1984 - Ignorance Is Strength

1984

Author: George Orwell

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. –The Book

War is a way of shattering to pieces or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. –The Book

The object of power is power. –O'Brien

We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves. –O'Brien

I'm sure I'm not the first person to initially dislike the ending of this book before coming to the resigned conclusion that it ended just the way it should have. Really, a different ending – an ending I would have initially preferred – would strip the rest of the book of its power and terror. Because let's face it, the book is terrifying.

Book description on Barnesandnoble.com (I swear I read this after I wrote this post):

Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, Orwell's narrative is timelier than ever. 1984 presents a startling and haunting vision of the world, so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions—a legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time.

You could easily dismiss this book by naively stating that this could never happen here. Really? Because there are plenty of things that –looking back now – we can say shouldn't have happened in history (genocide, slavery, blood-letting). But all that happened, and this could happen, too. It wouldn't happen overnight, of course, but ask any conspiracy theorist how much he's sure the government is hiding from us already and you'll realize that it's a slippery slope to altering past newspapers, books and photos. Ask that same conspiracy theorist about privacy and how the government is encroaching upon his, and you'll see it's a slippery slope to telescreens and thought police.

Winston Smith's life was monitored from a young age. His memories have been stolen and replaced with whatever The Party favors at that moment. Even the few things he finds true and holds dear are but dreams under which lie nightmares. When he is finally captured, it is as if he had been waiting for it his entire adult life. But the torture – mental, physical, emotional – does not lose its effectiveness simply because he expected it, for of course he expected it.

Did the Brotherhood ever exist? Does O'Brien reveal a hidden truth to Winston Smith while living an outward lie? Or is his revelation of the Brotherhood the lie? Is this just another level of control The Party has placed on his life? Give him hope, something to believe in, and then crush him for it? I know without searching online that papers have surely been written on this very subject, so I'll leave it alone.

Back to the ending. What I initially wanted to see was Winston Smith beating the system. I didn't want him to give in to the torture, but merely pretend to do so. I didn't want him to give up Julia (though to be honest, I never much cared for her...) and I didn't want him to abandon individual thought. But he did. He did all of those things. When he was thrust back into Oceania and found himself patronizing the same café in which he'd years ago seen three people in nearly the same state in which he now subsists, I felt he was somehow still sticking to his beliefs, only silently now… alone. And I almost got excited.

And then came the news announcement about a war victory… the war in which they were fighting Eurasia (they had always been fighting Eurasia). When Smith instinctively and whole-heartedly begins to celebrate, admitting to himself that he loves Big Brother, I nearly threw the book down in disgust.

But the more I thought about it… the more I really thought, I began to see the importance of having Winston Smith turn into a Party pleaser at the end. He needed to for the sake of the story, for the sake of the power and importance that it holds. You see, if Winston Smith didn't become as brainwashed and obedient as the others in the Outer Party, it would mean that he was above Big Brother. And in order for the threat of this type of society to work, no "everyman" should be able to rise above it. If Winston Smith – for who is he in comparison to Big Brother? – can think on his own despite what The Party tells him to think, then why wouldn't I be able to? Or you? Surely if you or I could rise above The Party, there's no way it could exist in our world; we're all far too strong-willed and free-thinking for that! We're definitely smarter than Winston Smith! And if he'd have beaten Big Brother, we would have had hope that our world will never become Oceania.

And that is why I slowly gained an appreciation for Mr. Orwell's allowing Winston Smith to become a true Outer Party member. This one moment in time reinforces the power of The Party and proves that if we're not constantly vigilant, Big Brother is poised to pounce. Even here. Even now.

My takeaway: Memories are important – sometimes they're all we have in the world that seeks to prove you wrong; don't let them go. And avoid talking in your sleep, for apparently that's when your true nature emerges.