The Bottom Line: more relevant than ever, very readable, and likely to impact the reader; the likes of John Grisham can just cringe and scrape in unworthiness before it.
jkkelley's Full Review: Nineteen Eighty-Four Books
This Epinion contains a number of mature and potentially disturbing references. Big kids only, please. Please note also that I have carelessly revealed important plot details, on the grounds that this book is not so much about a plot--it is about ideas.
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He loved Big Brother.
Those are the final four words of 1984. When I first read them, they struck me like a board across the back of the neck. (And, be it noted, I was once nearly killed by such an impact--no lie--so I know precisely what I'm talking about.) It's been nearly a generation, but it may as well have been yesterday.
I first read it in a very superficial manner in high school, and it didn't really hit me until the actual year 1984. In fact, on the first date referenced specifically by the main character (April 4, 1984), I may well have been reading it. It was a text for my modern European history survey in college seventeen years ago (nearly to the day, in fact), so a superficial reading was not going to cut it--especially for a course in my major.
This time I was engrossed in Winston Smith's long, lonely, forlorn struggle against a world of contradictory statements designed to systematically break down the faintest trace of humanity and individuality. Winston, a faceless bureaucrat, declares war against a society whose raison d'être is to possess his mind. The system intrudes constantly; it functions the same whether Winston consents, just passively lies there, or fights back. He twists viciously, flings off the grunting weight of indifferent, impersonal oppression, and decides that he has not really lived until he began to fight.
I've been there. In fact, that describes my upbringing.
Winston discovers allies, but hope as one might for him, the system he goes up against handles rebels with an inexorable spirit-grinding mechanism. It is not enough that he die. It is not enough that he submit under duress. It is not enough that he confess to all manner of low crimes. Nothing will suffice but utter submission of the essential self.
Been there too. That describes my adulthood to this day.
The pressure of conformity insinuates from every direction... not just against me, but against all. My fourth rereading of 1984, for the purposes of this essay, left me with the belief that its message grows more relevant every day. I am amazed (and given hope by the fact) that our school systems do currently not ban it. The day they do (again), the message of 1984 will move from yellow to red alert (again).
Indulge me a moment. In-coming!
"You have no privacy. Get over it."
"It's just a business decision; don't take it personally."
"If you don't vote, you can't complain."
"Wear a Tommy Humdinger shirt. Be individual. Be unique."
"Surely you don't believe those fairy tales about a god and a cross."
"Don't be rude to telemarketers; they are just doing their jobs."
"My self-confidence has soared since I got my breast implants."
"If you want to get hired, you'll wear a real suit."
"You don't understand; this drug replaces a chemical your brain doesn't produce."
"A computer on every desktop, running Microsoft software."
"The nail that sticks up is hammered down."
"Only 'liberals' truly understand the human condition."
"It's too wordy. If you can't get the message across in ten words, forget it."
"What do you mean, she's black (/white/Jewish/Thai)? How could you do this to me?"
"Just ignore the bully. Names can never hurt you. Never throw the first punch."
"I still need to lose ten more pounds."
"You don't want to have children? You're sick!"
"Oh, sure, you're bisexual. We all were too, before we really confronted our sexuality."
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
"It's dirty down there."
"If you don't like this country, why don't you just leave?"
"If you value your Temple Recommend, you'll do as Elder Sanctimoni and I tell you."
"You know what the neighbours would say."
"Nice girls don't use those words."
"So, John...your mother tells me you haven't taken communion for two years."
"Ever have those days when you just don't feel 'fresh and feminine'?"
"Drive the sporty new Acura Spatula LX!"
"All my friends listen to Rage Against the Machine, so I will too."
"If you don't stand up during the national anthem, you're a Commie."
"Everyone has a car. You have to have a car."
"How could anyone possibly survive without cable TV?"
"So just throw the junk mail away if you don't like it."
"Everyone else is cooperating with us."
"You, young lady, look like some kind of whóre."
"I watched the Super Bowl just for the commercials."
"The two-party system may be flawed but it's still the best ever designed."
If after reading the above, you're now nearly angry enough to smash the monitor, you understand. (Please don't forget to stop in the gift shop on your way out.)
I just pummelled you, kind reader, with six all-tubes salvos of conformist rhetoric--some or all of which you may yourself subscribe to--and in so doing I've shown you what it's like to read 1984. I do not believe that a page of the book goes by without a statement, in one form or another, that will come as a body blow to anyone who believes in freedom of writing, speech and thought. It does not matter what form those freedoms take for you. In 1984, it is flat-out gone.
When Winston loves Big Brother, the light of liberty and determination in him fades to darkness. In the true contradictory spirit of 1984, this is portrayed as a moment of dawning light and joy. Ironic. I have read that some women, to their magnified mortification, find that they become aroused and even orgasm during rape, and that this renders it still more traumatic; like having not merely one's body taken but one's soul. Maybe that's what happens to Winston in the end--though in his case, the ecstasy is the closing act, his last thought and feeling. He does not get to grieve.
Contradictions are the mechanism by which the Ingsoc (English Socialism) of Winston's Airstrip One (formerly England) of Oceania (formerly the English-speaking countries plus Central and South America) breaks down the independence of the psyche. Freedom is Slavery. War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. When constantly bombarded with contradictory statements, eventually one's unique grip on perceived objective reality is pounded down into a numb receptiveness, the mind a blank canvas on which the propagandist can paint today's version of history--or edit yesterday's version when its message becomes inconvenient.
It is as though the mind were a collection of odd-shaped stones and Ingsoc the rock crusher; when it is done, the gravel all looks the same. You can use it in cement, or pave a road, or crush it further to make sand, or do as you otherwise wish.
What makes 1984 an important work of literature is the fact that a single page of it can supply the thinking reader with enough questions to last a week. I offer a sampling from page 66 of my copy, said page literally chosen by confidently closing my eyes and opening the book:
"Rutherford had once been a famous caricaturist, whose brutal cartoons had helped to inflame popular opinion before and during the Revolution. Even now, at long intervals, his cartoons were appearing in the Times. They were simply an imitation of his earlier manner, and curiously lifeless and unconvincing." (What does this say about the basic value of creativity? Of art? What do we lose when a Bill Watterson quits writing Calvin & Hobbes because he's simply not willing to conform?)
"And then a voice from the telescreen was singing: 'Under the spreading chestnut tree; I sold you and you sold me. There lie they, and here lie we; Under the spreading chestnut tree.' The three men never stirred. But when Winston glanced again at Rutherford's ruinous face, he saw that his eyes were full of tears." (How many times has each of us looked into the face of living human ruin? Have we fled from it? Can we confront it? Am I a living ruin?)
"A little later all three were rearrested. It appeared that they had engaged in fresh conspiracies from the very moment of their release. At their second trial they confessed to all their old crimes over again, with a whole string of new ones." (Why is there so much pressure to make public confession? Do we believe in any sort of rehabilitation? If so, is our 'rehabilitation' simply a means of promoting conformity? For whose benefit is it... that of the rehabilitated individual, or so that we may congratulate ourselves on our humanity?)
1984 is not about the repression of individuality, but rather its systematic and utter destruction. All that makes us unique individuals: love, family ties, our own perceptions of history, an enterprising spirit, egotism, modesty, courage, trust, greed, lust. At one point Winston observes that, contrary to his historic perception, the proletarian masses are still human, and the Party members largely no longer are.
The designation of the Party's main enemy, Emmanuel Goldstein, as stereotypically Jewish would be easy enough to interpret only at a shallow level. Orwell wrote in 1949, and it is tempting to consider his writing merely a polemic against totalitarianism, as best understood by the world in 1949--either Nazism or Stalinism, neither of which obviously meant world Jewry any goodwill at all. But I think there's more here.
I think Orwell's message is timeless: any authority that rules by strength of power is deeply shaken by the notion that there is someone it cannot bribe, intimidate, ingratiate or hoodwink. For those are its only weapons short of simply crushing the spirit beneath its jackboot. Anyone with actual values that will not be compromised makes the blood of those who rule by strength run cold with the fear of their own mortality--for anyone ruling by raw power, in my personal view, has probably whóred away every value that once made him or her human. (In a good moment, I can summon pity for them. I have few moments that good. The look in my eyes when I speak of them has been described as 'chilling'.)
So it isn't enough for them to obliterate Winston, the man. If they fail to steal his newly-discovered soul, and those of all who oppose them, they must swiftly perish.
When I read the final line of 1984, I resolved that I would never love Big Brother, no matter how insinuatively he might appeal to me. Instead, I preferred to be human, and to cherish all that could make one human--good, bad or atrocious, perfect or imperfect. My soul has been damaged, maybe irretrievably, and perhaps it's a horror to gaze upon--but it's mine. Cut me, and at least I bleed real blood--not ichor, nor ectoplasm. I can be slain, but only because I am truly alive.
It shall never be otherwise. I will not sell, not for any price. It may be a piece of junk, but I cherish it as fiercely as I despise tyranny. I hate Big Brother. Apathy is more than can be asked of me.
Therefore, I have a kinship with any other devotee of 1984 who sees it as more than an anti-utopian novel.
I'm not noble. Never pretended to be. But I'm human.
Here's to Emmanuel Goldstein.
Down with Big Brother.
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Without the kind advice and assistance of Epinionatrix prettyinpink (q.v.), this essay would have been blithely published with many egregious flaws. Alex and I salute her. (For the remaining flaws, clearly, I claim all fault.)
This Epinion is part of the Great One-Liner Writeoff, highlighting the works which with a single line affected our outlooks on life in some way. I was honoured to be invited to participate, and I encourage you to check out the full list of links to essays at http://www.geocities.com/bkclark1/, or just look up:
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