Review: NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George Orwell

Winston Smith is a lonely man living in the London of our dystopian future, with Big Brother watching every move people make and the Thought Police ready to take any dissenters down. Winston hates Big Brother and has a vague desire to join "the Brotherhood," a group lead by Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the State. But it isn't until Winston falls in the love that the Thought Police really come after him...

If Animal Farm is George Orwell's vision of communism, Nineteen Eighty-Four is his vision of totalitarianism. And just for the record, I'm already really annoyed at writing out "ninety eighty-four," so from now on it's just 1984. Okay? Okay.

I didn't enjoy 1984 as much as Animal Farm. Or, you know, at all really. There is sooooo much exposition about this and that and how everything works that it tried my patience. Winston is a misogynistic wet blanket and I had trouble caring about what happened to him, even when it was horrifying.

That's not say I think 1984 is a bad book, just that it's more about the world of the novel and ideas than story and characters. And some of the ideas are really brilliant! Things like Big Brother and the Thought Police are already part of the lexicon, but what I found fascinating was the concept of doublethink:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ’doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.

This, combined with newspeak, the language of Big Brother, allows people to say anything and mean nothing. There's no longer an opposite of good, because why use the word "bad" when you can just say "ungood"? The ultimate goal of newspeak is to eliminate most words altogether. After all, as long as the word freedom exists, people will remember there was such a thing.

Memory, both historical and personal, serves a major role in 1984. Government altering history and the short-term memory of its citizens was touched upon in Animal Farm, but in 1984 that loss of memory is a cornerstone of the narrative. Winston doesn't know for sure it's 1984, can barely remember his mother and sister or any incident from his childhood, and is eventually completely brainwashed into forgetting he ever hated Big Brother. The only reality is the one created by the state. Everyone is sharing in a delusion, their view of the world slightly twisted until they're all participating in massive "group think." Anyone who doesn't conform to the universal opinion isn't just wrong, but considered insane, even though they're only sane people in the bunch. This isn't just a case of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, but of "two and two make five": it's not logic, it's not reality, but it's the truth because Big Brother says it is. It reminded me of the empty Obama chair from the GOP 2012 convention.

Anyway, an interesting book. I'm not sure I would universally recommend it like I would Animal Farm, but if you're into dystopian fiction, 1984's the mother of all dystopian novels. It's also the only one that's ever really sent a chill up my spine because not only could it happen, it nearly did.




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Thoughts on THE HOBBIT by JRR Tolkien

Once there was a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins who was very respectable, at least until a wizard named Gandalf tricked him into going on an adventure with a bunch of dwarves to steal a dragon's treasure.

This was my first time reading The Hobbit. Remember that ugly-ass cartoon based on the The Hobbit that they used to show sometimes on Saturday mornings? Yeah, that removed any desire I might have had to read the books. Ever. (It's kind of weird how awful those cartoons were--I think there was a LotR one, too--because they actually seemed to follow the books pretty closely. But without any artistry or interpretation.) Anyway, I didn't intend to read The Hobbit now; however, I was googling something--I forget what--and came across the audiobook on YouTube (fun fact: The Hobbit was in the public domain in the US until January of this year, which means you can still find the audiobook and eBook versions for free online). I hit play just out of curiosity and was totally sucked into the story.

Surprisingly, I thoroughly enjoyed The Hobbit--in fact, I would say it's impossible not to like this book. There's something very innocent and disarming about it. I absolutely fell in love with Bilbo; he is an awesome character. And the stand-out scenes in The Hobbit absolutely sparkle. I loved the beginning where the dwarfs come to Bilbo's house, when he trades riddles with Gollum, and when he steals from Smaug. Smaug was awesome as well!

That being said, I do have one major beef and few minor ones with this book. I'm not sure I would have gotten through it if I had read it rather than listened to it. I mean, for one there are NO WOMEN anywhere in this novel. All the main characters are men. And even the minor characters. I mean, I've read books from the 19th century that were written by men, take place almost entirely on a battlefield, have five characters, and they still manage to fit a female character in there. So how about a shout out for the ladies, JRR? I really wonder how any of the peoples in his novels manage to self-populate considering the ratio of women to men. Maybe we should have put some more thought into that and less thought into how the Elves talk, hmmmm? Why on earth would I be interested in a book with no women in it? Answer: I wouldn't. Secondly, The Hobbit feels uneven at times (especially at the end, which seems to go on and on). Then Tolkien goes into a political rant wherein Smaug is equated to a dictator whose death brings instability and infighting to the region, and the book gets slightly academic. Read: boring.

The no women thing aside, though, The Hobbit was a fast, fun read. Unless of course you start to think about what it all sets into motion in Lord of the Rings, in which case it's actually kind of chilling. But try not to think about that.