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huxley didn't write 1984. its a powerful book - if you want more subtlety, read orwell's essays.
share1984 is junk, because it was nihilistic. Nihilism serves no purpose because it offers no solutions and it instills fatalism.
For example, imagine if I wrote a book called 2084 that painted a picture of a bleak landscape of misery, hatred and dejection all over the world. The hero or heroine is the PERFECT person to change things around because he/she is smart, resourceful, and compassionate. But oh, look--as perfect as this person is, The Powers That Be soundly defeat this person and I end my book with, "There is no future, no hope, evil has completely triumphed so should something similar to what I describe in my book come to pass, don't even bother fighting against it."
That is what Orwell did with 1984, and it's why I hate him, like Huxley and Golding (who wrote Lord of the Flies). Everyone lauds them as prophets, but they didn't write their books to create a call to action but to instill pessimism, defeatism and fatalism in their readers.
> That is what Orwell did with 1984, and it's why I hate him, like Huxley and Golding (who wrote Lord of the Flies).
Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World are two of my favorite books, but I won't argue their merits; just state that I disagree. To each their own, and as the saying goes, everyone's entitled to an opinion.
> For example, imagine if I wrote a book called 2084 that painted a picture of a bleak landscape of misery, hatred and dejection all over the world. The hero or heroine is the PERFECT person to change things around because he/she is smart, resourceful, and compassionate.
Are you saying Winston Smith was those things? Here I do have to disagree and state my reasons. His intelligence seems to be only average for an Outer Party member; he's smarter than Parsons, not as bright as Syme. Resourceful? He can scrounge for razor blades well enough, and he does come up with the idea of renting Charrington's room -- which was a big mistake IMO. But Julia, who treats the black market like you or I would treat a large shopping mall, is far more resourceful. Compassionate? Not at first. He kicks a severed body part into the gutter without a second thought, views the proles with contempt, and in his first diary entry he describes a movie's shot of a child's severed arm flying up into the air as "wonderful."
About a year ago I posted a long essay on the board here for the John Hurt/Suzanna Hamilton movie. I think I make a pretty good case that while Oceanic society was a horrible place to live, it wasn't as oppressive as Winston imagined it to be; that at the story's beginning Winston was warped by his paranoia into half-psychosis; and that it he and Julia hadn't rented Charrington's room they might have carried on their affair for decades. It's much too long to repeat here so I'll just give the link: https://moviechat.org/tt0087803/Nineteen-Eighty-Four/5f19b68a52f94046634138e0/Julia-the-Thought-Police-and-other-matters
Good grief...do you not know the history behind 1984?
George Orwell was a STAUNCH anti-Stalinist. 1984 was both an expression of his contempt and fear of Stalinism. This is not speculation or conjecture on my part. That is what the novel is. It's Orwell imagining a nightmare scenario if something like Stalinism were to take place in England.
I read your essay, and you kept dismissing Winston as a nobody who didn't pose any real threat. How can you say that when he was part of the apparatus responsible for erasing history and distorting truths? His JOB was literally to take scraps of news and put them down a "memory hole." Up until the book starts, he thinks nothing of it and then suddenly he becomes keenly aware of the significance of what he's doing and why Big Brother is asking him to do it. He then poses a very real threat to the state because when he starts connecting the dots, he has the potential to be a whistleblower, or become another Emmanuel Goldstein.
I don't understand your other dismissals of Winston Smith, calling him paranoid and such. Smith's paranoia is purposely induced by Big Brother to keep people in check so they don't rise up against The State. That's why there are Big Brother posters everywhere with eyes that follow people no matter where they go. There is 24/7 surveillance at all times. There are secret police and neighbors ready to turn you in for any little thing, even a wrong facial expression. But in the wake of all that you're painting Smith's mindset as paranoia and psychosis. I'm not trying to be condescending, but are you sure you really read this book and not going by the movie? Because the book makes pretty damned clear that if you even so much as look cross-eyed, you could be reported and sent to a dungeon, never to be seen again.
I think that Orwell realized that the message he was trying to impart would be more effective if his hero failed in his attempts to overcome the evils he was foretelling.
shareThat may be true. But he was also a defeatist and nihilist. I know this because it wasn't necessary, after having Smith soundly crushed at the end, to have that famous line about imagining a boot being firmly planted on a human face--forever. Since the book was an attack on Stalinism, he was basically saying that Stalinism was so perfectly evil, there was no hope or way of defeating it.
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