/lit/ - Literature

Best novel of the 20th century.

>>18349653
t. 105 IQ low spectrum midwit.

I don't enjoy George Orwell. corny and not that sharp

The government was right; Winston was a paranoid depressed schizo.

There was nothing that was really wrong with Winston's life in the beginning of the book, yet he feels deeply unsatisfied. No one else besides him shares this feeling; everyone else leads normal, productive lives. Throughout the book there is no direct evidence to suggest the party is evil.

At the end of the book it even says Winston realized the error of his ways and admits he is wrong. He is grateful to finally be so well adjusted. It is a happy ending.

been years since I read the book but that was ultimately my impression of it

>>18349651
Our current dystopia is like a blending of 1984 and Brave New World. If you're a regular dipshit normie, you get the BNW treatment - the oligarchs keep you stupid and pacified with drugs, casual sex and vapid entertainment.
But if you decide you want to learn how the world really works and start asking inconvenient questions, you get the 1984 treatment. You are shunned from society, slandered, ridiculed, threatened, if they have any blackmail material you'll be blackmailed, etc.
If you pose a big enough threat you will be flat-out murdered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrance_Yeakey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb

And there are countless other murdered truth-tellers. Western "democracy" is an absolute sham, in reality, the west is run like a giant mafia. A handful of families - Rockefellers, Rothschilds, etc - control everything. Elected politicians are just their puppets. They're put in place to trick the normies into thinking they have some kind of control over how their country is run, and shift blame for bad governance onto the people themselves - "if only you had voted differently!"
The field of candidates is rigged. It doesn't matter who you vote for, you're just voting for different flavors of plutocracy.

Oh and by the way, look up who Aldous Huxley was. Royal Society. Huxley wasn't warning us with his book, BNW was a blueprint for what Huxley and his plutocrat buddies wanted the world to become. They have largely succeeded.

>>18349732

So what you're saying is that although "1984 wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual", as they say, Brave New World WAS...

>>18349756
Pretty much. The Huxleys were all in favor of global technocracy. They all wanted a one-world government, they were all eugenicists, they wanted to smash all of the religions together into a single global cult that is controlled by the one-world government.

>>18349697
I feel sorry for you

>>18349808
Evidence? I liked Huxley's work. A little disappointed to discover this.

>>18351434
I don't know if it's true but you should always separate the art from the artist.

>>18351458
I don't separate the art from the artist. That is a useless dogma.

Do you guys like the everyman's library edition of this?

>>18349659
The fact that midwits enjoy it and high brows hate it is what makes it such a powerful entity. It's all there in the book mate

>>18349697
An opinion so edgy you could shave your face with it for six months to conserve rations

>>18349697
I think the torture scene was actually a schizophrenic episode. They probably had him in a very nice mental health facility.

>>18349697

Bro... so Winston was a paranoid schizo cause the government was restricting language by removing vocabulary so people can't accurately express what they mean and because they were supervised through TV and punished / disappeared in institutions meant to keep people in place and not raise against the government ?

Also

>At the end of the book it even says Winston realized the error of his ways and admits he is wrong. He is grateful to finally be so well adjusted. It is a happy ending.

Winston didn't "realize the error of his ways", he just resigned to the fact that there's no way to fight against the system, no matter what you do. After being tortured and forced to conform you call that a happy ending, ok bro.

>>18352303
>very nice mental health facility
this gave me chills

>>18352618
>mental health
This have me chills

>>18352618
People who are insane don't deserve to live on the streets.

People keep relating everything to 1984 nowadays without realizing that we are actually way more similar to Brave New World.

>>18352875
I'm new to /lit/ is this a meme response? Someone always pipes up with it without elaborating.

>>18349697
t. O'Brien

>>18352262
based

>>18349697
>bodily issues
>lack of access to resources
>only alcohol is basically gasoline
>unable/unwilling to write or think coherently without risk of loss of life

fucking retard.

>>18349651
Part 2 > 1 > 3

>>18352303

exactly, it seems very surreal and afterwards there is no evidence that it actually took place and was not in Winston's head.

>>18352427

the issue is the book is written from the perspective of Winston. You are taking everything he claims about the society, government, and the people around him at face value but there is no evidence to suggest that he is not crazy. It would be different if there was objective outside evidence of his claims but we never see it.

>After being tortured and forced to conform

what is this torture, you mean making him look at a rat in a cage? They never physically touch him or harm him in any way. The government is supposed to be this big, evil entity that abducts and tortures people frequently; you would think they have sophisticated methods of brainwashing and torture and yet the very first and only thing they do is put a rat in his face? Does this make sense to you? Did this scene even occur in reality? Not to mention Julia apparently broke down immediately and yet is never seen or spoken of again after Winston is "tortured". Did she even exist herself?

>>18354271

similar to above response, you are taking everything Winston claims about the world he is living in as fact and the truth when there is nothing to suggest that is the case

Any book whose furthest genius is the inspiration of fear is trite by default. True fear, when seen, is internal, not external, and that is only the beginning of Orwell's failures.

>>18349651
For me, the most impactful moment while reading the book was when Winston recieves the note saying "I love you".

>>18349697

>>18349697
exactly, this is the only correct reading post-9/11

>>18349697
Obvious bait.

>>18349661
You could never write something even remotely as good in your wildest dreams.

How come people always refer to this book as one for midwits but never elaborate as to why?

>>18356838
Contrarians. They can't like what's popular because if blunts their edge.

>>18356838
>How come people always refer to this book as one for midwits but never elaborate as to why?
Because midwits assume that Orwellian society is a prediction for the future because of its namesake, when it was in fact a historical recollection of much of his experiences in Burma with a sci-fi twist.

>>18354400
What is this bait? There's a whole section describing how he is beaten by a gang of guards every day, sometimes for hours, and then when he's in the room with O'Brien he's repeatedly subjected to unbearably painful electrical torture.

>>18357037
Yeah, imagine something as barbaric as electricity being used..

>>18349697
>No one else besides him shares this feeling
How do you make everyone happy?
Shoot all the unhappy people.

>>18354400
>Not to mention Julia apparently broke down immediately
I assumed O'Brien was lying when he said that to break Winston down even further.

>>18357537
>I assumed O'Brien was lying when he said that to break Winston down even further.
Same. It becomes evident at the end he was truthful though. Don't they suggest they made her sterile at the end though?

>>18357546
I don't believe he was telling the truth. Julia did break down at the end, true, but it probably did not happen anywhere near as fast as O'Brien claimed. Given how much she hated the Party before, I don't think a reprogramming like the one Winston underwent could have possibly been completed that quickly.

>Don't they suggest they made her sterile at the end though?
Which part are you thinking of? The one where Winston talks about how the shape of her body changed?

>>18357011
Absolute hogwash. It is a prediction for the future even if you must insist it was unintentional.

>>18357627
They specifically said her stomach was hard, hence my thoughts, but maybe this is metaphorical? I also think that Julia would have broken down very quickly - the sharp contrast you need to look at is the shape of rebellion between Julia and Winston (and this perhaps shows Orwell's thoughts on the sexes).

Winston forms an internal process, a philosophical argument against what the party stood for - he wanted to engage it intellectually. Julia however, wants to fuck. That's her thing. She fucks, and fucks, and fucks. Her entire rebellion is a hedonistic venture, cathartic by its nature, of self relief through the body. It is exploration of rebellion through both mind and body; Winston even shares this with Julia, but she is utterly uninterested in his musings.

That said, I think Julia would have cracked far, far, faster than Julia. Her rebellion was about physical pleasures, not about a principled point against The Party.

>>18357635
>unintentional
And therein lies the problem, people always think it's Orwell forming a commentary on what the future holds, but I do not think that was his intent in writing.

>>18357660
I assumed Julia's changed shape was just a remnant of the torture she underwent, just like Winston's loss of hair. But perhaps there's more behind it.

It's true that Julia's rebellion was different from Winston's, but I think this may also have been because Winston was born before the Revolution, unlike Julia. Julia couldn't remember a world without the Party and just saw it as an unchangeable part of reality, something she hated, but had to deal with. Even though Winston's memory was fractured, he still knew that the world was once different.

Very relevant today.

I think the biggest difference between the book and today is that we have materialism instead of war. The essay in the middle of the book about war is peace was illuminating. They keep the world in a state of constant conventional attrition warfare to waste the output of peoples labor so the standard of living doesn't increase. I definitely noticed parallels between this and our own societies problems with materialism, planned obsolescence and offshore manufacturing. We work our asses off to pay off some overpriced crap that wears out by the time its fully paid for. Wondering if anybody else read it this way? Also I need to commute an hour each way to my job just because nobody in north america gives a shit about good urban planning, so I might just be a bit biased about this issue.

A lot of the other things he talks about are here in some form. I think the constant burning and rewriting of history is a metaphor for the 24 hour news cycle and Newspeak is memes.

>>18349732
This guy gets it but most of the population of Oceania are proles who are allowed to think whatever they want because the party knows that all the content that reaches them is bullshit. They only care what opinions Winston has because he was responsible for making content. You're absolutely right about powerful business leaders pulling strings behind the scenes though.

>>18357714
Sorry I had meant to say Julia would have cracked far faster than Winston, because hers is physically driven, whilst Winston had created a mindset against it.

I like your point on the time frame, perhaps part of this commentary isn't in fact sexist as I had raised an eye-brow to, but is rather a commentary on how, those born and indoctrinated into a system without knowing different might only have their bodies to combat that system with, rather than a mental impetus to do so... I don't know how well that'd hold though, Julia seems to address the ridiculousness of her role in The Party, and she does work as an anti-pornographer...

Good book, but sad having to live through it in reality.

Incidentally, it's a good novel but for many people it's the only book they really know about.

>>18357791
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Julia also work in the department responsible for producing porn for the proles? Kind of ironic that she's also in the Junior Anti-Sex League, but it showcases the different lifestyles the Party intended for each class. Party members are expected to be as celibate as possible, but proles can sleep around as much as they want.

>>18357853
That's the one - it's been a while since I read the book. You're right, she works in the porn division and the anti-youth sex league (she has that red sash - real subtle Arthur), which again might show younger people in the absence of 'greater thought' are pushed towards obsessing over their bodies, sexuality etc.

Either way, I think that O'Brien telling us Julia broke was a meta play by Orwell. You said you thought he was lying - there's no way she broke so easily - and I rather suspect that's what Winston would have wanted to think too. I think it puts you in his shoes quite well. It's a clever trick. I think I went through the same thinking at one point, but logically concluded she probably broke quite quickly.

The flip side to that, is there is no positive for Winston in Julia in that outcome.
a) Julia broke and told them everything. (NEGATIVE RESULT: She has betrayed Winston.)
b) Julia has not broken. (NEGATIVE RESULT: She is still being tortured.)

>>18357898
I think the Junior Anti-Sex League was one part of the Party's way of making sure that each generation is more loyal to the Party than the one before it. The youth's loyalty to the Party is already intense at the time of the events in the book (think of Parsons's daughter spying on and eventually betraying him, for example, despite Parsons already being very loyal, aside from the thoughtcrime he committed in his sleep) and would likely grow even greater in every generation to come, perhaps even leading to the children in the book eventually being betrayed by their own descendents, though that's speculation, of course.
Eventually, there should be no loyalty to anything but the Party in the minds of the Party members. Sleeping with someone, however, may quickly establish loyalty to another person, therefore the youth is fervently taught to not do that.

>>18358020
>Eventually, there should be no loyalty to anything but the Party in the minds of the Party members. Sleeping with someone, however, may quickly establish loyalty to another person, therefore the youth is fervently taught to not do that.
Sure, but it could also be a red herring; if people are too busy trying to meet their basic needs, such as sex, reproduction, and development, then surely they're also too busy to fulfil their higher order needs?

>>18358029
Could very well be, yes. It would probably work pretty well, the Outer Party was barely familiar with needs of higher order, so they may not even think about them at all. That's also part of how the proles were kept under control, by not even exposing them to any other conditions, thus making it impossible to compare theirs to any higher ones.

>>18358125
Precisely, so by not exposing Julia to 'other ideologies', and then creating a fixation on bodily control (such as through sex), the party ultimately creates a situation where someone's perception of 'true rebellion' is going against the thing the party says they don't want you to do - but the thing they're saying they don't want you to do, might not be the greatest thing they don't want you to do - they'd rather keep that secret.

It's really hard to say what his angle was on this... there are lots of ways to look at it.

Ultimately I still think Julia broke quickly. The implication I got was they'd given her a hysterectomy, and I think stripping her of her womanhood would have been a rapid death blow to her rebellion.