Date: 25 May 2014
Location: Bonnie
It seemed an odd choice to read another dystopian novel for this month’s meeting, but in the end, I think it was worth it. When I began reading Brave New World last month, I was expecting to rediscover the familiar plot of Big Brother. Instead I got “orgy porgy” and “bumblepuppy.” I may have read Huxley’s book at some point in the past but I retained none of the plot. It was Nineteen Eighty-four that has stuck with me all these years. I think it is the better written book. The characters are more fully developed. The language is more engaging. More of its terminology has entered everyday use.
While both books serve up cautionary tales of future totalitarian societies, Huxley gives us control through pleasure while Orwell paints a darker scene filled with torture and hate. World War II separated the publication of the two books. Nineteen Eighty-four was written after the use of nuclear weapons, large scale attacks on civilian populations, and genocide.
The book draws heavily on many aspects of Nazi Germany and Stalinism. Party members are desensitized to violence and death. The ruling 2% of Inner Party members seek and revere power for its own sake, observing, controlling, destroying those outside their circle. History is constantly revised to reflect current Party policy. An artificial language, Newspeak, is under development to insure complete control of the individual. Reality is what the Party says it is and they will utilize any and all methods, physical and psychological, to insure that no one thinks otherwise.
The most startling thing I felt in re-reading this book was its relevance in today’s world. Surveillance is wide-spread: “red-light” cameras, CCTV in Great Britain, the NSA’s collection of phone data. Casual violence is wide-spread in movies, TV programs, video games. Basic democratic principals are abridged in the Patriot Act. That history is rewritten has long been recognized and will surely continue.
As painful as it may be to read, I think that Orwell accomplished his purpose in creating a work that warns us to guard against our baser natures. I think we all agreed that maturity and wider life experience gave a better understanding of the depth of this book.
How did the author treat women? As horribly as he treated men.
— Claudia
Side note: George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair.
Total trivia: Huxley, who had briefly taught Blair at Eton, wrote a letter to him saying that he had enjoyed reading Nineteen Eighty-four but that he felt the result of a future totalitarian society was more likely to resemble what he had described in Brave New World than “the boot upon the face” that Blair expounded.