MovieChat Forums > Nineteen Eighty-Four (1985) Discussion > How much of Goldstein's book was real?

How much of Goldstein's book was real?


O'Brien seem to suggest that the book is a forgery, but I think this is to mess around with Winston's head. How much of Goldstein's book was real and actually described the actual situation?

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As a description of the state of the world, it is real. This is how O'Brien and Winston discuss it in the novel:

'You have read THE BOOK, Goldstein’s book, or parts of it, at least. Did it tell you anything that you did not know already?’

‘You have read it?’ said Winston.

‘I wrote it. That is to say, I collaborated in writing it. No book is produced individually, as you know.’

‘Is it true, what it says?’

‘As description, yes. The programme it sets forth is nonsense. The secret accumulation of knowledge — a gradual spread of enlightenment — ultimately a proletarian rebellion — the overthrow of the Party. You foresaw yourself that that was what it would say. It is all nonsense. The proletarians will never revolt, not in a thousand years or a million. They cannot. I do not have to tell you the reason: you know it already. If you have ever cherished any dreams of violent insurrection, you must abandon them.
With Goldstein's book, it seems the Party likes to let thought criminals in on how the world is (factual part), and then get their hopes up about a proletarian rebellion (nonsense part).

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The thing is wouldn't writing this book be a crime against Big Brother even though it's in the service of the State? I guess that's where Doublethink comes in!

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What I loved about the story is just how much of it really is left unanswered. Did Goldstein write any part of it? Did Goldstein ever even exist? Did Big Brother ever exist?

Let's be bad guys.

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Goldestein and Big Brother may have existed but it is highly unlikely. The Party understands that strong emotions such as love and hate are best directed at individuals than organisations and Big Brother and Goldestein are outlets for this.

O'Brien states that the Book is true for a description of how the current situation came to be but the Proles will not overthrow the Party as they are unaware they are being oppressed. They cannot become aware that they are being oppressed until they rebel and they cannot rebel until they are aware that they are being oppressed.

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I'm not certain of Goldstein but Big Brother was more of an idea rather that of an individual. Sort of like we in the U.S. have Uncle Sam who was used extensively to rally people to volunteer for the military when the U.S. entered WWI. Goldstein could also have been an invented bogeyman, something to rally against. After all, it's easier to rally against an idea when there is a face to it. If it's faceless, it's easy to lose interest hence the old man's face at the rallies in the book/film.

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I suspect it was like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a scurrilous forgery purporting to show how the evil Jews planned to corrupt and subdue the world. The Nazis grabbed onto it as "justification" for their genocidal campaign of destruction.


The restitution of life is no great feat. A variety of deaths may well enter into your punishment

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But what would be the party's motive in writing a book that reveals a lot of the Party's dirty politics, just to fool a few rebels like Winston?

The book is rather clumsily fitted into the story. Orwell needed a clear-eyed revelation of how the Party worked, since Winston himself can't see the big picture. Then, to dramatize how there is no real opposition to the Party, he tells us that the Party itself wrote it in a huge fit of doublethink. Orwell's early publishers even wanted him to cut it out of 1984.

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I agree with this.

The "book within a book" is a bit of a writing faux pas -- all of a sudden Orwell stops showing you this bleak world and starts telling you about it, in lecture format, for a few dozen pages. It brings the entire plot to a standstill and while it does answer some of the more burning questions, it is a terrible deviation from the actual story.

Much of the information in Goldstein's book could have been shoe-horned into Winston's conversations with O'brien later on in the Ministry of Love, or it could have been placed in an appendix like Newspeak for those interested in learning more about the history of the revolution. But putting it right smack in the middle of the novel sucked all the momentum out of the story.

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Dystopias often tend to run into a problem like this, regarding exposition. BRAVE NEW WORLD handles it by having the "misfits" meet a half-sympathetic official, Mustafa Mond. In FAHRENHEIT Montag's boss gives him a detailed lecture, supposedly to pump up the latter's morale. In HUNGER GAMES it isn't really needed, because the oppressive government actually isn't lying about what it is doing. In MAZE RUNNER we never really get an explanation. In DIVERGENT the explanation waits until the final novel and isn't really convincing. In GIVER we can sort of guess what happened: that the ancestors got too obsessed about how to protect their supposed Utopia.

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me-1523 ..."But putting it right smack in the middle of the novel sucked all the momentum out of the story"

on the other hand, it does make what happens next even more startling

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Anyone ever.considered writing it?

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only Orwell could have carried on writing it. Anyone else trying to do so wouldn't do it justice.
1984 was his last book and he died not long afterwards. I'd like to think had he carried on, he could have finished "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" and had it as an appendix to 1984 as suggested earlier in the thread. Or maybe the reader's only supposed to know as much as Winston knows and it's better only seeing a couple of chapters.

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either way, in 2022, "oligarchical collectivism" seems to take on a whole new meaning!

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I think the book may have come from some original source but the concept of Goldstein is entirely fictitous, he's a fantasy made up by the Party to keep everyone in check and to make sure everybody is so distracted, so caught up in the rage-filled frenzy of the 2-Minutes Hate, that they never realise the real criminals are the Party themselves.

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It was real. The hidden pages in the new version of Newspeak state the inevitability of a stratified society. The upper class ruling, using the middle class in concert to subjugate the workers. The middle class envies the upper class and tries to overthrow it by instigating insurrection in the masses. The upper class recognizes the middle class threat and tries to prevent it. Replace upper, middle, and workers classes with Inner party, Outer party, and Proleteriat, and you have Orwell's 1984.

Goldstein was the main creator of the book and probably was sincere about it. O'Brien may have contributed to it, but he was too much of a cynic to believe it. Not sure if Big Brother was involved, he may have been a party fabrication. In fact all of this could have been created by the party to control people; but that is a lot to reveal and would be a great risk to it. Goldstein rebelled against the direction the party was going, and became its nemesis. The party responded to his threat by incorporating him into their control stategy, justifying oppression to save Oceana from its enemies. Goldstein's movement being a potential fifth column.

So much of 1984 resembles the USSR around WW2, that it's hard to deny this being a metaphor for Trotsky becoming an anathema to Stalinist Russia. Trotsky fled the USSR, and continued to criticize Stalin and his party until he was finally assassinated. In the meantime, the Stalin regime used him like Goldstein in 1984. A constant threat that required constant vigilance.

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He only read two chapters of the book. I have wondered what the other chapters were.

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So Goldstein is basically Snowball the pig in Animal Farm?

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Did anyone ever think of writing it?

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