1984

I first read 1984 back in junior high school, and was incredibly grabbed by its dystopian view of society. This summer, it shot up the charts due to the NSA scandals, which suggests that the government may be more of a Big Brother than we even thought. I figured it was a good time to have another look at it.

George Orwell wrote this book in 1949, and didn't intend it so much as a work of science fiction but a contemporary commentary. It has become an iconic book that not only gave us the terms Big Brother and the thought police, but a warning to any government that spreads its totalitarian wings.

The book is set in England during the title year, but England is part of a larger nation, called Oceania. There are only three nations on Earth--Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. One is always at war with another. Oceania's government has complete control over its citizens, particularly those in the party. There apartments have telescreens that work both ways, transmitting and spying on inhabitants. Children are taught to inform on their parents (the youth organization is called "Spies"). Sex, while necessary to procreate, is encouraged only for that purpose, and there is an "Anti-Sex League." Citizens are encouraged to hate the enemy and the figurehead of the resistant movement, Emmanuel Goldstein, by periodic rages of hatred.

Winston Smith, an average man who works in the Ministry of Truth, is troubled by it all. He rebels by finding a nook in his apartment that is unseen by the telescreen and starting a diary. For one thing, he has memories and knows things he is told is untrue: "The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated."

Winston's job is to recreate history. Anytime a person becomes an unperson, or the war changes, or an official contradicts himself, he goes in and changes the record, which in Orwell's world only meant print. It's amusing and disturbing to think that now this is much easier to accomplish, as digitally changing something is a snap.

Later Winston will meet a woman, Julia, who shares his views. She hands him a note that says simply, "I love you," the three words that are most effective at changing anyone's outlook on life. They share an idyllic period of love and sex in the proletariat part of town, where people live in poverty but are not of interest to the party. But of course they are eventually found out. Then the book shows the full extent of the power of the government.

The book is easily readable, even with a large section devoted to the book written by Goldstein, which lays out the problems of society--there are three classes: the upper, middle, and lower, and that the first is trying to maintain its status, while the second tries to join the first, and the third is hopelessly locked in the basement. Winston believes that only the "proles" can provide the revolution needed to overthrow Big Brother. But Orwell will not let him, or us, have our fantasy.

This book is incredibly rich. Early on we hear a character called Syme discourse on "newspeak," an eradication of English into a simplistic form: "'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well...Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad?' 'Ungood' will do just as well...what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning; or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still."

Also, the notion of saying exactly what is opposite, which is a large part of most governmental language, comes into play here. The slogan everyone is forced to read on a constant basis is "War is Peace/Freedom Is Slavery/Ignorance Is Strength." Winston works at the Ministry of Truth, which is concerned with lies. The Ministry of Peace is the war department. The Ministry of Plenty keeps the people in starvation mode. And then there's the Ministry of Love.

The final act of the book is the torture Winston goes through after being caught. It is harrowing and eye-opening. His torturer reasons with him calmly, even while giving him incredible jolts of pain. He is beaten down over months, and when he believes he has at least kept something--he has not yet betrayed Julia--they take that away from him, in a scene right out of Poe (it involves rats). I remembered the words for almost forty years, and here they were, exactly as I remembered them: "Do it to Julia!"

Some other aspects of the book have become true: "It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts and lucky amulets."

1984 is not a happy read, but it does have its moments of weeds breaking through the concrete. Orwell's position is that the party will never be overthrown, as they are too consumed with power to ever let it happen. But just by Winston thinking the thoughts he does is rays of sunshine. "Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you made. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the world, you were not mad."

That's important to remember, especially when even in the freest of societies one realizes that the reality of 1984 is disturbingly too close for comfort.