Nineteen Eighty-Four
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (George Orwell) - Four Stars
Far from being a polemic against the Soviet-style of socialism the empire of Oceania is so obviously based on, I prefer to interpret Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as his concerned rumination on the nature of power. The existence of a nation like the Soviet Union is not Orwell's primary concern, but rather the fact that human beings could even invent such a system in the first place. On the surface, a story about the individual being crushed by a tyrannic government; underneath, a sad treatise on the extremes Orwell feels people are capable of going to in order to oppress their fellow man. The novel is a condemnation, a plausible fable on the lengths to which people in power—in any country, in every empire—will go to stay in power.
Orwell's pessimistic book argues that the more advanced humanity's technology becomes, the more regressed we become in our nature; an argument I must say contains more than a spark of validity. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Idi Amin Dada, Robert Mugabe, Islam Karimov... it's no coincidence that the tyrants of the 20th and 21st centuries make the tyrants of ancient times look like boy scouts. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Cuba, North Korea and other countries have all maintained policies and performed actions reminiscent of the Oceanian government in the novel. Now, only a fool would assert that America is becoming Oceania, but only a fool would deny that passing resemblances exist. For example, how well does the quote at the end of this entry, a passage from a novel written nearly sixty years ago, apply to the administration of George WPE Bush and their justification for the war on terror?
The book itself is surprisingly compact and linear. There are precious few characters of note in the novel, and even though the conclusion of the novel is foregone (even speculated on throughout the book) it still contains noteworthy impact. Parts of the book have not aged well (pneumatic tubes for interoffice mail?), but other parts were eerily prescient (the "telescreens" of the book exist, of a sort, in modern-day North Korea: every home is required to have a specially-made radio that cannot be turned off and broadcasts propoganda 24/7).
The main episode in the novel to support my interpretation is the climactic scene in Room 101. As cheesy and cliche as my words might seem, Orwell eloquently details how, when someone finally creates a way to efficiently force people to stop loving one another, mankind is doomed.
Far from being a polemic against the Soviet-style of socialism the empire of Oceania is so obviously based on, I prefer to interpret Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as his concerned rumination on the nature of power. The existence of a nation like the Soviet Union is not Orwell's primary concern, but rather the fact that human beings could even invent such a system in the first place. On the surface, a story about the individual being crushed by a tyrannic government; underneath, a sad treatise on the extremes Orwell feels people are capable of going to in order to oppress their fellow man. The novel is a condemnation, a plausible fable on the lengths to which people in power—in any country, in every empire—will go to stay in power.
Orwell's pessimistic book argues that the more advanced humanity's technology becomes, the more regressed we become in our nature; an argument I must say contains more than a spark of validity. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Idi Amin Dada, Robert Mugabe, Islam Karimov... it's no coincidence that the tyrants of the 20th and 21st centuries make the tyrants of ancient times look like boy scouts. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Cuba, North Korea and other countries have all maintained policies and performed actions reminiscent of the Oceanian government in the novel. Now, only a fool would assert that America is becoming Oceania, but only a fool would deny that passing resemblances exist. For example, how well does the quote at the end of this entry, a passage from a novel written nearly sixty years ago, apply to the administration of George WPE Bush and their justification for the war on terror?
The book itself is surprisingly compact and linear. There are precious few characters of note in the novel, and even though the conclusion of the novel is foregone (even speculated on throughout the book) it still contains noteworthy impact. Parts of the book have not aged well (pneumatic tubes for interoffice mail?), but other parts were eerily prescient (the "telescreens" of the book exist, of a sort, in modern-day North Korea: every home is required to have a specially-made radio that cannot be turned off and broadcasts propoganda 24/7).
The main episode in the novel to support my interpretation is the climactic scene in Room 101. As cheesy and cliche as my words might seem, Orwell eloquently details how, when someone finally creates a way to efficiently force people to stop loving one another, mankind is doomed.
Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary.
posted by Kevin at 10:01 PM
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