9 ms·

1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell

47 points by plg 13y ago

plg 13y ago
It's worth re-reading this wonderful book every couple of years. Every time I do, I see something new, either in the story itself, or in the writing craft, or in the story's context in society, as our world changes. It's also worth asking ourselves each time we re-read 1984, are we farther away or closer to the life depicted in the book, than last time we read it?
- mindcrime 13y ago
  I last re-read it about 5 or 6 years ago, IIRC. I'd say we're closer to that life now, than then.
  - 3am 13y ago
    This is about about as far as I can remember society being away from 1984. The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?), but remember the most pernicious influence in the actual book wasn't the surveillance, but the criminalization of actual ideas and corrupting the language in order to accomplish that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak).. in particular whiteblack (not to minimize your own nom de plume).
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      Don't you think, that we already have criminalization of thoughts and corruption of language? No? Then think again. Doubleplus think.
      - MartinCron 13y ago
        I'm trying to doubleplusthink on this one, but I really can't see any evidence of criminalization of thoughts. I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it.
        PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        You should just watch with an open mind what is going on in the world. There might be no mass-thought-reader yet, so you get through with your deplorable thoughts, but just take as a small example the era of McCarthy -- those that openly expressed possible communistic thoughts where persecuted. Or (to name a more current example) just say at the NY airport that the security measures are bullshit! ... just as doublethought-enhancer.
        MartinCron 13y ago
        The McCarthy era was both a long time ago and is almost universally regarded as a political and ideological failure. Are you saying that our society is infested with crypto-McCarthyists?
        PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I don't answer to posts that are not earnest. (I could answer to the first sentence alone, but it does not make sense to me to answer in the context of the second)
        Jare 13y ago
        > I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it Only because you don't have 24/7 surveillance on you. Yet.
        mhurron 13y ago
        http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-manga-%E2%80%9Cvictims-don%E2%80%99t-have-to-exist%E2%80%9D/ http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-m... "A federal appeals panel has upheld the 20 year sentence of a lolicon found to have received illustrations of underage sex by email, saying that “it is not a required that the minor depicted actually exists”, and so ruling art not to be universally protected free speech."
        MartinCron 13y ago
    - dil8 13y ago
      You just have to listen to a politician speak for a few minutes to see how language has been corrupted...
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        How has language been corrupted? They say exactly what they mean. They might lead you to believe they are saying something different, but is that language's fault, or is that because they are silver tongues?
        PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        No, they change the meaning of language. Language is never living on an island. It lives with the users and the uses of it. By misusing the language, bending and caricaturing it, they corrupt it. Do you not realize it?
        sliverstorm 13y ago
        That's an artful phrasing, but an implication that your point 'is obvious' as the cornerstone of your argument is unconvincing. I postulate that artful, metaphorical, or misleading uses of language is both neither misuse nor bending it, and I would like a clearer explanation of what a corrupted language looks like, aside from "being corrupt".
        PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I give you one example: Because torture is forbidden, the US government just renamed the things they did to the prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo, just not naming it torture. Or because if the people in Guantanamo where soldiers they would have special rights and the other way around, if they where not, they should get a normal trial. So they just called them other names just to disguise that what they do is not right! That is corrupting the language. And I even see it in Germany. Because the basic rights (like free speech) are defined in our constitution and "security" is not among them, our former secretary of the interior said this would be a "super basic right" -- thus also putting security above all basic rights ... and giving our rights in the hands of the NSA. By this way, they corrupt our language and our thinking. Defining everything that way, how they pleasure and how they can betray us!
    - grey-area 13y ago
      Some examples of Orwellian terms in common use: Enemy combatants, Collateral damage, Leader of the free world, National security, War for peace, Premptive strikes, Enhanced interrogation Some Orwellian concepts: War on abstract nouns (e.g on terror), Pervasive surveillance, Pervasive propaganda, Casual use of torture, Widespread hysteria and hatred over minor threats, Former hated enemies now allies and vice versa, Stark divides between the haves and have nots, A distant and poorly understood enemy necessitates perpetual conflict and sacrifice It's a really interesting book and I disagree that we are any farther on in these respects than we were in orwell's time. His book is of course a fantasy intended to illustrate our failings by exaggerating them, not a strict prediction of the future, but it still has a lot to teach us.
      - MartinCron 13y ago
        It has been a long time since I last read 1984, but I don't see the war on abstract nouns (poverty, drugs, terror) as particularly Orwellian.
        grey-area 13y ago
        I was thinking of things like sexcrime or thoughtcrime, though I don't think it is called a war in 1984. In a broader sense though, this sort of War on x is very Orwellian I think because it's directing the public to scapegoat segments of the population (drug users, muslims as potential terrorists) and blame them for their ills, and see themselves as perpetually at war with members of their own society, in the same way that in 1984 those guilty of vague, abstract crimes became the enemy and worthy of hate, simply by virtue of a government pronouncement. War has become normalised and part of everyday life, with the implication that as we are at war special rules apply and the enemy, as designated by the government, deserves no mercy because we are engaged in an existential struggle.
    - bernardom 13y ago
      > The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?) Doubleplus ungood, actually.
  - spindritf 13y ago
    With the collapse of the Soviet Union and most of the communist block, we are farther than we have ever been since 1984 was written.
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      I think, it's just the opposite. Since the fall of the communist idea (of course it has fallen already before), one religion now is dominant: Capitalism. Meaning, anybody that does not believe in the "true god", is guilty of Thoughtcrime.
      - spindritf 13y ago
        Except they're not thrown in gulags, persecuted, or even inconvenienced. Quite a few self-proclaimed socialists and marxists I know, with public blogs and other hallmarks of modern political activism, work for large corporations. No one cares. I live in Poland, a post-communist country. Just yesterday I heard an interview on (public) radio with some (state-sponsored) university professor arguing that life was better under the previous system. No one cares. There is proper thoughtcrime, like racism, or denying holocaust that can get you in trouble, fired, even arrested. But that is still really mild compared to 1984 or 1984.
        PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I think, we will see what will come. But when you state the wrong things even today you can get into trouble. Of course it is still not so obvious as in 1984 or in the USSR system, but things change rapidly today and I see it in "free" Germany as thoughts are forbidden and when you say them openly, you will be banned from the public. It is just a small step from there to be arrested, as we saw before. Even today, if you have the wrong name you can be disallowed from flying in the "land of the free". Because the government put your name on the list. Some woman fought against this list, but the government even played tricks, that the trial could not go on. Where is there democracy or freedom?
mindcrime 13y ago
I read that book my senior year in high-school, and to this day I will cite it as one of the - if not THE - most influential books I've ever read. I know Orwell was no libertarian, but what I took from the book (probably influenced by a genetic proclivity towards rebellion and anti-authoritarian thinking) was a tremendous mistrust of government... which I suspect was a strong influence on my eventually settling into a libertarian worldview. Some people say that Nineteen Eighty-Four wasn't written to be a warning, and maybe it wasn't - but I have a hard time seeing how anybody could read it and not discover something of a warning inside. And I think that's even more true given the various revelations over the past few years, vis-a-vis surveillance and diminishing civil liberties. I encourage anybody who hasn't read Nineteen Eighty-Four to go read it immediately. If you aren't either angry has hell, or sad as hell, or both, at the end, you're a rare breed. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt
- cma 13y ago
  Left-libertarian, or royal-libertarian? http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    Meh... I don't much care for labels, and leaving it at "libertarian" is probably specific enough. But if you really care, I associate a lot with the "voluntaryist" and/or "anarcho-capitalist" schools of thought. My beliefs about the ownership of land are in a state of flux and I'm not actually convinced there is any truly objective way to settle that issue.
    - ArkyBeagle 13y ago
      Look up Henry George, specifically "Progress and Poverty." His land taxation regime is to say the least controversial, but it's still compelling and it's something. It's also considered responsible for much of the rapid progress out of medievalism in the Far East late in the 19th/early in the 20th Century. Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan all had periods of very rapid industrialization under land taxes. No less than William F. Buckley referenced Henry George more than once.
fennecfoxen 13y ago
People interested in Orwell's 1984 might also be interested in C. S. Lewis's' That Hideous Strength, a pre-Atomic treatment of the dystopian sci-fi future from an unexpected author that actually predates 1984. Here's a review... by Orwell. http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ > His book describes the struggle of a little group of sane people against a nightmare that nearly conquers the world. A company of mad scientists – or, perhaps, they are not mad, but have merely destroyed in themselves all human feeling, all notion of good and evil – are plotting to conquer Britain, then the whole planet, and then other planets, until they have brought the universe under their control. >... > There is nothing outrageously improbable in such a conspiracy. Indeed, at a moment when a single atomic bomb – of a type already pronounced “obsolete” – has just blown probably three hundred thousand people to fragments, it sounds all too topical.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  Interesting to note that Orwell railed against tyranny, control of the understrength masses by a powerful few, and the obliteration of individualism and C. S. Lewis wrote thinly-disguised Christian propaganda targeted towards children.
  - fennecfoxen 13y ago
    That Hideous Strength is anything but "thinly-disguised Christian propaganda targeted towards children." First, as a novel, it's openly Christian (which, combined with the sci-fi dystopia, makes it a pretty unique entity - I find it fascinating, myself). It may also help you understand the sort of things the Christian right fears from the likes of people like yourself. Secondly, it's not targeted towards children. Even assuming a child would be paying attention after the first ten minutes' read: there's a sadistic lesbian police chief (a character of the sort whom Lewis is theorized to personally fancy), several open (if brief) discussions about sexuality and eroticism... to say nothing of the violent murders, suicides and tiger maulings. It's not exactly what you'd consider child-safe, let alone targeted. But I guess if you already know all there is to know about Lewis from the five-minute treatment in your local left-leaning literature class, or if you gleaned most of it secondhand from reading Neil Gaiman's The Problem of Susan, then you have no need to see anything that might interfere with your expectations. Go ahead and congratulate yourself on truly understanding the man. Also be sure to avoid: his WWI poetry. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2003/2003-h/2003-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2003/2003-h/2003-h.htm
PythonicAlpha 13y ago
It seems to me, this book is more relevant today than ever. Orwell might have erred with the date, but I think he didn't with the direction of human kind.
- bananacurve 13y ago
  The state of the world is improving, sorry but it is, but that doesn't fit into the epic narrative that so many want to believe. Your life is not as epic a struggle as your parents or their parents, all men are essentially kings today in terms of freedom and opportunity and a million other metrics. No one reports good news, progress is not as exciting as doom.
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    I don't want to believe, that the world is rapidly being corrupted, but it is. Freedom and opportunity? Opportunity might be true in some areas (particularly IT), but not in other areas. Just because you think you are king, you are not! Freedom, no, not at all. Democracy has brought much freedom to the people and after the 2nd WW freedom lived up to it's maximum, it seems to me. But in the last decades it declined rapidly. Do you mean, freedom in Iraq? Or in Afghanistan or other Arabian countries? Think twice! There might be some countries, yes, but they are far away from being real free. Freedom in western countries? Europe?? The US??? Think again! Just think!
    - saraid216 13y ago
      Yelling "think" is not actually the substitute for evidence that you seem to believe it is.
      - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I do not yell. I am just wondering. I am wondering, how people have been blinded. Maybe I have just to big expectations.
  - BugBrother 13y ago
iaygo 13y ago
It's an interesting article but of course the writing deadline was only a part of what killed him. His health declined during the period of being a tramp and working menial jobs in France where he was hospitalized with pneumonia. It didn't help being shot through the neck by a fascist sniper in the Spanish Civil War and also being a heavy smoker. Lastly, wintering in cold, wet Scotland isn't a good plan for anyone with bad lungs.
Perceval 13y ago
The world of 1984 was based on James Burnham's book The Managerial Revolution. Orwell even wrote a couple reviews of Burnham's work. Here's the first: http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh
simonebrunozzi 13y ago
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned "Brave New World" so far. IMHO, much closer to actual reality than 1984.
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  Might be. I must admit, that I do not know Brave New World as good as 1984. Might be, that there are more exact descriptions of our future around. But one thing I think is dominant and alarming: The "free" world does not converge to a system of even rights and freedom for all, but into a new system of control and inequality, that might in turn even top the system of the middle ages.
ArkyBeagle 13y ago
Orwell had tuberculosis, not uncommon for people from urban environment in his day. That's why the "bad lung". Whether he smoked or not is probably quite irrelevant. Orwell fought against Fascism ( both of the Lft and of the Right) , and mercantilism/empire. Not capitalism. Something can be one of those, but not both. These things are quite precise terms that have very specific meanings. The point of 1984 is not that some sinister cadre has seized power ( that's more like Alan Moore in "V for Vendetta" ) but rather that people stopped wanting to think at all, and the resulting regime met their preferences better as they simply stopped thinking at all.
dallos 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29 George Orwell averred that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) must be partly derived from We. Orwell began Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) some eight months after he read We in a French translation and wrote a review of it. Orwell is reported as "saying that he was taking it as the model for his next novel."

47 points by plg 13y ago

plg 13y ago

It's worth re-reading this wonderful book every couple of years. Every time I do, I see something new, either in the story itself, or in the writing craft, or in the story's context in society, as our world changes. It's also worth asking ourselves each time we re-read 1984, are we farther away or closer to the life depicted in the book, than last time we read it?

mindcrime 13y ago
I last re-read it about 5 or 6 years ago, IIRC. I'd say we're closer to that life now, than then.
- 3am 13y ago
  This is about about as far as I can remember society being away from 1984. The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?), but remember the most pernicious influence in the actual book wasn't the surveillance, but the criminalization of actual ideas and corrupting the language in order to accomplish that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak).. in particular whiteblack (not to minimize your own nom de plume).
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    Don't you think, that we already have criminalization of thoughts and corruption of language? No? Then think again. Doubleplus think.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      I'm trying to doubleplusthink on this one, but I really can't see any evidence of criminalization of thoughts. I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it.
      - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        You should just watch with an open mind what is going on in the world. There might be no mass-thought-reader yet, so you get through with your deplorable thoughts, but just take as a small example the era of McCarthy -- those that openly expressed possible communistic thoughts where persecuted. Or (to name a more current example) just say at the NY airport that the security measures are bullshit! ... just as doublethought-enhancer.
        MartinCron 13y ago
        The McCarthy era was both a long time ago and is almost universally regarded as a political and ideological failure. Are you saying that our society is infested with crypto-McCarthyists?
        PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I don't answer to posts that are not earnest. (I could answer to the first sentence alone, but it does not make sense to me to answer in the context of the second)
      - Jare 13y ago
        > I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it Only because you don't have 24/7 surveillance on you. Yet.
      - mhurron 13y ago
        http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-manga-%E2%80%9Cvictims-don%E2%80%99t-have-to-exist%E2%80%9D/ http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-m... "A federal appeals panel has upheld the 20 year sentence of a lolicon found to have received illustrations of underage sex by email, saying that “it is not a required that the minor depicted actually exists”, and so ruling art not to be universally protected free speech."
        MartinCron 13y ago
  - dil8 13y ago
    You just have to listen to a politician speak for a few minutes to see how language has been corrupted...
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      How has language been corrupted? They say exactly what they mean. They might lead you to believe they are saying something different, but is that language's fault, or is that because they are silver tongues?
      - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        No, they change the meaning of language. Language is never living on an island. It lives with the users and the uses of it. By misusing the language, bending and caricaturing it, they corrupt it. Do you not realize it?
        sliverstorm 13y ago
        That's an artful phrasing, but an implication that your point 'is obvious' as the cornerstone of your argument is unconvincing. I postulate that artful, metaphorical, or misleading uses of language is both neither misuse nor bending it, and I would like a clearer explanation of what a corrupted language looks like, aside from "being corrupt".
        PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I give you one example: Because torture is forbidden, the US government just renamed the things they did to the prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo, just not naming it torture. Or because if the people in Guantanamo where soldiers they would have special rights and the other way around, if they where not, they should get a normal trial. So they just called them other names just to disguise that what they do is not right! That is corrupting the language. And I even see it in Germany. Because the basic rights (like free speech) are defined in our constitution and "security" is not among them, our former secretary of the interior said this would be a "super basic right" -- thus also putting security above all basic rights ... and giving our rights in the hands of the NSA. By this way, they corrupt our language and our thinking. Defining everything that way, how they pleasure and how they can betray us!
  - grey-area 13y ago
    Some examples of Orwellian terms in common use: Enemy combatants, Collateral damage, Leader of the free world, National security, War for peace, Premptive strikes, Enhanced interrogation Some Orwellian concepts: War on abstract nouns (e.g on terror), Pervasive surveillance, Pervasive propaganda, Casual use of torture, Widespread hysteria and hatred over minor threats, Former hated enemies now allies and vice versa, Stark divides between the haves and have nots, A distant and poorly understood enemy necessitates perpetual conflict and sacrifice It's a really interesting book and I disagree that we are any farther on in these respects than we were in orwell's time. His book is of course a fantasy intended to illustrate our failings by exaggerating them, not a strict prediction of the future, but it still has a lot to teach us.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      It has been a long time since I last read 1984, but I don't see the war on abstract nouns (poverty, drugs, terror) as particularly Orwellian.
      - grey-area 13y ago
        I was thinking of things like sexcrime or thoughtcrime, though I don't think it is called a war in 1984. In a broader sense though, this sort of War on x is very Orwellian I think because it's directing the public to scapegoat segments of the population (drug users, muslims as potential terrorists) and blame them for their ills, and see themselves as perpetually at war with members of their own society, in the same way that in 1984 those guilty of vague, abstract crimes became the enemy and worthy of hate, simply by virtue of a government pronouncement. War has become normalised and part of everyday life, with the implication that as we are at war special rules apply and the enemy, as designated by the government, deserves no mercy because we are engaged in an existential struggle.
  - bernardom 13y ago
    > The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?) Doubleplus ungood, actually.
- spindritf 13y ago
  With the collapse of the Soviet Union and most of the communist block, we are farther than we have ever been since 1984 was written.
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    I think, it's just the opposite. Since the fall of the communist idea (of course it has fallen already before), one religion now is dominant: Capitalism. Meaning, anybody that does not believe in the "true god", is guilty of Thoughtcrime.
    - spindritf 13y ago
      Except they're not thrown in gulags, persecuted, or even inconvenienced. Quite a few self-proclaimed socialists and marxists I know, with public blogs and other hallmarks of modern political activism, work for large corporations. No one cares. I live in Poland, a post-communist country. Just yesterday I heard an interview on (public) radio with some (state-sponsored) university professor arguing that life was better under the previous system. No one cares. There is proper thoughtcrime, like racism, or denying holocaust that can get you in trouble, fired, even arrested. But that is still really mild compared to 1984 or 1984.
      - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I think, we will see what will come. But when you state the wrong things even today you can get into trouble. Of course it is still not so obvious as in 1984 or in the USSR system, but things change rapidly today and I see it in "free" Germany as thoughts are forbidden and when you say them openly, you will be banned from the public. It is just a small step from there to be arrested, as we saw before. Even today, if you have the wrong name you can be disallowed from flying in the "land of the free". Because the government put your name on the list. Some woman fought against this list, but the government even played tricks, that the trial could not go on. Where is there democracy or freedom?

mindcrime 13y ago

I read that book my senior year in high-school, and to this day I will cite it as one of the - if not THE - most influential books I've ever read. I know Orwell was no libertarian, but what I took from the book (probably influenced by a genetic proclivity towards rebellion and anti-authoritarian thinking) was a tremendous mistrust of government... which I suspect was a strong influence on my eventually settling into a libertarian worldview. Some people say that Nineteen Eighty-Four wasn't written to be a warning, and maybe it wasn't - but I have a hard time seeing how anybody could read it and not discover something of a warning inside. And I think that's even more true given the various revelations over the past few years, vis-a-vis surveillance and diminishing civil liberties. I encourage anybody who hasn't read Nineteen Eighty-Four to go read it immediately. If you aren't either angry has hell, or sad as hell, or both, at the end, you're a rare breed. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

cma 13y ago
Left-libertarian, or royal-libertarian? http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html
- mindcrime 13y ago
  Meh... I don't much care for labels, and leaving it at "libertarian" is probably specific enough. But if you really care, I associate a lot with the "voluntaryist" and/or "anarcho-capitalist" schools of thought. My beliefs about the ownership of land are in a state of flux and I'm not actually convinced there is any truly objective way to settle that issue.
  - ArkyBeagle 13y ago
    Look up Henry George, specifically "Progress and Poverty." His land taxation regime is to say the least controversial, but it's still compelling and it's something. It's also considered responsible for much of the rapid progress out of medievalism in the Far East late in the 19th/early in the 20th Century. Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan all had periods of very rapid industrialization under land taxes. No less than William F. Buckley referenced Henry George more than once.

fennecfoxen 13y ago

People interested in Orwell's 1984 might also be interested in C. S. Lewis's' That Hideous Strength, a pre-Atomic treatment of the dystopian sci-fi future from an unexpected author that actually predates 1984. Here's a review... by Orwell. http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ > His book describes the struggle of a little group of sane people against a nightmare that nearly conquers the world. A company of mad scientists – or, perhaps, they are not mad, but have merely destroyed in themselves all human feeling, all notion of good and evil – are plotting to conquer Britain, then the whole planet, and then other planets, until they have brought the universe under their control. >... > There is nothing outrageously improbable in such a conspiracy. Indeed, at a moment when a single atomic bomb – of a type already pronounced “obsolete” – has just blown probably three hundred thousand people to fragments, it sounds all too topical.

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
Interesting to note that Orwell railed against tyranny, control of the understrength masses by a powerful few, and the obliteration of individualism and C. S. Lewis wrote thinly-disguised Christian propaganda targeted towards children.
- fennecfoxen 13y ago
  That Hideous Strength is anything but "thinly-disguised Christian propaganda targeted towards children." First, as a novel, it's openly Christian (which, combined with the sci-fi dystopia, makes it a pretty unique entity - I find it fascinating, myself). It may also help you understand the sort of things the Christian right fears from the likes of people like yourself. Secondly, it's not targeted towards children. Even assuming a child would be paying attention after the first ten minutes' read: there's a sadistic lesbian police chief (a character of the sort whom Lewis is theorized to personally fancy), several open (if brief) discussions about sexuality and eroticism... to say nothing of the violent murders, suicides and tiger maulings. It's not exactly what you'd consider child-safe, let alone targeted. But I guess if you already know all there is to know about Lewis from the five-minute treatment in your local left-leaning literature class, or if you gleaned most of it secondhand from reading Neil Gaiman's The Problem of Susan, then you have no need to see anything that might interfere with your expectations. Go ahead and congratulate yourself on truly understanding the man. Also be sure to avoid: his WWI poetry. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2003/2003-h/2003-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2003/2003-h/2003-h.htm

PythonicAlpha 13y ago

It seems to me, this book is more relevant today than ever. Orwell might have erred with the date, but I think he didn't with the direction of human kind.

bananacurve 13y ago
The state of the world is improving, sorry but it is, but that doesn't fit into the epic narrative that so many want to believe. Your life is not as epic a struggle as your parents or their parents, all men are essentially kings today in terms of freedom and opportunity and a million other metrics. No one reports good news, progress is not as exciting as doom.
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  I don't want to believe, that the world is rapidly being corrupted, but it is. Freedom and opportunity? Opportunity might be true in some areas (particularly IT), but not in other areas. Just because you think you are king, you are not! Freedom, no, not at all. Democracy has brought much freedom to the people and after the 2nd WW freedom lived up to it's maximum, it seems to me. But in the last decades it declined rapidly. Do you mean, freedom in Iraq? Or in Afghanistan or other Arabian countries? Think twice! There might be some countries, yes, but they are far away from being real free. Freedom in western countries? Europe?? The US??? Think again! Just think!
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Yelling "think" is not actually the substitute for evidence that you seem to believe it is.
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      I do not yell. I am just wondering. I am wondering, how people have been blinded. Maybe I have just to big expectations.
- BugBrother 13y ago

iaygo 13y ago

It's an interesting article but of course the writing deadline was only a part of what killed him. His health declined during the period of being a tramp and working menial jobs in France where he was hospitalized with pneumonia. It didn't help being shot through the neck by a fascist sniper in the Spanish Civil War and also being a heavy smoker. Lastly, wintering in cold, wet Scotland isn't a good plan for anyone with bad lungs.

Perceval 13y ago

The world of 1984 was based on James Burnham's book The Managerial Revolution. Orwell even wrote a couple reviews of Burnham's work. Here's the first: http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh

simonebrunozzi 13y ago

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned "Brave New World" so far. IMHO, much closer to actual reality than 1984.

PythonicAlpha 13y ago
Might be. I must admit, that I do not know Brave New World as good as 1984. Might be, that there are more exact descriptions of our future around. But one thing I think is dominant and alarming: The "free" world does not converge to a system of even rights and freedom for all, but into a new system of control and inequality, that might in turn even top the system of the middle ages.

ArkyBeagle 13y ago

Orwell had tuberculosis, not uncommon for people from urban environment in his day. That's why the "bad lung". Whether he smoked or not is probably quite irrelevant. Orwell fought against Fascism ( both of the Lft and of the Right) , and mercantilism/empire. Not capitalism. Something can be one of those, but not both. These things are quite precise terms that have very specific meanings. The point of 1984 is not that some sinister cadre has seized power ( that's more like Alan Moore in "V for Vendetta" ) but rather that people stopped wanting to think at all, and the resulting regime met their preferences better as they simply stopped thinking at all.

dallos 13y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29 George Orwell averred that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) must be partly derived from We. Orwell began Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) some eight months after he read We in a French translation and wrote a review of it. Orwell is reported as "saying that he was taking it as the model for his next novel."