Even though I finished this one at the begining of the week I have only just gotten round to writing this one up. I was not feeling too well at the start of the week - had some kind of exczema rash and needed to take allergy pills that made me tired, antibiotics that made my stomach feel weird and use a steroid cream to make the rash all better. Fortunately the rash is almost gone now and my stomach has gotten used to taking the antibiotics. I feel like a robot sometimes having to set alarms to remind myself to take my pills. But is is all for the best and it is only for a few more days.
The one I have just finished means that I can finally cross off one more of my BBC Top 100 reads list (it is nr 11 on the list). This is a result as I have not been reading too many books on that list and hope to get through it before I reach 50... well you gotta have goals!
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1984 - George Orwell
I absolutely loved it!!
The story feels alien enough to be fictional but real enough so that it might actually become reality if the right circumstances would come together at some point in time.
As I write this review I realise that it is full of opinions and emotions that I can afford to have but none of the characters in the book can. I cannot imagine what it would be like if the human race would ever allow itself to become what Orwell projects in this book. I think that this is part of what makes the books so special. It was written back in 1949, just a couple of years after the end of the Second World War and it must have been a time of uncertainty, despair and rebuilding. You can tell that the events of the war have had an impact on Orwell. The Second World War might have made some people realise that the future may not always be rosy and bright. It has shown the world that it may only take a charismatic nutter, one dangerous idea and a lot of people who do not care about what happens to them or others, to create a world that is completely alien to the one you know now. In 1984 Orwell seems to have created his vision of a world that seems extreme but yet has elements in it that are too far away from the truth to make it possible to become reality. It shows what might have happened if mankind had accepted a totalitarian rule where the individual does not counts and all that is done is for the greater glory of the Party not the individual. There is no individual - no individual feelings, no individual thought, no individual activity. One of the things that struck me is that it is not so much that people are hounded for what they are (Jews, Gypsies, anything but German) but that they are targeted when they want to have their own thoughts, feelings and ideas. All that Winston really wants is the right to believe that 2 and 2 make 4 all the time, not just when Big Brother tells him to. It might seem trivial but it is in essence the freedom to have your own thoughts and not to have someone tell you what to think. It is knowing that what you know in your heart to be true is not going to get you killed.
In the world that Winston lives in his time is never is own and he is always watched, even when he sleeps. People are always kept busy, there is work, collective activities and then sleep. There is some free time for the individual but most of them probably use it for Party related work anyway... what else is there? Not one person we meet (except Winston and Julia) seem to want time for themselves to get away from the Party regime. The rest of the masses seem to be happy to follow the party's lead in everything.
The Party is everywhere. There are monitors in his house - although Winston has managed to find one corner in his living room where the screen does not see what he does. Yet how he thought that Big Brother would allow that to continue for long is beyond me. He knows that the Party wants to take control of all individuals in all areas of their lives. How did he think he was the one who was going to escape that influence? Why did he think that Big Brother would not be suspicious if he moved out of the line of sight of the television screen and hid hours of his life from the Party?
Winston's job consists of re-writing history and making it fit in with the Truth as the Party sees it. He spends his time changing stories in the media to fit in with the Party ideology. Even if this means changing who they have been at war with for the past 5 years or who got killed when and what for. I believe that at one level Winston knows that what he is doing is wrong and that he is helping in keeping up the farce of this unreality that he lives in. However, he seems to be unable to use that knowledge for anything useful as rebelling or organising a resistance. The Party and the strict way society is organised has made sure of that... remember that there is no individual and the Party is always right. Winston has this knowledge of altering history but does not know what to do with it, who to talk to about it - for who can you trust, or how to even start to make a change in his life or that of others. He keeps saying that he does not know what history is but he forgets that his mind contains his past, his history and that of the world around him. If only he understood that he can simply see how the world changes around him by what Big Brother makes him change in the documents. If he kept hold of the changes that Big Brother asks him to carry out then he would be able to trace the past back. But Winston does what he is told keeps changing history and wanders through life thinking he is the only one having these un-Partyish thoughts. Winston is leading a double life in a way. On the one hand he keeps up the facade of believing Party ideology while on the other hand he tries to make sense of his un-Party thoughts. He is forced to see one truth and thinks that there is another truth out there but how he proves this is beyond him. He knows his thoughts are not in line with what the Party wants him to believe. Part of him thinks he can escape, that perhaps he is the one who can get away and start the resistance. But it is a plan doomed to fail from the start - Winston does not know what to do with his freedom of thought. He is not a man of great ideas. All he wants to do is write in his diary and share his thoughts with his lover, Julia.
Julia who does not really care about him, the Party of anything else in this world. Julia who might well have been the one to set him up into betraying how he really feels about the Party. She is the one who makes the first move on Winston. Why? From the way he is described I cannot imagine that Winston is the catch of the century? It seems that all that Julia wants is to have some fun. She is manipulative and very clever. She knows how to play the system, knows exactly what to do, what to say, how to act. She does all this so Big Brother does not suspect her of having un-Party thoughts and feelings. And yet she gets caught with Winston. At best you could say that if she is not a plant then she is the one who gets the worst deal. On the face of it she does everything right, she tows the Party line and yet she gets caught. It seems that even when on the surface you do everything right they will find you out, they will catch you and they will punish you! They will know if you are not true to the Party, they know everything and to try and resist or escape it's influence is futile!
The world around Winston feels dark and depressing. I cannot remember Winston having a happy thought or feeling happy very often. Well, he does get really excited when he finds the notebook to write in and the glass paperweight because to him they are a link to the past. I think he experiences some kind of freedom of mind in what he writes in his notebook but he is not generally happy or relaxed. His affair with Julia gives him pleasure and she is a little bit of light in his life. However, you already know it cannot possibly last. Not in the world that Winston lives in. In the end we learn that the Party knew what he was up to all along! They had been watching him for years. It does not even occur to Winston to question this. To me it seems unlikely that Big Brother has been watching Winston for almost 7 years and that now he has finally been caught. It seems more likely that someone sold him out not too long ago and that is how he ends up arrested. However, Winston is sure that Big Brother has watched his every move and downfall and that there is not even any chance of escape. Strangely enough neither him nor Julia try to even move when the TV screen shouts at them to stay put until the soldiers come to get them. To me this kind of warning means that they are not there yet and there is still time to get away. To Winston it just means that they have found him, he will be caught, he will be punished. Whatever will follow is inevitable so why even try to move. The idea to escape does not even cross his mind!
The story takes place in only a few enclosed spaces. The flat where Winston lives... or maybe I should say exists, is a shabby flat. The place that Winston works is a small cubicle where he sits, huddled over his little desk space, whispering amendments to articles into his speakwrite. When Winston and Julia meet for the first time it is not out in the open but in a clearing surrounded by trees hidden away from the grasp of Big Brother (they hope). When Julia and Winston meet later on in their affair it is in a small back room in the slums of the city. When he is being "re-educated" he spends his time in small cells being de-humanised and forced into betraying everything that he knows is right.
The man who is sent to re-educate Winston in the cells is one of the scariest characters in the book. O'Brien is one who realises what the Party is, how it operates, how it manipulates reality and how it influences people's lives. He sees the truth and chooses to still carry on as he does for the good of the Party. What the Party says is true and even if is his own eyes see that it is different he will convince himself that the Party is right. He is a blind faith follower of the Party and what it stands for and that is why he is so good at his job. He does.. he does not question. Winston tries to resist him up to some point, for what is the harm in thinking that 2 and 2 is four when the Party wants you to say it is 5? But in the end he is no match for O'Brien and he succumbs to the Party line and is released back into the world a broken man, harmless.
What scares me most about the book is how easy it seems to be for a relatively small group of people to have absolute control over the masses. None of the people we meet are stupid or dimwitted but all of them accept their fate and seem resigned to their place in life. They really have no opinion one way or the other as to what is reality and what is fiction. They are spoon fed their history and accept it because Big Brother could not possibly be wrong.
Reading the book and from the remarks that O'Brien makes I get the feeling that there is not even a Big Brother any more in this world of Orwell's. It is just an idea invented to keep the masses under control. I think the war that is going on is probably never going to be over and that life will always be full of party activities and restrictions for the people who live in that world. I also believe that none of the people in Orwell's world will give a flying hoot if that was the case. This is the life they know and if they were to be free as we understand it they would not know what to do with it. It's a depressing view of mankind and the world but if you look at the world around you in some nations, some elements of Orwell's invented world are not too far from the truth.
The appendix on the Principles of Newspeak is genius!!! In this one chapter about language and how the Party uses it to restrict and change the meaning of words really teaches you all you need to know about the society that invented it.
Title: 1984
Author: George Orwell
326 pages
Penguin Books
no ISBN nr
Books bought: 0 (my Bookaholics Anonymous sponsor will be proud of me!)
Books to be read: 67
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