Lyn's Reviews > 1984

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

This changed the way that I looked at ideologies and changed the way I looked at leadership. Cynical, scathing, and not without its flaws, this is still a stark, haunting glimpse at what could be.

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”

Chilling.

** 2018 addendum - it is a testament to great literature that a reader recalls the work years later and this is a book about which I frequently think. The scene that I most often think is when Winston and Julia are captured.

** 2019 reread - Lost in my memory was to what extent Orwell describes and explains his nightmare.
Winston Smith cautiously and surreptitiously learns about the Brotherhood led by Goldstein and then learns all too well about doublethink.

More than just a cautionary political tale, Orwell has described an ideological abyss into which we must not gaze; a glimpse at authoritarianism power plays to which the Nazis and Soviets never descended. While we can appreciate the reminder to avoid authoritarianism and his prophetic vision, the idea that truth can be arranged through media is perhaps the most relevant for us today.

*** 2020 reread

This time around I focused on the human side of this iconic novel – especially the relationship between Winston and Julia. In the past I have somewhat overlooked Julia as a character and thought that Orwell had neglected to form a strong female character, however I now think that she is every bit as strong as Winston and plays a central role in Orwell’s message.

Whereas Winston hates the party and wants to overturn it, Julia is much more practical and realistic in her rebellion. Winston thinks about the nature of the totalitarianism in abstract ways, Julia uses the terms of doublethink against the party and makes her frank sexuality a systematic rejection of party principle.

While Orwell was forming a cautionary tale based upon his own experience in writing against authoritarian regimes like Stalin’s, Hitler’s (both actually named in the text) and by extension Moa, Mussolini and Franco, it occurs to me that the irony of Winston’s dystopia is at least to some degree focused on the party members themselves. Winston embodies the use of media as propaganda and to disseminate inaccurate statements that prop up the party. In today’s world we are already seeing this kind of abrogation of truth in favor of party purity.

Every bit as timeless and relevant as it has ever been.

*** 2023 reread -

I think we all have had a situation similar to this: we search on the internet for something and then we start seeing advertisements related to our earlier search. That seems reasonable enough, understandable at least.

What about this situation though: we have a VERBAL discussion with our spouse, alone in our kitchen, and then we start seeing advertisements about the subject of our speech.

Wait a minute. OK, I’ve got an Amazon echo, they must have heard us talking.

Wait a minute: heard us talking? In the “privacy” of our home? And who is they?

The fear of surveillance has risen to an alarming level in the past few years and we can look back to 1948 and Orwell’s tale as one source of this anxiety.

I’m in my early 50s as I write this and my generation was raised to be somewhat suspect of governmental intrusions and overreach, taught to be vigilant against totalitarianism. We lived in the time of the Soviet Union and we were taught to be mindful of surveillance and propaganda.

But what if the surveillance does not come from government?
What if what we were taught was itself not wholly correct or accurate?

A young person recently told me that they had read 1984 in high school in the past 3-4 years so this gave me some hope about the next generation.

As a press officer in the military, I had a hand, as did Winston Smith, in shaping the news and thus history. If in my little corner of history, I cropped photos, erasing some people’s involvement in an event, destroying the full accurate record of what happened, then extrapolate this ability at official omission and you can begin to see how easily can the truth be tweaked to match a desired narrative.

This book is as provocative as ever, maybe more so in our strange political climate. More than anything else, this is a thought provoking novel, we are required to think critically about what Orwell states and he invites us, page after page, to think and rethink what we know and how we have been led to know it.

If we “know” something is true, why do we know that? HOW do we know that truth? Like Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom! We are asked to consider our source and to be at least a little skeptical, of everything.

In this reread, I also made notice of the casual violence that creeps up into Winston’s thoughts. Was Orwell suggesting that the subrogation of Winston’s natural feelings caused an aggressive response in him? Does injustice and tyranny lead to subconscious of animosity?

Orwell describes how Proles represent 85% of Oceania, we see the propaganda and party policy from the perspective of the party, of a party member who actually initiates the remaking of news and thus history. The Party makes up 15% and the inner party is only about 2%. It occurred to me that I’m a Prole, most of us are on the outside looking in. Like George Carlin said, “it’s a club, and we’re not in it.” Did the Proles care anymore? Did they pay attention to the “news” or were they more like Julia, and only played the part for the surveillance state?

I’m going to buy copies of this book for the young people in my life.