Might as Well: 1984
Well, I finished reading George Orwell's 1984. It is the more brilliant of Orwell's anti-Stalinist books, the other being Animal Farm. I found Animal Farm rather tepid a few years ago, when I read it. I felt that it perhaps lost a lot of its power, now that we no longer live in fear of the Godless Communist Russians. However, 1984, is still startlingly relevant to the way that power is gotten today, whether it is the constant fear mongering to which we we are subjected, or the way in which war is used to maintain and propagate economic instability. I don't even know if Orwell intended the book to be aimed at more than Stalinist Russia, but, to borrow from Eric Fromm's essay at the end of the book, it means us.
If anyone still looks at this page and is interested in further discussion of this book, add comments to this post, and maybe drop me a line telling me that you have.
Peace.
If anyone still looks at this page and is interested in further discussion of this book, add comments to this post, and maybe drop me a line telling me that you have.
Peace.
posted by Freedom Man at 3:04 PM
2 Comments:
I have to agree. One thing that I would have to add is the use of newspeak. Orwell's conception of a language that actually shrinks each year is spot on. While we don't have a police enforcement of language we do have an increasing list of things that one can not say because they are "unamerican" or "support the enemy".
On a personal note, I read this book in high school and it set me on edge for two weeks. To me it was the journey of the protagonist that really spoke to me. I can't see how that couldn't be me.
The use of language is something that we talked about in high school when we talked about the book (in history class, so they didn't have us read it - not that I would have anyway). Someone said that "the limits of my language are the limits of my world." A simple (and now trite) example is how people from hot climates do not differentiate between ice and snow, while the Inuit have something like 40 words for different types of frozen water. The cool thing about Newspeak is that makes Orwell's vision completely convincing, that by controlling vocabulary thoughts can be completely controlled. One theme that weaves in and of the book is that there are people who collectively have the power to overthrow those who would oppress them, but don't. That's us
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