145. 1984

 

Yeah, this was not a bit of me.

We've recently visited George Orwell's grave and therefore done some research on him for Phantom Adventures UK which we published a few days ago. So it made sense for me to read one of the man's most successful books and considering I was at the forefront of this research I still had high hopes for the narrative I was due to consume.

I can appreciate how some people enjoyed this, I understand subjectively the new and fresh ideas he had and how ground breaking this book was in its time. However, I seem to very much be a modern woman and this just doesn't gel with me. I enjoy many a non-PC form of media, and I'm of the view that some people just need to grow up when looking back at snapshots from a different era that are still circulating today. But this one just wasn't something I personally sought to enjoy in any form from any time. From the first chapter and how a woman was described from the POV of our main character, I just knew I was going to hate this book, and even trying to push that down I ended up being right.

In the end, it took me 3 weeks to read this book in its entirety and I very nearly gave up. I was bored. It was wordy, with differing views from an outdated period that I couldn't relate to even a tiny bit. I can see how this book has ended up favoured by conspiracy theorists and born a culture where 'Big Brother' paranoia is no longer a joke, and perhaps the reason why I hate this so much is that there is an inkling that this idea isn't so much fiction as it should be. The way technology has advanced with cameras and microphones and whatnot, we are being constantly watched in one form or another, we just haven't gone full insanity mode yet.

1984 follows Winston Smith, a rather boring man, caught up in the forced routine presented by Big Brother where you are unable to think or be an individual. His job is to alter historical records to meet the needs of the party, and having purchased a diary within the first few pages (which is also illegal) he begins to write of how he hates the party and the life he is forced to live and so ultimately drives himself a bit insane through becoming a free-thinking man.

This was as far as I got when I picked up the book the first time around. Two chapters in. A week passed before I forced myself to pick it up again and continue on for the sake of it. I am a long standing believer that life is too short to read a book you dont enjoy, but it became a matter of principle for me in the end. I'd visited this man's final resting place, I'd rudely pried into his life, and I'd made my own assumptions on Orwell/Blair when doing so. The least I could do was complete his last book, especially after the life he had lived in order to make himself a successful author.

It became somewhat easier to read after that. The woman he had described (as in Winston) earlier on as wanting to 'rape and murder' was named Julia and had dragged Winston into the illegal act of adultery, as it turns out Winston was married but estranged, as she declared her love for him and then from then onward it was a few chapters of 'making love' in various places and how they avoided being caught.

As we move on with this risk taking narrative, O'Brien, a man who Winston has always wanted to be of the resistance approaches the couple and feigns being on their side, only it turns out he isn't. The couple are quite literally caught in the act and then it all goes downhill from there. We are then subjected to three chapters of nonsense after the chapter from the unbearably boring resistance book, where Winston is tortured into loving Big Brother and becoming a shell of the man he had been. We end the book where Winston is no longer able to have a thought of his own or feel any emotion. 

From my view, this book was pointless. I see the story, I see how it swings in the favour of the villain as there is no happy ending. I just don't like it. This is odd to me as I often read stories which have rushed their endings to give us a resolution and a happy one at that and I wish that they dont and that it isn't happy and the good guys lose. This book is exactly that, there is no resolution and the bad guys win. However, I find myself frustrated as we are dragged into this controlled narrative partway through Winston's personal rebellion, the gaps are filled in, and then we follow him as he commits his crimes under the watchful eye of Big Brother, is caught, and then turned. The narrative is basically there is no winning against something so powerful, that is the point, but I guess what I'm saying is- I hate that. I feel like with a story as suppressive as this, the little guy should have even a morsel of hope and in this book he doesnt. If you want to go on a deeper level as I assess my true feelings on this, I think I hate this because this was supposed to be a warning but it is now a guide. I hate it because in modern society the book shows us that us free spirits will always lose. It depresses me. The parallels to real life depresses me.

I do not like this book. I do not like this book. I do not like this book.

I can really appreciate the genius behind this. It was published in 1949, this was amazing stuff for the post war, half starved country. It inspired fear, it seemed unrealistic based on the horrors they'd already seen, it was just fiction. Clever, clever, fiction. It isn't anymore especially now that 1984 itself is a distant memory.

I'm having to give this one two reviews, a personal and a professional. I appreciate the art and the artist, but I also must be true to myself and say what I feel. 

Professionally I give 1984 an 8/10. It was ahead of its time. Clever, wordy, violent. On the cusp of dystopian, but too realistic now to be true to that genre. This is simply an alternate world, fact for what could have been. I can see why it is so highly rated and firmly cemented into must read fiction from over the years.

Personally I'm giving it a 4/10. It seems harsh which is why I raised it from the original 3 I was going to give. I didn't like it, but I didn't despise it either. Not to my taste, vulgar in places, and clearly written by a man who was very opinionated and seemed to make it his mission to remain on the outside of accepted society. Perhaps I am bias from learning about him, but I don't think we would have gotten along. 

Join me next Thursday for my literary corner of the internet, when I review another classic with Agatha Christie's Murder on the Links.