> which definitely included motorized vehicles to carry troops Yes, I'm not saying cars or motor vehicles didn't exist. I'm saying they were not available to a

> which definitely included motorized vehicles to carry troops Yes, I'm not saying cars or motor vehicles didn't exist. I'm saying they were not available to anyone except the most elite and so they don't appear on the streets in the book. Orwell was painting a picture of a world so impoverished by useless and anti-human totalitarian bureaucracy that common things of his time were practically non-existent. > I am aware of the Model T I think you're confusing decades here. Model T was 1908 to 1927. By 1948 you already had pretty much all of the big names in car manufacturing established. Just take a look at the 1948 London Motor Show[0] if you want proof that car production and culture were in full swing. > That's 1908, but I would argue that the place cars occupied in the public imagination forty years later in 1948 would still look a lot more like that You're flat out wrong with the above. That's like saying "that was 1983 but I would argue that the place computers occupied in the public imagination forty years later in 2023 would still look a lot more like that". It's just absurd and easily proven wrong by just looking at any media from that decade. It's 40 years for crying out loud! > I think his non-mentioning of cars in 1984 merely illuminates the mindset and world from which Orwell was writing, rather than representing a conscious choice to say to the reader, "these poor wretches don't even have their own motorcars!" This just makes it plainly obvious that you haven't even bothered to skim the book. I'll refer you to Chapter 9 where Winston reads from Goldstein's book. "But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction—indeed, in some sense was the destruction—of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motorcar or even an airplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared." [1] It's actually quite worrying how much you seem to be attempting to rewrite history given the context in which we are speaking. [0] https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/cc-history-london-motor-show-1948-the-start-of-a-new-era/ https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/c... [1] https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/orwellg-nineteeneightyfour/orwellg-nineteeneightyfour-00-h.html https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/orwellg-nineteeneightyfour/orwel...