1984
- Author: Geroge Orwell
- Rating: 9.0
- TLDR: Introspection reveals more and more that nothing is sacred, not even the mind1.
Potential Spoilers below!! You have been warned…
Thoughts
1984 is a marvelous book. It was written with political impulse, questioning the function of information, oppression, and the of course, the new ideology on the block, fascism. But to say that the sole purpose of 1984 is to warn against fascism does the book an incredible disservice. To me, the book is about the fight between ideology and reality. It is about the cost required to impose ideology as a universal constant. It is about harnessing human motive, thought, and intent, about stripping away all control of the ‘spontaneous’ individual, to make them operate according to a greater purpose, like some neutered cyborg creature so far mutilated from their original form.
1984 is written simply. The descriptions are short but succinct—surgical. Orwell does a good job of making you feel paranoid, confused, and constantly grasping for footholds of coherency. What little reprieve there is stands in great contrast to the overwhelming isolation of 1984’s setting. The people do not talk, communication is one sides, nonverbal, and inferred. The watchful eye of big brother is too everpresent to allow for anything more.
The ending of the book is also great. Winston’s process through the ministry of love. How he resists the pain until it fills his entire being, until he is left with nothing. The subliminal feelings of love for O’brian, which eventually become anchors to his being in the world which would not dispose of him, it is all so well done.
If you somehow haven’t read this book before, I would absolutely recommend it.
Notable Quotations:
they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event in the locked loneliness in which one had to live
Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.
Stoic or Depressing, pick your poision
It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.
All history was a palimpset, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.
By extension, all reality is a palimpset. We write our woes on the same dirt which our ancestors acted upon prior
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
Most essential to the total control the Party Requires. The only source of truth then becomes the party itself
of the extremity of his danger he had lost the power to act. It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body.
In a way, you are always fighting your own body. It’s just that usually you both agree
As he sat waiting on the edge of the bed he thought again of the cellars of the Ministry of Love. It was curious how that predestined horror moved in and out of one’s consciousness. There it lay, fixed in future time, preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100. One could not avoid it, but one could perhaps postpone it: and yet instead, every now and again, by a conscious, witful act, one chose to shorten the interval before it happened.
I think this is probably the definition of life, love, or what have you. To make the conscious decision to act according to a higher version of yourself, at the cost of your ephemeral self
‘You’re only a rebel from the waist downwards,’ he told her. She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms round him in delight.
They could not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.
You’re always at the mercy of something: We’re all just dogs leashed behind a cart
in the room itself there was no sound except the insect voice of the clock.
Awesome visual writing
He was not certain that he would use the razor blade even if he got the chance. It was more natural to exist from moment to moment, accepting another ten minutes’ life even with the certainty that there was torture at the end of it.
A good example of rationality being a possible, but not default, state of being
‘We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves’
An omniscient, omnipotent Ingsoc is not fighting fascism or communism, but is struggling against humanity itself, wrestling it’s nuances and quirks into a suitable, coherent form. Of course, to win this battle is to annihilate what makes humans human in the first place. And of course, if this battle is anything but total–if there are any other prevailing options—then Ingsoc is determinedly and completely cruel, and not to be considered as a valid form of government or ideology.
If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man.
‘Do you see that thing facing you? That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity. Now put your clothes on again.’
The core of Ingsoc’s philosophy. To annihilate man, or that most essential part of himself that will always fundamentally resist Ingsoc.
✰ Thematic Statement ✰:
Even the speck of whitish dust on the cover of his diary they had carefully replaced.
I choose to believe that Ingsoc was not this omnipotent, but that they had such a fine level of control that it didn’t really matter. They did not have to be everywhere at once, all they had to do was make the individual fear ever place of unknown—wherever the individual could not be absolutely sure of it’s state, until no such state existed
Footnotes
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Sorry Emerson. ↩