Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Mar 26, 2017
- 3 min read
★★★★★
As I struggled over the past couple of days to organize my thoughts about George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, it seemed like there was nothing I could say that everyone didn’t already know. Except, sitting down at last to write this review, I realized that my thinking was entirely wrong because I didn’t know everything about it when I sat down to read it—yes, for the first time—a week ago.
Written in the aftermath of World War II, from 1947–1948, and published in 1949, the dystopian future Orwell paints is probably—no, not probably, definitely—the bleakest, most brutal, most unforgiving novel I’ve ever read. And, quite possibly, the best. Sure, like most everyone, I was aware of its themes of mass surveillance, censorship, and nationalism, but I wasn’t aware of the love story at its heart. Nor was I aware of the extent to which, though set nearly forty years into the future, the motifs of Nineteen Eighty-Four are largely grounded in the geopolitical events leading up to and resulting from World War II. As dystopian fiction goes, Orwell’s masterpiece is perhaps not so wildly imaginative—postwar Britain plus Stalin-era Soviet Union—but it’s so compellingly told it doesn’t matter.
It is, of course, no coincidence that I chose to read this book now. It seems that with every presidential succession cries of, “Ninteen Eighty-Four!” commence anew, but the volume and vociferousness of those cries has never been louder, in my lifetime at least, than in reaction to the Trump presidency. Much is, to quote the Talking Heads, the same as it ever was. But what is different this time isn’t simply the blatantness, the absolute lack of fear, the brazen audacity of Trump and his administration to lie, lie about the lie, and repeat the lie until, for the rest of us, fighting the lie is more tiresome than either accepting the lie or simply giving up (because its innate absurdity stupefies any rational thinker), but to thumb their noses not just at the truth, but the very idea of Truth. Surveillance, censorship, nationalism: these things are scary and dangerous and even abhorrent to a democracy and to the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness we hold dear (or at least proclaim to). But a post-truth world in which objective, provable, immutable facts no longer matter? Where there is no truth only belief? That will be the final, disastrous step in fulfilling Orwell’s dystopian nightmare: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
There is reason for hope, however, both in Nineteen Eighty-Four and in our own fragile world. I won’t spoil in what way hope, if it is to be found at the end of Orwell’s novel at all (a matter of some debate, naturally), comes to pass. But for us, to invert a Star Trek quotation, “Resistance is not futile.” We are not the Borg, and it is neither inevitability nor destiny that we should become so. Our democracy is not one-sided, it is a relationship: sometimes We The People have a generous, considerate partner; at other times a solipsistic, abusive asshole. Hope lies in—and our future depends on—recognizing which one we have now, and if it’s the latter, making conscious choices to ensure we get out safely and never go back.
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