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longwayhome -> RE: 1984 (6/11/2017 5:26:59 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LadyPact
quote:
ORIGINAL: BamaD
I have already told you twice that I have read the book. If you can't follow that then you have no chance of understanding 1984. Personally I thought Animal Farm was a better read
but not as good a book.
Read Animal Farm, it is more on your level.
I actually liked Animal Farm.
Personally, I've always felt it was a clearer distinction. Orwell did use the same tactic regarding 'what does the reader see?" The evidence of the pigs' corruption was more evident far earlier in the read and no doubt by the book's end.
One of the brilliant things Orwell did in both books was to use the premise of the scapegoat. Not, in my opinion, to the extent in Animal Farm as it was in 1984. However, in both books, Orwell created suspicion. I always felt this was wrapped up earlier in AF, but not so tidy in 1984. Nobody ever really knows if Goldstein ever existed, except for those at the very top who had memories. (The ministry to truth had already re-written all of the records.) If he did exist, was he (and his followers) really to blame for the acts that the people of Oceania were really led to believe? Or instead, was Goldstein the dissenting voice, opposing the other Party members that had risen to power, with the realization that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely?
(In case folks haven't noticed, I really have read the book. :) )
I appreciated Animal Farm too.
Despite it's language and style being more like a children's book, Animal Farm was every bit as complex as you suggest. Animal Farm was a brilliant allegory of Russian history from the Revolution to the entrenchment of Stalin's power, made all the more powerful by how applicable it was to other countries and other revolutions. It was certainly born out of the dismay with which the left in Europe watched the Soviet Union under Stalin subvert the original aims of the revolution and the realisation that the seeds of that subversion were there from the start (the comment you made about the pigs' corruption being evident far earlier, especially on a second read).
1984 certainly pulls together the themes of Animal Farm, and concerns Orwell had far closer to home about the state of democracy in the UK. The Ministry of Truth appears to be based on his own experience of the UK Ministry of Information, bearing in mind that the UK, in common with other societies at war in the 1940s, was virtually a dictatorship with a scarily advanced propaganda and secret service machine. Recently this less than wholesome view of the UK has been brought out in a number of TV productions showing the very real divisions in society and the domestic machine to stamp down on dissent, especially with regard to those sympathetic to fascism, and the continued surveillance of domestic socialists. Goldstein seems just too close to Bronstein (Trotsky) to be a coincidence, who became a hero to many European socialists as a disappeared Menshevik not tainted with the machinations of the Bolshevik coup. (Although as a leader of the Red Army he hardly emerged without blood on his hands.)
The theme of scapegoating of supposed national enemies based of radical distortions to create fear and maintain power seems very close to the behaviour of many historical and current regimes and is brilliantly developed in 1984. It extended not just to leaders but to the whole populace of Eurasia/Eastasia depending on the direction of the wind. We are encouraged in the book to believe that this scapegoating was a distortion rather than a complete fabrication but Orwell brilliantly keeps the full extent of the fabrication intentionally vague. Goldstein appears to have been real but how much else is true of the propaganda is never made apparent.
Harnessing the hatred fear of the people to subjugate them rather than involving them in government as the ultimate betrayal of revolution and democracy is not exactly an alien concept to us, although so far removed now from America 1765-83, France 1789-99, Europe 1848 and Russia 1905-23 we tend to have a jaundiced view of the democratic potential of revolutions anyway. The omnipresence of government and big corporation surveillance, as well as exploiting a fear of foreigners and internal subversives by turning a small truth into a big lie should both be very familiar.
I watch people on these Boards vilify millions of ordinary people instead of concentrating on the actual terrorists and I wonder how far we have come.
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