelieve in the principles of Ingsoc. We are thoughtcriminals. We are also adulterers. I tell you this because we want to put ourselves at your mercy. If you want us to incriminate ourselves in any other way, we are ready."And so, O'Brien initiates them into the Brotherhood. He gives them a text by Goldstein, a founding member, but subsequent enemy, of the Party and frequent subject of The Two Minutes Hate. Within the book, Goldstein explains that whereas human history had seen a series of rebellions by the Middle against the High in the name of equality, the current revolution lead by the Party is different: "With the development of machine production, ... the case was altered. Even if it was still necessary for human beings to do different kinds

of work, it was no longer necessary for them to live at different social or economic levels. Therefore, from the point of view of the new groups who were on the point of seizing power, human equality was no longer an ideal to be striven after, but a danger to be averted." And he describes the makeup of the Party: "The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists and professional politicians. These people, whose origins lay in the salaried middle class and the upper grades of the working class, had been shaped and brought together by the barren world of monopoly industry and centralized government."Here then lies the genius of Orwell and the reason that the Left so despises him. It would have been easy to write a polemic against fascism in 1948 and by then you could even criticize Communism without courting total revulsion from the Left. Moreover, the politically expedient way in which to criticize these isms was to speak of the noble goals betrayed by tiny bands of oligarchs. But Orwell went beyond these easier targets and attacked Socialism and centralized government in general. When Winston is being tortured, he is told: "If you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stomping on a human face-forever." 1984 stands as an indictment of all the bureaucratic boot wearers everywhere, regardless of their intentions or their ideology. It is a paean to freedom & freedom of thought.1984 is clearly the greatest novel of the 20th Century and should be #1 on the Modern Library list.The most powerful and terrifying novel I have read in years.' Arthur Schlesinger Jr.Undoubtedly for many of you this book will bring back bad memories. Of dreary English lessons, of reading out loud in front of the class and not understanding a word of what you're saying. But I urge you to put all of that to one side for a minute and give this fantastically absorbing and uncannily prophetic novel another go.'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' Thus begins a nightmare trip through a strange and troubled future Britain now named 'Airstrip 1', a part of the huge international state known as Oceania which is perpetually at war with either Eastasia (China and the countries south of it, Japan's islands and a large part of Manchuria, Mongolia and Tibet) or Eurasia (the northern part of the European and Asiatic land-mass, from Portugal to the Bering Strait). Winston Smith is our guide, a worker in the Ministry of Truth, where the past is constantly being rewritten, novels are produced by machines and songs are composed on devices called versificators. He is a pawn of The Party, whose figurehead is the omnipresent Big Brother and three contradictory slogans are: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.His actions are monitored twenty-four hours a day for signs of disloyalty or emotion, by telescreens with cameras inside and merciless spies (including children and friends brainwashed by the party's doctrines). Love has been abolished, along with free thought, and sex is indulged in only to produce more hardworking citizens to serve the cause. Oceania is populated by these virtual human drones, doing the party's bidding, and also by the 'proles' who can't muster the motivation to revolt ('Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.'). Having said that, you can hardly blame them: any hint of opposition is swiftly, and savagely, dealt with. The strong arm of the party, the so-called Thought Police, come for dissidents during the night, always during the night, taking them away to become 'unpeople'. If they're lucky. If not, they

might find themselves in Room 101, facing their deepest, darkest fears.So imagine Winston's surprise when a fellow worker, a young woman called Julia, risks all by passing him a note one day declaring that she loves him. The pair embark on an illicit affair, meeting in secret (or so they believe), eager to discuss how they can overthrow Big Brother. Winston has a feeling that O'Brien, a member of the inner party, may in fact be involved with the Brotherhood against BB. But is O'Brien to be trusted, or will he turn them both in to be reconditioned?A world-famous satire on totalitarianism and a critique of both the left and right, George Orwell's relentlessly depressing and yet awe-inspiring piece has certainly earned its place in the history books after fifty years in print. An inspiration for such films as Brazil and Judge Dredd (which was a comic book first -ed.), as well as TV programmes like 'The Prisoner', 'Blake's 7', 'Babylon 5' and... the list goes on.But what of the novel itself, and how has it stood up to the test of time? Remarkably well, as a matter of fact. Orwell's warnings about a country manipulated by an insane minority who want power for power's sake are just as relevant today as they ever were (especially in the light of Blair's New Labour nanny state and the European Union). You only have to look up the next time you're in town to realise that BB is watching you through CC TV cameras, as well as monitoring you on the Internet. All right, so these measures are an excellent means by which to combat crime both in the real world and in cyberspace, but it just goes to prove how accurate the author's predictions have turned out to be. And how careful we must be not to let such technology fall into the wrong hands.In addition, I was quite surprised by how horrific the book was, not just in terms of a sense of helpless inevitability that permeates the entire story, but also in its graphic descriptions.But not even this can compare with the poignancy of Winston's childhood remembrances, which outline the squalid conditions he was brought up in (obviously inspired by Orwell's own time living in poverty), his mother and baby sister's sudden disappearance and his entrance into a Reclamation Camp.The year - and even the century - may have come and gone, but 1984 is about so much more than just a date. It's about who we are, who we might be and who we definitely should not be. For my money there's never been a better time to reacquaint yourself with this eternally significant masterwork, comrade.Read more of Paul's reviews at Terror Tales Online, The Online Home of the Horror Small Press or visit his web site, Shadow Writer.Winston Smith is a rebel- but then to even think about doing anything against the party is a crime- thoughtcrime. Yet, he dares to step out of line and even starts a diary! He meets a girl- Julia and they fall in love- again something which would get them killed or worse. In the end they do get caught and are put through horrifying torture. The purpose as OBrien says is not to merely kill the rebels, but to make them accept and love the party and Big Brother before they are finally shot.The idea of Big Brother(the iconic leader) is based on Joseph Stalin. But unlike the latter, we do not know if he is a living person. Yet, Big Brother is everywhere, he listens to everything to you say, he watches everything you do(somewhat like God?). The world is constantly at war and though the statistics say otherwise, peoples ration are decreased almost every week. There are four ministries which rule Oceania(the world has three super powersOceania, Eurasia and Eastasia), i.e. Ministry of Love, Ministry of Peace, Ministry of Truth and Ministry of Plenty, which deal with controlling people though constant monitoring

and torture, war, falsification and propaganda and controlling rations respectively.You can feel a sense of despair through out the book, not only is it palpable, it starts affecting you. the arguments and ideas are driven through with pain and anguish- what if the world turns out to be like this? Or are we really heading to a world like this? Maybe not, hopefully.The book flows much like a saw does through wood, slicing and making you question the motives of the world you live in. While it may seem the author is nihilisticthere is enough of salt in there to see what he sees. If in the last 60 or so years(since the book was written), the world hasnt moved one bit of the knife-edge in terms of falling into a world of hatred and war, then surely there is something we need to think about.Even in an age of democracy- you cant but help draw parallels to the present day situation. The picture is no way pretty. In the end you are left with a damning silence, wondering what is reality. The characters are almost alive, in fact you believe they are real. You live every second of the book and know through out what awaits you. It doesnt matter, what you know, all that matters is what they think you have to know. 2+2=5.A must read book, but be prepared to answer questions which you never thought you would ask yourself. There is no happy ending- there is nothing that makes you smile anywhere in the book. Big Brother is watching you.