Now, I realize this is supposedly a travel blog, or at least, like, a traveling teacher blog. But I’m rather proud of the fact that I finally finished reading a book in spite of my “busy schedule” (which, yes, I know is a sorry excuse for not being able to finish books most days, but bear with me). I also happen to be a literary enthusiast, albeit a lazy one. So, in short, my book review of 1984.
Let me just go ahead and admit it. I came late to the 1984 party. Most of my friends had to read it in high school. After finally reading it, at my 25 humble years, I must say it both makes a perfect and at once absolutely inappropriate book for a high school audience. On one hand, the concepts with which it deals are important and necessary for the budding highschooler intellect, and far be it from me to say that highschoolers aren’t capable of wrapping their heads around the irony of such party slogans as WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS BLISS STRENGTH. But on the other hand, I can’t help but think that as a result of the importance of exposing this often banned book to young people it almost gets cast off as just another YA classic must-read. Classic and must-read it is. YA, though? Far from it.
I want to start by saying I disagree with many reviews claiming that this is merely (or primarily) a bleak projection of the future (now-present/past). I say merely because just as this book has been pigeonholed a bit for its controversial political nature, I think it also has been reduced ideologically to a simple black-and-white warning.
More accurately, it is a sort of road map for how exactly totalitarian governments function and by what means it takes to subdue and stupefy an entire population. Does this happen in many forms today? Yes. Is it building into some dark-future climax of which 1984 is the inevitable result? Not likely, as this book proves that these sorts of horrendous thought-control (or brainwashing) systems have been at work in any number of governments for the past century, and beyond, if not on such an extreme and absolute scale. So, in that way, limiting it to a narrative revolving around fantasies of a specific futurescape is too narrow for what it was intended, while it also seems too narrow to define it strictly as a book speaking of the trials of its time in hyperbole.
Which is, of course, the exact balance that makes 1984 a timeless classic. (and TL;DR: Erich Fromm basically discusses this in depth in the excellent Afterword of my Signet Classics edition of the novel)
To steal from that afterword, “Orwell…is not a prophet of disaster. He wants to warn and awaken us.”
Moving on to my actual review. This book does an enormous amount of world building in a brief amount of time. It manages to maintain an absurd yet convincing projection of the sort of world that could exist if the systems already in place became powerful enough to subdue all rational thought.
1984 was published in 1949, and so, in that sense, was one of the earliest novels to discuss a specific image of society set in the not-so-distant future based around social ills that were novel and terrifying during its conception (even alluding to the threat of nuclear war, which at the time, had not happened yet, although the bombs were in their early test stages). As both dystopian and social science fiction, it takes the cake for its crisp, developed image of a world in which thinking about the very words freedom and equality is a crime punishable by torture and death because of its “unorthodox” nature. It basically carries the desire to make a group of people submit to their oppressor absolutely and willingly to a logical extreme which could and does in fact (if more subtly) happen. After all, who hasn’t met a strong right-wing nationalist that doesn’t tend to doublethink (meaning holding two contradicting beliefs, one based on rational, concrete fact and one on irrational, fear-driven vitriol and choosing to believe the other at all costs)? There’s a reason the language of this book has found its way in our modern lexicon.
And on that note, one of the most fascinating aspects of this novel for me as a linguist was its explanation of a language developed solely to limit the range of thought. This speaks to Orwell’s brilliance as a linguist and language enthusiast (fun fact: Orwell became fluent in Burmese while policing in Burma–Burmese!). It appears that “Politics and the English Language,” in which he talks about the use of language and writing to manipulate the masses, is going on my to-read list.
Logically, this concept plays a crucial role in 1984 as Orwell developed “Newspeak” for the novel in order to show how government establishments like his fictional Ingsoc* could use language in order to alter the thought patterns and thereby limit the perceptions and ability for critical thought of its citizens across the generations. Andrew N. Rubin sums it up thusly: “Orwell claimed that we should be attentive to how the use of language has limited our capacity for critical thought just as we should be equally concerned with the ways in which dominant modes of thinking have reshaped the very language that we use.”
This “Newspeak” is not to be mistaken for “Netspeak”; however, I will say that there are some striking similarities which would lend them to comparison or unconscious association. The shortening and concision of words to convey basic meanings, not to mention the use of emojis in our current era to convey messages without words. Still, let’s not confuse ourselves: the purpose of netspeak has expanded and evolved outside of the rules of some militant single-party system and actually adds words to its vocabulary at an incredible rate and to serve a diverse number of purposes. Newspeak, on the other hand, was established and continuously developed by the party to eliminate “problematic, heretical/unorthodox” words from the English language, as a process of control rather than of free expression.
In the book, Orwell dedicates a whole appendix to this very subject, explaining 3 different types of vocabulary developed and implemented in written form using Newspeak and how it ties into the ideology of the Party. Linguistics, y’all. I’m in love.
Additional to language and vivid 3rd person accounts of the world that offer a window into how this world works, the government itself is fleshed-out via internal prose and the limited 3rd person perspective of the narrator who works within (and against) this system. It details an intricate layer of self-contradicting Ministries (of Peace (War), Love (torture), Truth (falsifications), and Plenty (rations)) and a Party-centered class system** that lend an otherwise distorted world its solidity and credibility – its relevance across time. The extreme nature of these manifestations proves how a society like the one Winston Smith lives in could come to exist and flourish. Plus, the irony can be appreciated by anyone aware of our own version of each ministry in the US (not to mention *cough* fake news).
The main character, Winston Smith, is not exactly your every man. In a way, that is what makes him so appealing. He is hapless, yes, and inevitably doomed (but don’t worry, if you’re like me and still late to this party, I won’t spoil that ending for you!). His crime? Loving to fornicate, keeping a journal, and possessing a smidge of human curiosity and rational thought. In every other way, he is exceedingly unextraordinary and even unlikeably, disturbingly human – paranoid, weak, and withdrawn. In a single word, grotesque. These traits create a relateable, truthful character trying to take some type of action in a cold, systematic world, so even though he’s not the sort of person I would generally root for, his perceptions and desires are real enough to bring me close enough to truly examine the twisted world he inhabits.
Relating back to why I don’t exactly consider this teen-appropriate***, the novel really takes you there as far as delivering on the violence of thought and action that living in a supremely fascist society would produce. On one hand, shocking details like that of the protagonist imagining raping and murdering a woman (that later becomes his quite unromantic love-interest) and scenes which expose the reader to torture in detail that even made me cringe seem like a lot to delve into without the right emotional maturity. But I suppose that’s what makes it a challenging and important read, and more so because these aspects highlight what a society of humans stripped of their humanity could look like – as well as the how and why.
1984 is not one of those books you can rank. Of course, we all have our preferences. But for the content, the message and how it is put across, the characterization, the writing style (crisp, sharp, and solid), and the linguistic and historical depth and analysis without being too pedantic – well, frankly, I give it 5/5 stars and approval as certainly not overrated. It continues to be relevant. And as long as the Capitalist machine functions, with bureaucracy and warfare in high demand, it will continue to be relevant, showing that it is not simply alien situations (relative to the “Western world”) like that of the Soviets, the Nazis, the WWII era Japanese and Chinese and North Korea which have sought to control and decimate its populations into mere bodies, party placeholders to uphold their regimes unknowing of the part they play in the machine.
Perhaps this work is so poignant because it holds up a mirror to the Imperial West and global warfare by placing it in a country called “Oceania,” including the United States and the United Kingdom. By bringing this system close to home and using a sort of parody and hyperbole, Orwell causes the Western reader to take a good, hard look at who the true enemies of “freedom” are and who they are not.
My final reflection left by this novel was this: if thought is so threatening for a totalitarian society, what would the world be like if those thoughts actually became actions? If we all exercised our freedom to express? Many of use sit from the convenience of our homes (myself included) mulling over the issues plaguing our world. Like Winston, we feel the limits of the society we live in and the enormity of the system we are up against – imperialism, capitalism, patriarchy, the intersections of them all. In the end, also like Winston, we may try to fight back, but we do very little. Many joke by saying “Thinking isn’t a crime yet,” but the next logical step, just as Winston concluded with the proles is to turn those thoughts into actions. To mobilize. The last thing every human being is left with is the ability to think rationally. Let’s not forget to act on those thoughts, too.
*Newspeak for English Socialism, the idea produced to show an England following models witnessed in Stalinist “socialism” and more presently, in North Korea
**Three classes are strictly defined as unalterable but undefined along race, gender, or monetary lines: the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the proles; each has different rules of conduct and luxuries, with the Inner Party having the greatest amount of luxuries and the greatest restrictions on conduct, and the proles having the fewest of both and being thought of as animals with no real power of class consciousness.
***Not to be a stiff; I read a ton of books in high school that were dark and gritty, but mostly its just that the themes are far darker than I personally would have expected to be relegated to this age group.
Diario de una Aventurera 