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> "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." --George Orwell, 1984 I think I've frequently heard this called a great opening l

by philh 14y ago

> "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." --George Orwell, 1984 I think I've frequently heard this called a great opening line, and I've never worked out why. It doesn't tell me anything that I care about, it doesn't seem especially clever, and I don't notice myself having any other discernible emotional reaction to it. Can someone explain?

to3m 14y ago
Clocks don't generally strike thirteen. So, if nothing else, you might read on to find out what's going on. (This style of opening might have been a bit more cutting-edge in 1948, perhaps.)
nagrom 14y ago
It sets the scene really well: "A bright, cold day in April" is evocative of exactly that. It's not pretentious and it immediately puts a setting in the readers mind. "and the clocks were striking thirteen." is an immediate juxtaposition of something non-intuitive. The first reaction is "Clocks don't strike thirteen! They strike a maximum of twelve!". It's just nonintuitive enough without necessarily being obviously nonsense. And so the reader is engaged to read the next sentence to find out what he means by thirteen. Get the reader to read the next sentence enough, and you've tricked them into reading the book ;-)
- philh 14y ago
  My first reaction is more like "okay, so it's one o'clock". I never really noticed that it was weird before, though now it's pointed out I can see that it is.
  - fastball 14y ago
    I think this opening line works better for people that don't use 24 hour time (namely Americans). That is interesting, because Orwell was British, and I am fairly certain that 24 hour time was adopted in Britain before 1948.
    - pcrh 14y ago
      The 24 hour clock is still not universally adopted in the UK. No English speaker says says "thirteen O'Clock" the way one might say "treize heures". English speakers might say "thirteen hundred hours", but only in restricted circumstances (e.g. in the military).
j_baker 14y ago
I think the point of the first line isn't to say anything, be clever, or to give you an emotional reaction. It's to prompt questions that make you want to read further. Questions like: * Why is it a cold day in spite of the fact that it's spring, and bright out? * Why are the clocks striking thirteen? Did the earth's rotation become slower? Or did some bureaucrat change the system of time to match his whims? In my mind, it alludes to the fact that this is a world that is ok with blatantly inconsistencies, but forces you to verify that allusion by reading further.
summerdown2 14y ago
We know what the weather is. The word 'April' tells us it's a time and place similar to today. Clocks striking thirteen tells us it's somewhere different. Thirteen is a traditionally unlucky number. It's a classic science fiction method of establishing setting. We're someplace similar to today but a little different, all transmitted in very few words. The effect is a tiny bit unsettling... if they changed the clocks to chime on thirteen, what else is wrong? It's similar to Heinlein's famous way of indicating we're in the future in a single line: "The door dilated." More here: http://fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/About_Five_Thousand_Seven_Hundred_Fifty_Words http://fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/About_Five_Thousand_Seven_Hund...
Mz 14y ago
In addition to the excellent points others have made, the description "bright cold day in April" is filled with strong contrast. April is usually a warm month or, at worst, cool. It isn't typically cold. Similarly, bright days tend to be more warm than not so sunny days. So it strongly evokes unusual weather, which has a long history of being associated with abnormal events of significance to humans. This is part of why the weather is a popular topic and something modern humans have put substantial effort into predicting, broadcasting, etc. The opening line signals an atmosphere ripe for unusual, important events that you wouldn't typically expect. It is a means to suggest the calm before the storm without admitting directly that a storm is coming. It is the kind of thing which causes one to prick their ears up, a cross between curiosity and threat assessment. Real life examples: The year Krakatoa exploded, there was enough ash in the air to cause an abnormally cold summer in Europe. (This cold summer led to a story writing club which resulted in the original "Frankenstein". It was too cold for normal outdoor summer activities.) The night of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, people were manic and still up after midnight when the quake finally hit. And stories of historical (pre modern weather prediction) weather disasters typically start with comments on the unusual atmosphere which weirded people out beforehand but failed to tell them exactly what was coming. So I think the line evokes that sense of being on edge and expectant even though you aren't quite sure why because there is no explicit threat inherent in a bright cold day in April. Still, there is implicit threat of something coming that you can't quite put your finger on. When it was written, people were likely more in touch with the weather than a lot of people in developed countries today, so it would have been more strongly evocative for that audience.

by philh 14y ago

to3m 14y ago

Clocks don't generally strike thirteen. So, if nothing else, you might read on to find out what's going on. (This style of opening might have been a bit more cutting-edge in 1948, perhaps.)

nagrom 14y ago

It sets the scene really well: "A bright, cold day in April" is evocative of exactly that. It's not pretentious and it immediately puts a setting in the readers mind. "and the clocks were striking thirteen." is an immediate juxtaposition of something non-intuitive. The first reaction is "Clocks don't strike thirteen! They strike a maximum of twelve!". It's just nonintuitive enough without necessarily being obviously nonsense. And so the reader is engaged to read the next sentence to find out what he means by thirteen. Get the reader to read the next sentence enough, and you've tricked them into reading the book ;-)

philh 14y ago
My first reaction is more like "okay, so it's one o'clock". I never really noticed that it was weird before, though now it's pointed out I can see that it is.
- fastball 14y ago
  I think this opening line works better for people that don't use 24 hour time (namely Americans). That is interesting, because Orwell was British, and I am fairly certain that 24 hour time was adopted in Britain before 1948.
  - pcrh 14y ago
    The 24 hour clock is still not universally adopted in the UK. No English speaker says says "thirteen O'Clock" the way one might say "treize heures". English speakers might say "thirteen hundred hours", but only in restricted circumstances (e.g. in the military).

j_baker 14y ago

I think the point of the first line isn't to say anything, be clever, or to give you an emotional reaction. It's to prompt questions that make you want to read further. Questions like: * Why is it a cold day in spite of the fact that it's spring, and bright out? * Why are the clocks striking thirteen? Did the earth's rotation become slower? Or did some bureaucrat change the system of time to match his whims? In my mind, it alludes to the fact that this is a world that is ok with blatantly inconsistencies, but forces you to verify that allusion by reading further.

summerdown2 14y ago

We know what the weather is. The word 'April' tells us it's a time and place similar to today. Clocks striking thirteen tells us it's somewhere different. Thirteen is a traditionally unlucky number. It's a classic science fiction method of establishing setting. We're someplace similar to today but a little different, all transmitted in very few words. The effect is a tiny bit unsettling... if they changed the clocks to chime on thirteen, what else is wrong? It's similar to Heinlein's famous way of indicating we're in the future in a single line: "The door dilated." More here: http://fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/About_Five_Thousand_Seven_Hundred_Fifty_Words http://fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/About_Five_Thousand_Seven_Hund...

Mz 14y ago

In addition to the excellent points others have made, the description "bright cold day in April" is filled with strong contrast. April is usually a warm month or, at worst, cool. It isn't typically cold. Similarly, bright days tend to be more warm than not so sunny days. So it strongly evokes unusual weather, which has a long history of being associated with abnormal events of significance to humans. This is part of why the weather is a popular topic and something modern humans have put substantial effort into predicting, broadcasting, etc. The opening line signals an atmosphere ripe for unusual, important events that you wouldn't typically expect. It is a means to suggest the calm before the storm without admitting directly that a storm is coming. It is the kind of thing which causes one to prick their ears up, a cross between curiosity and threat assessment. Real life examples: The year Krakatoa exploded, there was enough ash in the air to cause an abnormally cold summer in Europe. (This cold summer led to a story writing club which resulted in the original "Frankenstein". It was too cold for normal outdoor summer activities.) The night of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, people were manic and still up after midnight when the quake finally hit. And stories of historical (pre modern weather prediction) weather disasters typically start with comments on the unusual atmosphere which weirded people out beforehand but failed to tell them exactly what was coming. So I think the line evokes that sense of being on edge and expectant even though you aren't quite sure why because there is no explicit threat inherent in a bright cold day in April. Still, there is implicit threat of something coming that you can't quite put your finger on. When it was written, people were likely more in touch with the weather than a lot of people in developed countries today, so it would have been more strongly evocative for that audience.