Nineteen Eighty-Four

 

Mr. Orwell never manages to disappoint me. This is the fifth time I am reading it and honestly it has amazed me all the four times I have read them. According to me “1984″ is the best satire ever written. Every time I have read this book, it runs a shiver down my spine and I do not know what to make of the feeling. May be its just fear. Fear of being born in a totalitarian society and following its hapless rules which do not make any sense whatsoever.

Set in the year by which the novel was titled, Winston inhabits a world completely different to the one in which we all inhabit today. After the nuclear war of the 1960’s, democracy was abandoned as the civil war which engulfed Britain turned against the capitalist hegemony. The workers (or proles), believing that taking away business interest meant that power would be vested in them through the collective state, backed a regime change which exterminated democracy and capitalism and replaced them with an horrific autocratic system of governance, the embodiment of this is the all-seeing omnipotent “Big Brother”, the nominal public figurehead of the newly formed Oceania (British Empire and the US mainly) to which subservience and adoration is required in equal measure. To achieve this, the “Party”, who run this new world, have removed all civil liberties. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and human rights are alien concepts. Attempting a degree of free thought is punishable by death. Indeed, the word freedom no longer exists, thanks to the removal of Common English, or “Oldspeak”, and the lack of comparative word in the new, preferred language, “Newspeak”. Words, work, broadcast media, social life, books-everything is designed to create mass adulation to Big Brother and the party. This is helped by the encouragement of “doublethink”, the process by which a loyal party member can take what may appear to be an untruth and accept that it is a truth by training his mind to ignore the former and blindly accepting the latter.

This is Winston’s problem. He has not quite got the hang of doublethink. He has memories of a time when the party never existed. He knows, through his job at the Ministry of Truth, that he is implicit in an elaborate falsification process. He cannot blindly accept these new facts, as he knows that they are not so. He is a minor member of the party, yet he hates the party and lives in fear of detection from the “thought police”. And what is to be made of Julia, the fervent young party member scrutinising his every action? The novel chronicles these physical and mental struggles as eventually he finds himself in the position he dreads the most.

Without ruining the novel for anyone who has not read it, this is as much information as I can really give without turning this review into a series of plot spoilers. What can be looked at, however, are some of the main issues arising in the novel, for it is the political repercussions of this work which have earned this novel its deserved status as a piece of classic literature.

In the second section of the novel, Winston is presented with a copy of “the book”. If you want to know more about how this happens-go read the novel! However, “the book”, for me, is the most fascinating part of this work. In it, Orwell creates a platform by which he explains why the world has changed into the way it is, how it has done so and most interestingly of all, why the population allow themselves to be subjugated as they do. In doing so, he exposes some of the most common devices for population control used by authorities all around the world. Many of them are still used today. The personal favourite of this reviewer is the principle of “Continuous War”. Orwell states that war, after WW2, has essentially ceased to be. Certainly there can never be another war of attrition like that seen in the early twentieth century. Due to nuclear proliferation, no major country can ever realistically expect again to successfully invade another, without inviting its own destruction. If society is destroyed, then no-one can have power, and those in charge never wish to relinquish power. Yet War is a splendid thing to authorities, when it can be controlled. It allows manpower to be used for production of goods which are largely destroyed and then rebuilt. It also keeps the populous fearful, and a fearful population can be manipulated much easier than a comfortable one. They will look to a leader, a protector, when they feel that there is risk. Thus war, so long as it can never cause true disaster to the homeland, is to be encouraged and sought.

In the face of world events since Orwell wrote his book, it is astonishing to see that, certainly on this theme, there are parallels which could be said to show that he was eerily correct. For 45 years the Cold War rumbled on, with near half the planet’s population living in fear of imminent destruction. Now we have a “War on Terror”, and with it a need for protection and a build up of fear. It has been used in the US to create the Patriot Act, while in Britain Parliament convenes today to discuss ID cards, both designed to curb civil liberties under the guise of protection from an international bad-guy…

There is so much more to this novel, which could be argued on similar lines. The proliferation of “text” (or txt, if you prefer) language shortening the English language, and thus reducing the potential for individual thought. The introduction of a national lottery to give the proles (that’s you and I, dear reader) a false level of hope each week to make the drudgery of life more bearable. The mass production of Newspapers which contain nothing except sport, sex and horoscopes to keep the masses believing that they know what is happening in the world, while telling them nothing. The list goes on and on and on.

And if there is a flaw with this novel, then this is it. While the central character’s story is moving and deeply disturbing at times, it is the potential conspiracies arising from Orwell’s predictions which spook the most. Once you read this book, you will see capitalist government conspiracies EVERYWHERE. I kid you not. This can leave you in a rather isolated social position. My brother, for example, is sick of me telling him that his life is being designed for him by others for their benefit. His last response was something about a good hiding or something…

Please read this novel. I implore this for two very, very good reasons. The first is that it will change forever your perception of the world in which you live, and make you realise that the b***tards running the show have much to answer for.