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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"1984" at Seventy: Why We Still Read Orwell's Book of Prophecy
Partly its owing to the fact that, unlike Darkness at Noon, Orwells book was not intended as a book about life under Communism. It was intended as a warning about tendencies within liberal democracies, and that is how it has been read. The postwar Sovietization of Eastern Europe produced societies right out of Orwells pages, but American readers responded to 1984 as a book about loyalty oaths and McCarthyism. In the nineteen-seventies, it was used to comment on Nixon and Watergate. There was a bounce in readership in 1983-84four million copies were sold that yearbecause, well, it was 1984. And in 2016 it got a bump from Trump.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/1984-at-seventy-why-we-still-read-orwells-book-of-prophecy?utm_source=pocket-newtab
DFW
(54,055 posts)Like "Animal Farm," it will remain a current classic as long as it hits home somewhere.
ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)Orwell really hit the nail on the head with 1984. There are so many comparisons one can draw to contemporary government/society. I think he had keen enough insight to realize he could use what already existed and extrapolate/exaggerate just slightly so that readers could instantly pick up on its relevance. BNW, while excellent, crosses the line into fantasy.
Docreed2003
(16,817 posts)While BTW has its fantasy elements, the basic theme is extremely applicable today. In essence, Huxley believed that there would be no reason to ban books because the masses would be so distracted with nonsense to care to even read a book, much like our current society is addicted to social media and binge watching TV.
ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)The main one mentioned was the bible. Remember how Henry Ford replaced God? On the other hand, you're right that the masses were distracted by nonsense or drugged out of their gourds.
By "fantasy," I mean all of BNW's context: babies gestated in bottles, everyone with their own private helicopter, completely automated recreational pastimes. I agree that these can be read as: "social programming" and "rampant consumerism," but I feel like Huxley carried it into hyperbole.
DFW
(54,055 posts)From the idealism of the losing side in the Spanish Civil War to finding out ten years later that Stalin murdered more of his own people than Hitler ever did, his predictions for the future were understandably bleak.
pansypoo53219
(20,906 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,440 posts)when you allow that the 'rich + corporations' basically own the government, there is no real difference.
Much like a theocracy, when there is no separation between church and state, they become the same thing.
In 1984, other than the obvious amalgam of "Big Brother" Orwell doesn't really say much about whether the bad guys were government operatives or company men. In the corporate/fascist model there is really no difference.
ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)Even if you think the movie is lousy, the got the part about corporation-as-government correct. In fact, I would venture to say that they based the setting on 1984 to some extent.
Here's the IMDB abstract:
Wounded Bear
(58,440 posts)ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)lame54
(35,141 posts)Aristus
(66,096 posts)The novel's ultra-bleak ending, with former dissident Winston Smith tortured into accepting Insoc, and tearfully admitting "He loved Big Brother" seems to have no way out of its utterly hopeless conclusion.
But the book does have a sort-of happy ending, if you look for it.
At the end of the narrative, there is an afterword explaining the provenance and purpose of Newspeak, the language of Oceania designed to limit free thought and prevent expression of dissent against the government. Some readers have inferred that the afterword is written 'in-universe', and, since it is written in the past tense, indicates that at some point after the end of Winston Smith's tale, Oceania and the reign of Big Brother and The Party came to an end. And a new society, permitting and protecting free thought and expression, rose in its place. That's the ending I've chosen to adopt as my own point of view.
Wounded Bear
(58,440 posts)Was it added post 1970? I think I read that in high school, so my view of it is dated.
Aristus
(66,096 posts)So it should not only be 'canon', but included in pre-1970 editions, I would think.