1984 Wasn’t Like 1984 but What about 2024?
This is my review of George Orwell’s 1984, which I published on goodreads, where I review every book I read. I just discovered that after posting a review, the site gives you some HTML code for sharing in a blog so I thought I’d try it out.
1984 by George Orwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It is a common pattern in speculative fiction for an author to extrapolate the then current state of society indefinitely into the future. Thus the 1984 which Orwell envisions in 1949 is a world permanently locked into the patterns of the World War II era – goods are scarce and rationed, bombs fall on neighborhoods, and propaganda continuously rallies the populace against the enemy. As described in the forbidden book which Winston reads, “THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM,” war has become a perpetual state designed to consume the energy of society, thus preventing any disruptive threat to the hierarchical strucutre that allows a privileged few to live at the expense of the ignorant masses. A dystopian vision, no doubt, which history repudiated in the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s, so that, as the advertisement went, 1984 wouldn’t be like 1984. Collectivism averted! But the warning remains relevant; the tools of control are still there. The truth is ever malleable, and the boot is ever ready to press down on the face; man can always be reduced to a cog in a machine. This book’s message is pertinent to events today in the 2020s, and will be so again and again, in future ages.
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Not a deep look at the book, I admit, but I didn’t want to give away too many spoilers! There’s a lot that could be said about why its message is pertinent to the 2020s, but I’ll leave most of that for future posts.
I’ll just add this observation: for all the lofty political philosophy expressed in 1984, ultimately the Party depends simply on physical force to maintain its control. It always comes down to the boot pressing on the face – the use of terror to subvert the will of the people. That’s all dystopia ever was and ever is.
