Book Review – George Orwell - 1984

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Various editions The definitive Dystopian vision of a totalitarian future Britain, as scary and relevant today as on publication in 1948. Its title simply swapped round the four and eight to set the work in the not too distant future. Though its predicted year is now 33 years behind us we live in an age of high tech surveillance (CCTV), government control of the media (newspeak) and alienation / punishment of any display of non-conformity and individualism. The story concerns Winston Smith, a London based citizen of Airstrip One (Britain) and working for The Ministry Of Truth. Smith’s duty is simply to go through old newspapers and publications revising the text to shorter wording, in effect an act of revisionist history. Smith uses indoctrinated principles of Newspeak, which reduces vocabulary and dictionary wording to as few words as possible. Words exist as solitary options without a thesaurus of similes. Emerald green, Lincoln green, lawn green, etc. are all gone, there is just green. The less words we have at our disposal, the less we can think. What words remain are fused together in one sprawling block. If something is particularly excellent and improved on an earlier version it may be described as ‘doubleplusgood’. Newspeak sounds frightfully prophetic of texting language which often abbreviates language, runs words together and replaces words with emoticons, or emojis as they have now become. Smith has his doubts about the State and its leader, the enigmatic, possibly non-existent Big Brother (who we never directly see. He is a symbol on posters and television logos). Big Brother is described as always watching and watching over everyone, and state surveillance equipment is all intrusive. You watch your TV and it watches you back. Even flowers can carry concealed cameras. Children are ordered to report their parents to the authorities as suspects for anything. Smith meets and falls in love with a girl called Julia who shares his dissenting views, and they meet carefully at a shop with no TV screens thinking themselves safe. They meet other rebels but these prove to be undercover Thought Police who arrest Smith, forcing him to sign false confessions. He is then taken to the universally dreaded Room 101 where torturers use people’s deepest phobias against them. Smith is particularly scared of rats and finds himself wearing a facemask which keeps a ravenous rat within millimetres of his face until he betrays Julia in sheer terror. He learns later that she has also betrayed him. Finally, as Airstrip One wins the long war against Eurasia, Smith is seen again one last time, fully, passionately loyal to the all triumphal Big Brother as his free will has been brainwashed away to nothing. Other memorable 1984 images include; the two minute hate – a daily work break in which staff give vent to total primal cathartic contempt for the enemies of the state, especially Goldstein, the Jewish leader of the resistance who no more exists than Big Brother. Goldstein’s race is a clear echo of the victims of the Nazism that inspired Orwell’s timeless warning. The Memory Hole – Where any literature, art or documents not wanted by the State are destroyed and lost forever. The sinister ministries are four in number, Love, Fear, Plenty and Truth. Each actually does the opposite to what its name promises. The Ministry of Truth peddles lies and propaganda. The Ministry of Plenty produces very meagre food and drink rations to keep its population too weak to fight back. Smith’s capture takes place before he can commit any true act of rebellion against the state. It is his love for Julia and curiosity to find the end of a half-recalled nursery rhyme, Oranges And Lemons, that lands him in the Ministry Of Love’s Room 101. In 2017, The newly elected Donald Trump regime has called its bogus claims and practices merely ‘alternative facts’. The regime is openly calling for the reintroduction of torture for perceived enemies of the state and attempting to censor and use social networking to promote a counter-factual Newspeak heavy ‘alternative facts’ perception of its action, with threats to curtail the media freedoms of the US media and actors who dare to voice dissent and worry about the new state order. Sound familiar? If not, 1984 is a book you really need to read, right away. It has now become Amazon’s number one best-seller in the US, which shows that many people are making rather obvious associations with the current political zeitgeist. Arthur Chappell