Nineteen Eighty-Four

This is a benchmark in fiction writing that represents a fear-filled oligarchic police state ruling through the use of extreme militaristic war-communism and controlled entirely by The Party. The Party preaches fear and hate and controls every aspect of people’s lives, including what they believe and even what they thought they knew…this accomplished by the continuous changing of history. That is the department in which our unfortunate antagonist, Winston Smith, works.

 For me, I was actually one of the last people on Earth to have read this book. Many people have read it in high school on some assigned reading (deemed fit for the feeble minds of the masses by head Party members, no doubt) and pretty much everyone else has reached that point in their lives where they said “I need to read this.” I hadn’t, or maybe I finally had and I’m just a late bloomer. Either way, I’ve always entertained the idea but I never knew what it was about, because people just talk about what the book means and how important it is but I never knew if I’d like it. Neglecting what the plot is about, I wondered if there was going to be anything I like in it; mutated dinosaurs raised from the dead hunting cyborg interplanetary exiles in an unnamed, Amazonian Earth-like environment? No, just a really angry communist government in a dystopian future in which George Orwell pulls no punches in relating how awful they are.

It didn’t take long to figure out why nobody talks about what the book is about…because it’s that good. Books like Twilight and just about every Stephen King book are talked about in terms of what happens in the book. But not what it means. The opposite is true for 1984. You decide which I prefer. It stands alone in its genre as being not only one of the first dystopian future/political commentaries acting as a warning, but is quite possibly the best (see also: Brave New World post, out later this month)

Many stories offer little more than the actual plot, which most of us can appreciate, and say nothing about life, love, science, truth and knowledge. 1984 says much about all of it by completely banning all of these things in this society, and even torturing people wickedly for seeking them. A truly awful message to people who want to feel secure by forgoing basic civil liberties and empowering their government.

I still can barely wrap my mind around all of the concern this society brings about to the human race, but I think that was Orwell’s goal. To use an extreme case to show how terrible things someday might be. But, to make myself feel better, I think back to what an extremely unintellectual co-worker said to me during a discussion of 1984 fans in the office: “But if you have nothing to hide, what’s the problem with the government watching you’re every move?”

Absolutely the mindset that inspired this piece of literature. Thank you and kindly go fuck yourself before  you damn the human race. Anyway, if you haven’t read this one yet, or even lately, it is also highly recommended.