1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/10/1984-george-orwell

by plg • 13 years ago

47 63 13 years ago

plg• 13 years ago

It's worth re-reading this wonderful book every couple of years. Every time I do, I see something new, either in the story itself, or in the writing craft, or in the story's context in society, as our world changes.

It's also worth asking ourselves each time we re-read 1984, are we farther away or closer to the life depicted in the book, than last time we read it?

mindcrime3• 13 years ago

I last re-read it about 5 or 6 years ago, IIRC. I'd say we're closer to that life now, than then.

3am• 13 years ago

This is about about as far as I can remember society being away from 1984. The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?), but remember the most pernicious influence in the actual book wasn't the surveillance, but the criminalization of actual ideas and corrupting the language in order to accomplish that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak).. in particular whiteblack (not to minimize your own nom de plume).

spindritf2• 13 years ago

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and most of the communist block, we are farther than we have ever been since 1984 was written.

mindcrime3• 13 years ago

I read that book my senior year in high-school, and to this day I will cite it as one of the - if not THE - most influential books I've ever read. I know Orwell was no libertarian, but what I took from the book (probably influenced by a genetic proclivity towards rebellion and anti-authoritarian thinking) was a tremendous mistrust of government... which I suspect was a strong influence on my eventually settling into a libertarian worldview.

Some people say that Nineteen Eighty-Four wasn't written to be a warning, and maybe it wasn't - but I have a hard time seeing how anybody could read it and not discover something of a warning inside. And I think that's even more true given the various revelations over the past few years, vis-a-vis surveillance and diminishing civil liberties.

I encourage anybody who hasn't read Nineteen Eighty-Four to go read it immediately. If you aren't either angry has hell, or sad as hell, or both, at the end, you're a rare breed.

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

cma• 13 years ago

Left-libertarian, or royal-libertarian?

http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html

mindcrime3• 13 years ago

Meh... I don't much care for labels, and leaving it at "libertarian" is probably specific enough. But if you really care, I associate a lot with the "voluntaryist" and/or "anarcho-capitalist" schools of thought. My beliefs about the ownership of land are in a state of flux and I'm not actually convinced there is any truly objective way to settle that issue.

fennecfoxen2• 13 years ago

People interested in Orwell's 1984 might also be interested in C. S. Lewis's' That Hideous Strength, a pre-Atomic treatment of the dystopian sci-fi future from an unexpected author that actually predates 1984. Here's a review... by Orwell. http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/

His book describes the struggle of a little group of sane people against a nightmare that nearly conquers the world. A company of mad scientists – or, perhaps, they are not mad, but have merely destroyed in themselves all human feeling, all notion of good and evil – are plotting to conquer Britain, then the whole planet, and then other planets, until they have brought the universe under their control.
...
There is nothing outrageously improbable in such a conspiracy. Indeed, at a moment when a single atomic bomb – of a type already pronounced “obsolete” – has just blown probably three hundred thousand people to fragments, it sounds all too topical.

oneeyedpigeon• 13 years ago

Interesting to note that Orwell railed against tyranny, control of the understrength masses by a powerful few, and the obliteration of individualism and C. S. Lewis wrote thinly-disguised Christian propaganda targeted towards children.

fennecfoxen2• 13 years ago

That Hideous Strength is anything but "thinly-disguised Christian propaganda targeted towards children." First, as a novel, it's openly Christian (which, combined with the sci-fi dystopia, makes it a pretty unique entity - I find it fascinating, myself). It may also help you understand the sort of things the Christian right fears from the likes of people like yourself.

Secondly, it's not targeted towards children. Even assuming a child would be paying attention after the first ten minutes' read: there's a sadistic lesbian police chief (a character of the sort whom Lewis is theorized to personally fancy), several open (if brief) discussions about sexuality and eroticism... to say nothing of the violent murders, suicides and tiger maulings.

It's not exactly what you'd consider child-safe, let alone targeted.

But I guess if you already know all there is to know about Lewis from the five-minute treatment in your local left-leaning literature class, or if you gleaned most of it secondhand from reading Neil Gaiman's The Problem of Susan, then you have no need to see anything that might interfere with your expectations. Go ahead and congratulate yourself on truly understanding the man.

Also be sure to avoid: his WWI poetry. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2003/2003-h/2003-h.htm

PythonicAlpha14• 13 years ago

It seems to me, this book is more relevant today than ever. Orwell might have erred with the date, but I think he didn't with the direction of human kind.

bananacurve2• 13 years ago

The state of the world is improving, sorry but it is, but that doesn't fit into the epic narrative that so many want to believe. Your life is not as epic a struggle as your parents or their parents, all men are essentially kings today in terms of freedom and opportunity and a million other metrics. No one reports good news, progress is not as exciting as doom.

PythonicAlpha14• 13 years ago

I don't want to believe, that the world is rapidly being corrupted, but it is.

Freedom and opportunity?

Opportunity might be true in some areas (particularly IT), but not in other areas. Just because you think you are king, you are not!

Freedom, no, not at all. Democracy has brought much freedom to the people and after the 2nd WW freedom lived up to it's maximum, it seems to me. But in the last decades it declined rapidly.

Do you mean, freedom in Iraq? Or in Afghanistan or other Arabian countries? Think twice! There might be some countries, yes, but they are far away from being real free.

Freedom in western countries? Europe?? The US???

Think again! Just think!

BugBrother• 13 years ago

You are totally correct in all you write. Yet, it is still quite easy to think of future 1984 scenarios.

For instance, consider the Chinese version of NSA, it is an ideal tool for a free economy (i.e. a working economy) with control of the population. The country has already got a capitalist economy married to a dictatorship. We expect China to open up and democratize, now that it is getting better and the average education is increasing. But what if the communist party instead starts to integrate with the military, increases automatic surveillance and goes the other way? "The future as a foot that stamps in a face" (iirc from 1984) might seem lika a nice scenario for quite a few guys in boots.

Will it happen? Afaik, the risk is small. But it certainly exists.

saraid2164• 13 years ago

Orwell might have erred with the date

Not really.

PythonicAlpha14• 13 years ago

Not really.

What do you have in mind? I was thinking about it, but could not get anything fixed to 1984 that could make it a relevant date.

cafard2• 13 years ago

Anthony Burgess writes somewhere or other that Orwell wanted to use 1948 but was talked out of it.

cafard2• 13 years ago

If taken at face value, it suffers from the same problem as "The Godfather", i.e. the picture of a perfectly consistent, always working system. That fit nicely into notions of the totalitarian state popularized about that time, and lasting into the 1980s and beyond. The alteration of the leading Communist regimes into whatever they have become--how do you characterize the PRC?--has not entirely destroyed the appeal of these notions.

iaygo• 13 years ago

It's an interesting article but of course the writing deadline was only a part of what killed him. His health declined during the period of being a tramp and working menial jobs in France where he was hospitalized with pneumonia. It didn't help being shot through the neck by a fascist sniper in the Spanish Civil War and also being a heavy smoker. Lastly, wintering in cold, wet Scotland isn't a good plan for anyone with bad lungs.

Perceval• 13 years ago

The world of 1984 was based on James Burnham's book The Managerial Revolution. Orwell even wrote a couple reviews of Burnham's work. Here's the first: http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh

simonebrunozzi• 13 years ago

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned "Brave New World" so far. IMHO, much closer to actual reality than 1984.

PythonicAlpha14• 13 years ago

Might be. I must admit, that I do not know Brave New World as good as 1984.

Might be, that there are more exact descriptions of our future around. But one thing I think is dominant and alarming: The "free" world does not converge to a system of even rights and freedom for all, but into a new system of control and inequality, that might in turn even top the system of the middle ages.

ArkyBeagle2• 13 years ago

Orwell had tuberculosis, not uncommon for people from urban environment in his day. That's why the "bad lung". Whether he smoked or not is probably quite irrelevant.

Orwell fought against Fascism ( both of the Lft and of the Right) , and mercantilism/empire. Not capitalism. Something can be one of those, but not both. These things are quite precise terms that have very specific meanings.

The point of 1984 is not that some sinister cadre has seized power ( that's more like Alan Moore in "V for Vendetta" ) but rather that people stopped wanting to think at all, and the resulting regime met their preferences better as they simply stopped thinking at all.

dallos• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29

George Orwell averred that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) must be partly derived from We.

Orwell began Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) some eight months after he read We in a French translation and wrote a review of it. Orwell is reported as "saying that he was taking it as the model for his next novel."

1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell

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