Nineteen-Eighty-Four

[liam]

This is just a little kudos thrown to Mr George Orwell as I have recently re-read my copy of 1984 and have rediscovered a love for it and it's dramatic description of dystopian society.
I found this to be a very politically enlightening book upon first reading it at 14, it opened my eyes to political theory/philosophy and it's practice.
Who else appreciates this masterpiece and what has it perhaps revealed to you, if anything?

[downbeatplumb]

I read it at school, it was very dark. The architype dystopian future. It was quite prophetic the surveilance society he predicted is here now in a more benign form.

[liam]

That was something I meant to mention, can anybody else see a parallel between modern society's direction and the state control in the book? Because I'm sure we aren't so long from it as I'd like to think. I think the darkness is necessary and acts only in a good way, but I have some deep-rooted love of broken-down society in art so maybe I am a little biased towards that aspect of it.

[Annik]

Man, I loved that book. I should re-read it.

Do you guys think that the two characters where ever really in love? I always thought that they were just in a relationship of convenience and wanted to rebel.

[Faith No More]

It's been many years since I've read it, so I don't remember a whole lot of the details. I do remember it was an amazing book, and I really liked it.

Also, I own a first edition printing of it.

[Brian37]

Hitchens loved Orwell and considered him required reading. I haven't read it since my youth, but what stuck with me was the oppressive tone of the utopia must be sought at the cost of the individual. Animal Farm had much the same tone.

Believers don't understand what a hero to individual freedom he was, even for them. He was of Jeffersonian mind. Hitchens may have said "damn it, you are full of shit, and your religious credulity fucks up society". But individual freedom and the ability, even to make absurd claims, was not something Hitchens would have wanted oppressed by government.

There is no such thing as a utopia, be it religious or political. There is only our common humanity and the common law we as a species consent to. Hitchens understood this. Believers should be thanking him, not condemning him. And Orwell too.

[liam]

There is no such thing as a utopia, be it religious or political. There is only our common humanity and the common law we as a species consent to. Hitchens understood this. Believers should be thanking him, not condemning him. And Orwell too.

But i think the point of 1984 was to contrast dystopian reality with the expectation of utopia which led to the setting up of the government. It's quite damning of socialism which i dislike but overall a a magnificent read.

Do you guys think that the two characters where ever really in love? I always thought that they were just in a relationship of convenience and wanted to rebel.

well honestly no, but this seems to me to be a sub-narrative in itself, the idea of love in the book is meant to be that of an eschewd connection and so their love may not reflect our idea of true love but when compared to the uniform party-supported marriage it can be seen as a massive departure towards real love

[Kayenneh]

I loved it! Should read it again, though.. And I should definitely read Animal Farm too.

[Minimalist]

As George Carlin once observed - "Germany lost WWII but fascism won."

[The Grand Nudger]

Hehehe, I love it when i get the opportunity to blather on about this book. Orwell wasn't making any predictions. The sci-fi elements were added as a theme. He didn't predict a surveillance society, he felt that such a society already existed, and the best way for him to emphasize that was to paint a narrative where people could be watched directly at all times. Interesting to note that it wasn't actually the Soviet Union (though he drew upon it's lingo as a shortcut to menace..if you will) upon which this society was based, but the UK during wartime. It would seem that Mr Orwell didn't see much difference between what group of people might be intentionally misleading whatever other group of people for whatever reason- ie, it wasn't kosher to do this sort of thing even if the idea was to "fight communism/facism". Another interesting thing to note is that JFK's famous "last speech" ( the one he never delivered) echoes this sentiment in that the text would seem to question the value of becoming a cruel mirror image of the type of society you are trying to defend against in the course of setting yourself up as a bulwark against it. What good is it to fight facism/communism-what-have-you if you become interchangeable with your "enemies" in the process? Of course he got shot, and many a conspiracy theory finds it's origins in this text. In any case, the true value of this book was not that it was a prophetic sort of sci-fi (ala Jules Verne) but that it's predictions failed to pan out (as Orwell himself noted). It allowed us a glimpse into what we could be-at our very worst-and we went another way with it. Nevertheless, surveillance technology did progress to the point at which 1984 is a thing of the past (they have better ways to watch you now). On the other hand, as far as "prophetic sci-fi" is concerned, nothing in 1984 was so far beyond the scope of technology (even in his own lifetime) that it would be surprising to see it actualized. I like to think thaty this was his intention..to imagine a society that is only slightly different from our own, with technology that could appear "in the not-so-distant-future" in order to manufacture a sense of palpable dread due to the plausibility of the narrative.