Orwell's "1984" What would you guys say was the moral of the story?

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Anonymous Mon May 23 16:04:28 2011 No.1796734 [Reply] [Original]

Orwell's "1984"

What would you guys say was the moral of the story?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 16:05:28 2011 No.1796736 obedience can be challenging but it is important to a functioning society

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 16:05:28 2011 No.1796737 read license agreements.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 16:05:28 2011 No.1796739 They always get you in the end.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 16:06:28 2011 No.1796742 2+2=4

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 16:06:28 2011 No.1796748 Don't rely on the proles. England's class system was good and should be preserved.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 16:07:28 2011 No.1796749 Also, what do you think about the imporant questions raised about the book, other than "is this the future?"

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 16:09:28 2011 No.1796755 Start a revolution or we are all fucked.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 16:10:28 2011 No.1796759 homework fag detected

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 16:11:28 2011 No.1796763 The centralisation of information is a bad idea.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 16:12:28 2011 No.1796766 >>1796749 did julia and o'brien actually hook up or was it a dream sequence

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 16:14:28 2011 No.1796775 File: 39 KB, 528x404, roger sees what you did.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>1796766 of course, you think obrien's not going to hit that?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 17:26:28 2011 No.1796993 Meh it stated off as a warning but devolved into a love story IMO.

Anonymous Mon May 23 17:29:28 2011 No.1796996
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>>1796993
The love story is not the primary plot, nor is it even the secondary plot. It was only set up just to show how easily they would betray one another despite the ardent promises they made to each other not to.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 17:31:28 2011 No.1797002 >>1796996 I'm sorry but when 40% of a book is the characters talking and thinking about their love i generally assume the story is a significant undertone.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 17:33:28 2011 No.1797004 >>1797002 Except any love story worth its salt doesn't show a love being broken almost effortlessly by an authoritarian government.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 17:36:28 2011 No.1797014 Kind of generic, but here goes nothing: The importance of Freedom of thought and the government's ability to manipulate and control it's civilians.

Anonymous Mon May 23 17:40:28 2011 No.1797027

The love story is not the focus. If anything, it's simply a device to further reflect the novel's other points and foci, as has already been mentioned in this thread.

Like all speculative fiction, it has a political ideology and an agenda, and that's the point of the thing. Also, please don't read this as pejorative. It isn't. It's just the truth.

Anonymous Mon May 23 17:52:28 2011 No.1797057

You fucking

It's a description of the possibility of totalitarian politics - the moral, if there is any, is that we need to be incredibly vigilant about the possibility of totalitarian regimes, because they CAN occur (they're not a danger which is in the past but something which can recur) and because they absolutely destroy humanity and eliminate any space for human action or spontaneity. It's a warning about what the future could be. Put in more intellectual and philosophically cogent terms by Hannah Arendt, but more readable in Orwell, I suppose.

Anonymous Mon May 23 17:54:28 2011 No.1797063

>>1797027
>Like all speculative fiction, it has a political ideology and an agenda,

uh what

what's the political ideology of dune, please? what's the agenda of Book of the New Sun? what's the didactic meaning of John Crowley's "Little, Big"?

that seems like a really strange thing to say about speculative fiction as such and I'm not sure where you're coming from on this one

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 17:57:28 2011 No.1797074 It's about how one handles living in a world with the assumption of an omnipotent God.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 18:03:28 2011 No.1797086 1984 is about power. That's it. Power bad. We need get rid power.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 18:32:28 2011 No.1797164 >>1797086 >We need get rid power. no, but no one man should have it

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 18:39:28 2011 No.1797182 File: 43 KB, 318x470, 1305486184415.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>1797074 >It's about how one handles living in a world with the assumption of an omnipotent God

Krazee Eyez Killa !0Wbxk7v4U2 Mon May 23 18:50:28 2011 No.1797219

The "moral" in the sense of the lesson that was supposed to be taken from the novel would be in my opinion:

The government will over time increasingly use advances in technology and in knowledge against it's citizens. They will do so by the use of "doublespeak" and "doublethink," which means that people will have no way of thinking thoughts that the government don't want them to. Furthermore, they will censor all types of anti-government free-speech, punishing anyone who violates this law. People will be no longer be able to put up any meaningful resistance to those in power and humanity will forever be enslaved, without even being aware of it.

tl;dr: the matrix

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 18:53:28 2011 No.1797233 The moral of 1984 is to always be meticulous about dusting.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 18:58:28 2011 No.1797248 File: 98 KB, 581x363, 1303396459976.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] It's about what's going to happen in the year 2051

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 19:00:28 2011 No.1797255 totalitarianism is bad.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 19:09:28 2011 No.1797275 The moral of 1984 is this: We are legion.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 19:19:28 2011 No.1797291 >>1797275 Go back to /b/ anon.

Anonymous Mon May 23 19:23:28 2011 No.1797302

That group mentality is strong

That concentrated power is bad, and I supose if you want to push it that language is an important part of being able to express yourself which is painfully obvious.

Also to the person saying that the love was an important part of the story, it really wasnt. It was more of a device to explain peoples conflict of priorities when under external pressure (e.g. the doublethink idea).

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 19:41:28 2011 No.1797328 >>1797302 the love story made up at least 50% of the novel bro

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 19:42:28 2011 No.1797335 >>1797328 >mfw you don't get it. Not the person you're referencing, but the love story is a device, not the focus of the book. Even the beginning of their relationship is vapid and shallow.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 19:44:28 2011 No.1797341 It's about how swell capitalism is, and if you don't like it you're a faggot. No, really. That's the message.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 19:54:28 2011 No.1797361 File: 200 KB, 480x480, 1306044353507.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>1797341 Where does he make any reference or allusion to Capitalism? You totally misunderstood the book.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 19:57:28 2011 No.1797365 >>1797361 No, I didn't. It was written as anti-socialist propaganda. You don't have to use the word 'capitalism' to be working for it - in fact apologists for capitalism usually don't use that term, preferring words like 'freedom' or 'democracy'.

Anonymous Mon May 23 19:57:28 2011 No.1797368

I think that the world of 1984 magnifies the sort of Groupthink and herd mentality that is so common in society today. If you're the same, you "fit in" and get along well in society. If you're different, you're cast out from society. In nature (and in this book), if you are cast out from society, you die.

Moral: Conform or die.
Sub-moral: In the case that the above is true, rebel anyway.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 19:59:28 2011 No.1797372 >>1797368 Yeah, it's the English Atlas Shrugged, and it's very unfortunate that the secret services' work to promote it as a work of literature is still potent today.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:03:28 2011 No.1797379 >>1797372 The book is already out in the public domain. What effect do you think banning it would have? Would that stop people getting hold of it and reading it?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:05:28 2011 No.1797383 >>1797379 Who said anything about banning it?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:06:28 2011 No.1797385 >>1797383 they cant even censor cp let alone a book that has already printed millions of copies (probably)

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:09:28 2011 No.1797392

What I meant by the work of promotion is just that - it's been presented to generations of high-school and college kids as a major work. It isn't a major work of literature, its achievement is that it gave the right-wing press a lot of reductive cartoons to use when slamming progressive ideas. It provides a metaphorical handwash so that commentators can effectively call anyone left-of-center a Stalinist without facing the hilarity that would cause in more moderate observers.

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:09:28 2011 No.1797393

>>1797361
Yes it does, you fucking idiot. Remember when he's looking through the kid's textbook and it talks about how evil capitalism was and how people were starving in the streets while the rich capitalists had tophats and ruled everything. The whole point of that part was to show what the people of Oceania would have said about capitalism.

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:11:28 2011 No.1797401

Also, it should be noted, this is what it was for. Orwell was a journalist who wrote novels when he wanted to get over more than he could in an op-ed piece, not a novelist who occasionally wrote journalism. His aim in writing 1984 was to give Britain's government of the day a harder time in implementing sorely-needed reforms. Then he died, at just the right time - if he'd lived longer, his ouevre would contain hymns to Churchill's 50s Tory government.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:14:28 2011 No.1797410 >>1797392 >without facing the hilarity that would cause in more moderate observers. what do you mean by this? I think I understand the rest of the post but this part confused me somewhat.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:17:28 2011 No.1797420 >>1797393 The main thrust of the book is not about economic systems, but political systems. Any reference to an economic system is by-the-by. As a previous poster said, it's anti-totalitarianism.

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:18:28 2011 No.1797427

>>1797410

Well, if a right-winger calls a left-winger a Stalinist, it gets a laugh - you have to be a real tinfoil-hatter to equate anything a liberal or a British social democrat does with the horrors of Stalin's regime. But if you say they're introducing newspeak, or say 'Big Government is watching you', or something along those lines, it has a gloss of literacy and trenchent skepticism about it - despite being materially the same accusation.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:20:28 2011 No.1797432 >>1797401 are you saying that it gives the government a scarecrow to point at and say "look thats what these guys are saying" whenever anyone says "big brother state is taking over, etc" ??

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:22:28 2011 No.1797438 >>1797432 No, it gives right-wingers a bogeyman to use.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:25:28 2011 No.1797456 >>1797420 No, it seriously fucking isn't by-the-by, because if Orwell hadn't written about an explicitly post-revolutionary, anticapitalist regime, that book would have been long since forgotten about as the ravings of a dying man.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:26:28 2011 No.1797459 >>1797438 >>1797438 I think it can be used equally by left and right. It is no way a 'trump card' for either side. It would be ridiculous to claim otherwise.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:28:28 2011 No.1797462 File: 370 KB, 608x352, vlcsnap-2011-05-08-09h48m09s177.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] > Ingsoc means English socialism > 'economics is irrelevant' > mfw

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:28:28 2011 No.1797464 File: 446 KB, 1280x800, 1305591309678.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>1797456 >opinions you fail to explain how economics was central to the story. it was about a totalitaran government really.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:29:28 2011 No.1797468 >>1797459 Why would it be ridiculous?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:31:28 2011 No.1797477 >>1797468 Bro, just no dude. Present you're argument then flip it on it's head and you will see it works both ways.

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:32:28 2011 No.1797481

>>1797464

The entire book is framed as 'what socialism leads to' and it was written in a country that had elected a socialist government in a landslide election three years earlier, the opposition at that time being led by Winston Churchill who had equated socialist reform with the activity of the Gestapo! I'm giving you the facts, not my opinion. When was the last time you heard an in-depth discussion of economics in a work of propaganda?

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:38:28 2011 No.1797494

>>1797481
As admirable as your attempts to draw upon the environment that the author was in to back up your interpretation, it still doesn't change the contents of the words written. A work of art, while a product of an artist, stands alone and ultimately speaks for itself.

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:38:28 2011 No.1797495

>>1797477

No, it doesn't. You have come up against your own conditioning here. For you to admit that the misrepresentations of socialism in 1984 are not 'apolitical' would be to commit a taboo. 1984 is a work of propaganda. That's why it was promoted as a work of literature by the intercession of the secret services in Britain and the United States during the Cold War. Orwell himself was, by the time he wrote the book, in the direct employ of British Intelligence. You can refuse to join the dots all you like, but they're there.

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:42:28 2011 No.1797507

>>1797495
"The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein, describes the Party’s ideology as an Oligarchical Collectivism, that “rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism”.

It's about the betrayal of socialism by totalitarianism. Orwell was a democratic socialist.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:42:28 2011 No.1797508 >>1797495 >Orwell himself was, by the time he wrote the book, in the direct employ of British Intelligence citation? or theory?

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:43:28 2011 No.1797513

>>1797494

1984 isn't a work of art. The narrative is monotonous and deterministic, and the prose in which it's written is entirely functional. The characters are no less puppets when they rebel than when they conform, because Orwell was writing against the deadline of his own mortality and had no time to add flesh to the bones of his melodramatic outline. It's NOT a good book, even by Orwell's low standards - it was promoted as such during the Cold War for political reasons, and remains a keystone today because its greatness has become an informed attribute, but to call it great we have to suspend all our usual criteria and accept the CIA press-release as gospel. Well, what if we don't? What if we read it and see it for what it is?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:44:28 2011 No.1797516 There are a lot of stupid fucking people on /lit/ and in this thread specifically jesus guys

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:44:28 2011 No.1797521 whether he was writing against socialism or not, he was writing about totalitarianist socialism. And there clearly are morals in there about both socialism and totalitarianism.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:45:28 2011 No.1797522 >>1797516 the opposite of what you said

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:47:28 2011 No.1797526 >>1797513 you have to admit the ideas about doublespeak and doublethink are pretty good however.

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:47:28 2011 No.1797527

Let's hear from the man himself!

"My recent novel [Nineteen Eighty-Four] is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter), but as a show-up of the perversions . . . which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism. . . . The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else, and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere."

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:47:28 2011 No.1797529 >>1797507 That was to give former Communists like himself a face-saving out. >>1797508 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell's_list

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:48:28 2011 No.1797530

>>1797459
>>1797477

This.

The book is about One Central Power, there is no right or left. England has camera's in their streets, now I am not a Britfag but in Canada only Right - Wingers would dig this setup. Also only Left - wingers support big government which is present in the novel. To try and find any undertones of how Orwell's Society came to be is a wild goose chase.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:49:28 2011 No.1797533 More reliably perhaps, an article can be bought here: http://www.jstor.org/pss/27516511

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:51:28 2011 No.1797537 >>1797526 Yeah, pretty good propaganda. >>1797527 Lots of people don't think they agree with their boss, but they do his work. That's the genius of capitalism, it doesn't give a fuck about your conscience, just your labor.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:52:28 2011 No.1797539 >>1797530 This conversation is over your head.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:52:28 2011 No.1797543 >>1797530 The whole point of the Party was that it completely and deliberately reversed the principles on which it came to power. It could be a product of either Fascism or Communism- the point is that both can look exactly the same.

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:53:28 2011 No.1797545
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"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it"

mfw Conservatives try and claim Orwell

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:54:28 2011 No.1797549 >>1797539 I think that guy is onto something.

>>	Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ Mon May 23 20:54:28 2011 No.1797551 >>1797545 there's that pesky irrelevant authorial intent rearing its head again

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:54:28 2011 No.1797552 A lot of people will say about Orwell 'he wasn't about politics, he was about social justice' - it's nonsense. He's been treated to the kind of whitewash only religious icons or communist martyrs usually get.

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:55:28 2011 No.1797554

>>1797545

But he didn't fucking understand it, hence his work for the very people who were trying to unseat that Labour government he claimed to support.

I'm not a conservative, I'm a left-liberal. It's because of that I want you to understand Orwell for what he was.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:56:28 2011 No.1797556 File: 1 KB, 126x126, 1305314479608s.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] ITT: Everyone seems smart but has a completely different interpretation viewpoint >mfw

Anonymous Mon May 23 20:57:28 2011 No.1797559

>>1797545
yeah 1984 is pretty clearly a polemic against totalitarianism, and against the Soviet Union as a manifestation of same

It's hardly directed against socialism itself inevitably leading to totalitarian control. George Orwell is not von Hayek, and inasmuch as 1984 is a work of propaganda it's for Western liberalism and democracy and against the Soviet Union and communist totalitarianism. That's not the same as being against socialism, sorry.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:57:28 2011 No.1797560 >>1797545 and /thread

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:58:28 2011 No.1797562 >>1797549 So would those who told you Orwell was a great writer when every line of his prose reveals the opposite. Who do you think has done more to convince you? Your teachers, or that one guy?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 20:59:28 2011 No.1797565 >>1797559 Read this: >>1797365

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:01:28 2011 No.1797574 It's my hope that at least one person reading this has been persuaded to apply their taste to 1984's prose, rather than their memory. It's not a great book.

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:02:28 2011 No.1797575

>>1797554
Oh, he understood it alright.
He had seen Indian villagers being kicked the shit out of by their imperial rulers, he saw Spanish villages ripped apart by bombs, he saw the homeless begging just to be able to get a hot meal and he saw Northern villagers working fuck knows how many hours a day just to keep their family afloat.
While he might have taken a champagne socialistic view on all of this, he had seen it first hand and in many cases he had lived through it.

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:03:28 2011 No.1797580

>>1797565
not exactly sure what you're arguing here

if you're arguing that a defense of freedom and democracy, and an attack on the Soviet Union and communism, is necessarily a full-throated defense of monopolistic laissez-faire exploitative capitalism red in tooth and claw, then I would have to say you're stupid. If you're arguing that Orwell's book is in fact an explicit defense of capitalism and oppression - that we ought to understand socialism as leading inevitably to 1984 - then you are wrong.

1984 is an attack on the Soviet Union and on totalitarianism. If you think that attacking the Soviet Union is equivalent to anti-socialist propaganda, literally get the fuck out.

Anti-Soviet democratic socialists all up in this bitch

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:03:28 2011 No.1797583 >>1797565 Dude, there's nothing there to persuade that anon. It's just another anon's opinion, man.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:05:28 2011 No.1797590 Orwell threads always move quickly on /lit/ That must prove something.

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:06:28 2011 No.1797593

>>1797554
"The Information Research Department was a propaganda unit set up by the Labour government in 1948 based at the United Kingdom's Foreign Office, after the start of the Cold War."

Why do you say working for people trying to unseat the Labour government? Am I missing something here?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:08:28 2011 No.1797602 >>1797590 that's what 'they' want you to think.

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:09:28 2011 No.1797606

>>1797575

What 'it' are you talking about? He referred to democratic socialism 'as I understand it'. He understood it to be compatible with assisting in the blacklisting of people he 'suspected' of being Communists. In other words, he didn't understand democratic socialism.

>>1797580

You're adding needless qualifiers to capitalism. Orwell supported capitalism. The British government of 1948 were not capitalistic. Orwell did his part to damage the cause of progress in Britain, and the CIA promoted his book for purposes of state. These are FACTS. It doesn't matter how he justified his actions to himself, it doesn't matter what cliched reactions stirred in your heart when you read 1984, the book was written in this context, for these reasons, by this sort of person. That's all.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:10:28 2011 No.1797612 >>1797606 How exactly would you define democratic socialism, please Also, do you believe that a support for the Soviet Union was necessary for a support of the cause of progress

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:11:28 2011 No.1797614 >>1797606 When you said "He didn't understand it" I wrongly assumed you were referring to his Eton education. I humbly apologise for misinterpreting your comment.

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:12:28 2011 No.1797619

>>1797556
It's because everybody's right. Orwell was a democratic socialist and there's no way he wrote 1984 as a defence of capitalism.

HOWEVER as we all know authorial intent doesn't matter, and in a cold war context it could be read as a defence of life, liberty, and the EuroAmerican way.

FURTHERMORE I once read that 1984 actually came out in the USSR (presumably edited in parts), where the official media presented it as an attack on the horrendous living conditions of the warlike, imperialist west.

SO yeah, authorial intent not that big a deal, I guess.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:13:28 2011 No.1797627 >>1797606 >Orwell supported capitalism (Citation needed)

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:14:28 2011 No.1797630

>>1797583

It just saddens me that bad writing gets sold as good writing for political reasons. We're no better than North Korea until we kick the Orwell myth.

>>1797593

Yes. They played by the terms of the right, and the right defeated them. You don't do a commie-hunt when your opposition call you commies, it makes you look like you expect to find some.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:15:28 2011 No.1797633 >>1797630 >We're no better than North Korea until we kick the Orwell myth. Um...

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:15:28 2011 No.1797635 >>1797630 Are you saying Orwell is a bad writer? For such a short career in fiction he achieved a hell of a lot.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:15:28 2011 No.1797636 >>1797630 >We're no better than North Korea until we kick the Orwell myth. wait wait wait wait wait. what.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:18:28 2011 No.1797642 "We're no better than North Korea until we kick the Orwell myth." Don't even know what it means but quote of the year. Son, I am not disappoint.

. Anonymous Mon May 23 21:20:28 2011 No.1797650

My edition of nineteen eighty-four features compelling introduction by Thomas Pynchon. He proposes that the book actually has a happy ending (kind of, though not for the central characters) and that it is ultimately a defense of human decency and goodness: features that can survive even the harshest of conditions. It is, of course, aslo a warning.

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:22:28 2011 No.1797657

>>1797612

It's not a term I would use, because it's essentially a little bit bogus. Christopher Hitchens thinks he's this sort of socialist too, and this permitted him to support the Iraq war. The word 'democratic' is usually an advertising slogan - North Korea claims to be democratic even though no-one's listening who would agree on their definition.

No, I'm not a Stalinist.

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:27:28 2011 No.1797675

>>1797657
Real democratic socialism is very different from 'People's Democratic Republic of Wherever'. As I understand it, it's about achieving socialist economic goals through nonviolent, nonrevolutionary means- through success in elections. E.g. the Labour party before it, uh, stopped trying.

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:31:28 2011 No.1797686

>>1797635

No, he didn't. Compare him to his mentor, G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton's prose, when he's not being aphoristic, is almost as meat-and-potatoes, but he was a phenomenon in British letters for fifty years. Who now, except a certain sort of politically-dubious Christian, thinks him a major writer? Orwell's good fortune was that he kept his convictions as vague as the right usually like their ideology - we know whee Chesterton stood politically, and it's too weird, too 'period', and too clearly unworkable a territory to have any purchase on us now, or even then. But Orwell was there for the beginning of the Cold War, wrote with Chesterton's mixture of humdrum and melodrama, and spoke in the terms of the experiment that followed. So he retained relevance.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:31:28 2011 No.1797688 File: 127 KB, 414x594, redeed.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>1797675 The Labour Party will be back.

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:32:28 2011 No.1797691

>>1797650

I get what he was saying, but come-on, happy ending? When Winston disregards a pleasant memory of his lost family as a thought crime.... I had never read anything more heartbreaking!

btw when I think of extreme Capitalism, I see no other outcome than pure anarchy. Maybe those American Libertarians lunatics are onto something...

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:35:28 2011 No.1797704

>>1797686
Man, Chesterton is awesome, you're kind of misjudging his writing and his politics (although even as someone who loves him I basically agree that he's not a major writer in terms of influence or importance).

But yeah, I don't think Orwell is particularly important as a writer - certainly a gem of lesser water - but I do think that people are being rather inaccurate about his political affiliations and his positioning in the wake of the cold war. I think whoever said that Orwell's book was basically re-appropriated by people of a much more conservative cast was right.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:40:28 2011 No.1797718 >>1797691 My wiki-ing tells me one reason for a 'kinda happy ending' reading is that the newspeak guide at the end is written in the past tense >implying that Big Brother is dead >>1797704 This.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:42:28 2011 No.1797723 >>1797718 Oh, That except for not 'particularly important as a writer'. People might have a point about his prose, I don't know about that, but... he's a pretty big deal.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:52:28 2011 No.1797755 >>1797723 Was his prose that much worse than Steinbeck's? Good story tellers should get a by when it comes to less than great craft. I mean Hamlet absent the poetry is just a ridiculous story, (though I love the ghost of the King)

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:55:28 2011 No.1797769 The show "Big Brother" pretty much set up society to accept the idea of a Big Brother nanny state. Liberties are taken away one by one. Orwell was right, RATM were right.

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:58:28 2011 No.1797777

g. k. chesterton is actually pretty fun and clever. Honestly, i enjoy him more than orwell; in 1984, i thought the idea of language and control were interesting, but other then that, meh. It overated the ability of the government to enact a police state.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 21:59:28 2011 No.1797782 >>1797769 You're blaming Big Brother? That's... new. I can't fault your novelty.

Anonymous Mon May 23 21:59:28 2011 No.1797783

>>1797704

I've yet to read a single really outstanding passage of Chesterton that doesn't rely on aphorism and chiasmus, and I'm afraid his politics are absolute nonsense, of the same sort as Orwell's - wanting the self-image of a fighter against oppression while being, materially, anything but.

>>1797723

He's a 'big deal' in spite of not being a particularly good writer. You're right, but do you see what you're saying there? Only propagandists enjoy that kind of dispensation. His ability is an informed attribute. It is on the same level, precisely, as the scientific career of Elena Ceauşescu - he's good because the purposes of state require him to be good.

Pynchon's attribution of a happy ending is brilliant mischeviousness on his part - Winston's defeat is Orwell's feverish vision of his own.

Anonymous Mon May 23 22:05:28 2011 No.1797799

>>1797755

Bullshit. Hamlet being unrealistic doesn't matter, the lie of 'realism' hadn't been invented yet, and there is no story apart from the words used to tell it. There is no such species as a great book badly-written. Personally, I think there's a strong argument for saying that Steinbeck is the Left equivalent of Orwell, a propagandist accorded merit his writing doesn't earn, but I'm not interested enough in his status, work or life to put that assertion together.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:06:28 2011 No.1797802 >>1796734 Dont fuck with the government, because generally they will fuck you back and much, much harder.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:09:28 2011 No.1797808 >>1797777 I absolutely agree, Chesterton is more entertaining than Orwell. My point is, he didn't make any claims the CIA would want to propagate, so he's not assigned reading anywhere outside of a seminary.

Anonymous Mon May 23 22:10:28 2011 No.1797810

>>1797782
>>1797802
I dont know if its even an intentional plan, probably not, but either way they have used it to take away more freedoms. In time they will introduce ID cards and you will need them to leave your house. However, such ideas are seen as 'Orwellian,' and strongly opposed by the public. Maybe Orwell did help in this sense, he gave us a warning of what to look out for. Thank you Orwell RIP.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:11:28 2011 No.1797813 >>1797802 This is less of a misunderstanding than saying Orwell was an apolitical proponent of something called 'social justice'.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:13:28 2011 No.1797819 >>1797810 ^ This is the kind of dumb motherfucker who equates politics in western nations to Stalinism.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:15:28 2011 No.1797827 >>1797819 The day you have a chip in your head about to be detonated you will be holding your head in your hands saying "that anon told me it would come to this...sob."

Anonymous Mon May 23 22:17:28 2011 No.1797829

>>1797783
He was already well-known, and acclaimed as a good writer, before 1984, anon. You do have a point that the book was politically useful, but it was useful because it was very powerful and inventive. And I think you're overstating your case here- I read it as a young age and still understood that it was not presenting the 'inevitable consequences' of socialism, but rather the consequences of totalitarianism. The Party explicitly turns against any ideal but the pursuit of power.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:19:28 2011 No.1797835 >>1797827 lol No, I'll be honest, if that happens I'll probably say something like that.

Anonymous Mon May 23 22:20:28 2011 No.1797837

>>1797799

>no story apart from the words used to tell it. >There is no such species as a great book badly-written.

I disagree, what you first described is a play but can also be applied to a movie. 1984 is an example of a great book poorly written, and also Catch-22 (both of which would make for a terrible play/movie), but they are only poorly written when compared to other novels of great significance.

My point though was an oxymoron, you are correct, as only people capable of understanding the basics of good craft can write good stories.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:20:28 2011 No.1797841 It's good to see young people getting a head start on their summer reading homework.

Anonymous Mon May 23 22:23:28 2011 No.1797849

Before I tell you the moral of the story, I want you to know I am a certified genius (IQ>160 tested by a psychologist), I got an 800 on critical reading on the SAT, and I am a published author and noted essayist. I point these out so you know I am not some unintelligent punk who is just spouting his opinion that he stole from his 2nd period English Lit professor.

Now, from when I read 1984 back in 4th grade, I would have to surmise the moral message of the entire novel as:

>Fuck the police

Simplicity is a beautiful thing.

Catholic Socialist Mon May 23 22:25:28 2011 No.1797855
File: 82 KB, 626x800, Barocci,%20Federico2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

honestly, i don't think 1984 was anti-socialist anyway. He was anti a very certain strain of socialism. The nearest modern example would be something like political correctness, sort of. Most political correctness is just politeness dressed up in marxist jargon; some of it, is subtle newspeak and nonsense however.

For example, in america, see the feverish re-branding of leftism every 5 years.

Anonymous Mon May 23 22:29:28 2011 No.1797868

>>1797829

I know, kid, that's why I compared him to Chesterton. It was politically useful because it uses all the melodramatic techniques of propaganda. You first read it relatively recently, judging from your tone, and you got from it what you were told was there.

>>1797837

I know Hamlet is a play, thank you.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:30:28 2011 No.1797874 >>1797849 Yeah, the same message as Atlas Shrugged.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:33:28 2011 No.1797883 >>1797855 You're making the boilerplate right-wing use of Orwell yourself, so thanks for proving my point, 'Catholic Socialist', if that is your real name, Hillaire Belloc. Now make like Chesterton's flies, and split.

Anonymous Mon May 23 22:34:28 2011 No.1797889

>>1797868
Hell no, it was many years ago. And if I got from it "what I was told was there", then what I was told was that it wasn't an attack on socialism. And if that's what I was told... what's it being used as propaganda for?

By the way, are you an Americanon?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:36:28 2011 No.1797895 >>1797889 You're an adult and you write like that? Tragic story, bro.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:37:28 2011 No.1797896 >>1797889 Oh yeah, and now I'm googling... even Conservapedia of all places says "1984 is not meant to be taken as a condemnation of all left-of-center ideologies", and cites the quote further up this thread.

Anonymous Mon May 23 22:37:28 2011 No.1797898

>I know Hamlet is a play, thank you.

lol, what I was trying to say was that play's and movies (forgive me as french is my primary language, Canadian french anyway) are in a different ballpark than novels. Groundhog Day would probably be a shitty novel if it was written by the same people who wrote the screenplay. Though Shakespeare would have made a fantastic play based on that idea. But I still think Hamlet was a retarded story, despite my limited knowledge of literary history.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:38:28 2011 No.1797899 >>1797895 That's going to need explanation.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:39:28 2011 No.1797901 >>1797896 Oh, that quotation that's irrelevant? That one?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:42:28 2011 No.1797911 >>1797901 Why irrelevant?

Anonymous Mon May 23 22:44:28 2011 No.1797914

>>1797898

My point is, if the greatness isn't to be found in the writing, it isn't to be found anywhere. 1984 hasn't got the compelling characters that sometimes propel merely ordinary or bad writing into 'great' status (Sherlock Holmes, for example). It's really thinly-written stuff with ugly, unsympathetic characters, and it hasn't the literary quality to make that defensible except in the tautological terms of 'that's what it's saying'.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:45:28 2011 No.1797917 >>1797911 See >>1797537

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:47:28 2011 No.1797922 >>1797917 If something's being used as propaganda against socialism, don't you think the author explicitly and publicly denying that it's against socialism is relevant?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:49:28 2011 No.1797925 As I'm now restating stuff, I'm going to go and do something else. If I have persuaded one person to put 1984 to the test of their own critical intelligence as prose and as thought, my work here is done.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:51:28 2011 No.1797928 >>1797925 OK, dude. It that was you, no explanation on why you think I don't write like an adult? Or was it just a random troll?

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:52:28 2011 No.1797929 >>1797928 Other than misspelling 'if', I mean...

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 22:53:28 2011 No.1797930 >>1797922 One last reply, then - I think it's irrelevant for the same reason that Christopher Hitchens' continuing identification of himself as a man of the Left is irrelevant.

Anonymous Mon May 23 22:56:28 2011 No.1797938

>>1797914

I understand your point that great characters and great dialogue (Hamlet was both) are the primary focus of any great writer, and your right that in having those things the literature is great. You are more in the right than I, but I still believe that a tale in itself can also hold a strong message that is considered nearly as great as the characters and dialog. I can think of "The Boy who Cried Wolf" and "The Lottery" as my best examples.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 23:05:28 2011 No.1797961 >>1797930 I don't think there's enough to say that Orwell himself wasn't an (anti-Stalinist, anti-totalitarian) socialist.

>>	Anonymous Mon May 23 23:05:28 2011 No.1797962 ideologies come and go, but faggotry remains eternal.

Anonymous Mon May 23 23:25:28 2011 No.1798025

>>1797930
Not sure if this anon's still here, but... I'm wondering if part of the disagreement comes from differences in British and American views. 'Socialism' is after all a bad word in the States, and tended to be associated automatically with the USSR- so the idea of non-Communist socialism wouldn't be so familiar there. In Britain, on the other hand, the government at the time Orwell was writing- and which he supported- was made up of non-Communist socialists.

Anonymous Mon May 23 23:27:28 2011 No.1798031

>>1798025
Example:
'"Despite his own unequivocal and often expressed views, the popularity of the Orwell “brand” has led many people to misrepresent his views since his death, and to appropriate his prestige for their own political projects. That was typified by the introduction to the most popular edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four in the US, which quotes him accurately as saying that all his work “was against totalitarianism,” while in a somewhat Orwellian manner cutting out his important following phrase “and for democratic socialism.” '

Anonymous Mon May 23 23:39:28 2011 No.1798069

>>1798031
Or this:
'Orwell was distressed at many American reviews of the book, especially in Time and Life, which, in contrast to the British, saw Nineteen Eighty-Four as the author's renunciation of his long-held devotion to democratic socialism. Even his own publisher, Frederic Warburg, interpreted the book in the same way. This response moved Orwell, terminally ill in a hospital, to issue a repudiation. He outlined a statement to Warburg, who, from detailed notes, issued a press release in Orwell's name. First, Orwell noted that, contrary to many reviews, Nineteen Eighty-Four was not prophecy but an analysis of what could happen, based on present political trends. Orwell then added: "Specifically, the danger lies in the structure imposed on Socialist and on liberal capitalist communities by the necessity to prepare for total war with the USSR and the new weapons, of which of course the atomic bomb is the most powerful and the most publicized. But danger also lies in the acceptance of a totalitarian outlook by intellectuals of all colours." After outlining his forecast of several world superstates, specifically the Anglo-American world (Oceania) and a Soviet-dominated Eurasia, Orwell went on:

"If these two great blocs line up as mortal enemies it is obvious that the Anglo-Americans will not take the name of their opponents. . . .The name suggested in 1984 is of course Ingsoc, but in practice a wide range of choices is open. In the USA the phrase "American" or "hundred per cent American" is suitable and the qualifying adjective is as totalitarian as any could wish."'

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/lit/ - Literature