Orwell's 1984 - alternate history?

[poster342002]

As we can now see that things didn't turn out quite the way Orwell predicted in his novel, 1984, I now tend to consider this story to be an alternate history-type story.

Do others agree? If so, how did the state of the world envisaged in the 1984 Timeline come about? My guess is that something went horribly askew during WW2. Or even WW1!

What do others here think?

[KJM]

I don't see why it wouldn't be; I take my AH where I can get it. In fact, I keep wondering what 2004 (I made the title up) might have been like.

[NapoleonXIV]

Or maybe even a Confederate victory?

The US is strange, using the basis of a new and virtually unexploited continent it managed in about fifty years (1800-1850) to create two systems.
One, the Constitutional Union of the United States, was then and still remains pretty much the world's exemplar of a free country. The other, the unique form of slavery in the antebellum south, is said by many to be the most thoroughgoing form of oppression ever invented

"A boot stamping on a human face... forever" is a pretty good description of what US slavery was like in 1860, let alone 120 years later. Read John C Calhoun's erudite apologias for the "peculiar institution" and tell me if the word 'Orwellian' doesn't come to mind. Its a short step from enslaving one segment of your population to enslaving everyone, including yourself.

[Arch-Angel]

Well from what you can pull out of the book (which is sketchy) Western Europe and most if not all of the western hemisphere (at least Canada and the US) belong to Oceania. Their was a great revolution that started out nice but became repressive as the purges started. And things started going bad when Winston was a child. Winston is probably in his 50s so lets say he is around 8 when things go bad, therefore it was 42 years ago and so around 1938ish.

[Grey Wolf]

I had always assumed Orwell kinda prjected it from 1948, not that I see quite how, but to me Winston is in his 40s. The idea, as far as I understand it, is that the post-war system goes bad, rather than altering the previous history

Grey Wolf

[Leo Caesius]

The original title of the book was to be 1948, as I understand it. In the version we have (namely 1984), Winston Smith was nearing 50; if that's the case, he would have been born in roughly the same year as Orwell's own son.

The thing that struck me most about the book was the appendix on Newspeak (there's a footnote after the first few pages that directs you to it, with the words "Newspeak was the official language of Oceania"). As Thomas Pychon notes, this appendix is written -

entirely in modern, newspaper English, AND
in the past tense.

Small details such as these make a world of difference.

[Faeelin]

So that means what, we won?

[Leo Caesius]

So that means what, we won?

I think the implication is that the world of 1984, for whatever reason, returned to some sort of normalcy. While the footnote doesn't explicitly say that Oceania doesn't exist any more, it does strongly imply that IngSoc and the Party are things of the past. Towards the end of the essay, there are some contrafactuals ("When the task (of translating authors into Newspeak) had been completed, all their original writings, along with all that remained of the literature of the past, would be destroyed... the final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050). Because the article is written in Oldspeak, so to speak, and describes these authors and the literature of the past, one can assume that the final adoption and the destruction of all pre-Newspeak literature never occurred there.

[ljofa]

Best book ever.

Leo - the title of the book was going to be 1982 but as his TB got progressively bad, Orwell changed the title to 1984 as it was indeed 1948 that he published it.

The actual history of the book is indeed somewhat confused though Orwell accurately predicted the splitting of the world into 2 superpowers with a third "almost" superpower but not quite.

The Nazi's lose WW2. Europe is absorbed by the USSR whilst the USA takes over the exhausted British Empire. After a decade of confused fighting (Chinese Civil War), China takes over Japan, Korea and Indochina.

In Britain, there were "ideological battles". I think that Orwell meant for the USA to take over Canada, Australia and the rest of the empire but Britain itself had nominal independence and was used as some sort of battleground between "Ingsoc" and "Neo-Bolshevism" with Ingsoc winning out in the end and Britain joining Oceania as Airstrip One.

Certainly there was a limited nuclear war - "When the bomb fell on Colchester" - could have been a last ditch attempt for Eurasia to capture Britain. However, as Goldstein's book says, if Eurasia captures Britain, or if Oceania push Eurasia back to the Rhine or the Vistula as they could indeed do, it would mean either culturally assimilating x million people or exterminating them which strangely they seem reluctant to do. As war consists mainly of specialists blowing things with the occasional small raid, there are only territorial changes in northern africa, the middle east and India where the fighting takes place.

There's a still a debate as to how the book ends

1. Does Winston actually die or is it an imagined bullet killing the old Winston leaving the absolutely broken man at the chess board who loved Big Brother.

2. The capture of all of Africa by Oceania - I still think that this is a bigger than expected victory and Oceania have decided to change the rules on how continuous warfare is expected to be fought. I think that Oceania used the breaking of Winston as proof that they can conclusively break mankind and can look at definitively brainwashing the populations of Eurasia and Eastasia. But that's pure speculation with little/no evidence to go on.

[tom]

With this endless war going on, I had the funny feeling that there was an isolated tropical island resort where the three dictators relaxed together while millions died in a choreographed "war".

[David Howery]

I haven't read the book, but the (utterly awfully grim) movie based on it gave me the impression that all the wars were a facade, used to give the people an enemy to focus their hostility on, so they wouldn't feel so bad about their downtrodden lives....

[Will Ritson]

Perhaps the Britain portrayed in 1984 is a Britain somewhere along the lines of a more extreme North Korea. A state that exists seperate to the rest of the world.

The world Winston describes is based on what he knows and what he has been told. There is nothing to suggest that the world outside of Britain isn't "Westernised" as we know it.

Isn't Winston named after Churchill, suggesting that WW2 in some form occurred. I believe the timline shifts in 1948, from when Orwell wrote the story.

[Admiral Matt]

Absolutely hated this book (except as an abstract theory) until someone pointed out the implications of the appendix. With that, I think it's decent.

I always thought it would be funny to see what would happen when the super states started running out of natural resources. I suppose Eastasia would go first, gobbled up by the other two, at which point the whole system is irrevocably destroyed. Oceania and Eurasia can't stop fighting each other, obviously, but neither is there a third party to maintain the equilibrium. When one side started losing, they would be forced to counter by breaking rules - attacking core territories, using nuclear weapons, etc. This would continue until the whole mess went to bits.

[zoomar]

I like 1984, and one really could read it today as an alternate history - and a very well-realized one at that. In fact, I read it again not long ago and, unlike other dystopian futures written in the 40's - 60's like Farenheit 451 and Brave New World it seemed much more real. And as Admiral Matt pointed out, the appendix is great.

Also, I always had a soft spot for the Union of the English Speaking Peoples, otherwise known as Oceania.

[poster342002]

Perhaps the Britain portrayed in 1984 is a Britain somewhere along the lines of a more extreme North Korea. A state that exists seperate to the rest of the world.

The world Winston describes is based on what he knows and what he has been told. There is nothing to suggest that the world outside of Britain isn't "Westernised" as we know it.

Isn't Winston named after Churchill, suggesting that WW2 in some form occurred. I believe the timline shifts in 1948, from when Orwell wrote the story.

Perhaps in the 1984 timeline, it was a Britain falling into decline that started WW2 under Churchills's leadership in an attempt to restore a flagging empire? Perhaps Britain then went on to lose the war but was not annihalated in the way that Germany was in OTL, leaving the kind of isolated, rump-dictatorship you describe? A North Korea-ised Britain would be a very bizarre place indeed, and it's regime would similarly be stuck in a political timewarp of wartime paranoia. All it's wartime emergency measures (suspension of democracy etc) might continue indefinately, with the wartime coalition govt becoming an entrenched one-party state.

[ljofa]

I don't think Airstrip One is akin to North Korea - I think it is a part of a Super United States/Oceania but because it's a territory on one of the front lines, it's subject to more bombing than the Americas.

The book says it's vital to encourage shortages of everything and general rationing so everyone has the same amounts of goods. There can be no elitism therefore within the ranks of the proles, within the ranks of the outer party and within the ranks of the inner party - although the inners have the most and the proles the least.

[poster342002]

Interestingly, on the old board archives someone posted the following about the 1984 timeline:

"Maybe the repression in Britain is worse than anywhere else. Later, when logistics screw up the attempt at eternal war, the rest of Oceania comes to its senses and history is left with the repugnant curiosity that Britain has become."

This would point towards Britain being in a similar position and social mess that North Korea is in OTL. Perhaps it is the natural outcome for totalitarian blocs of nations to produce a country that follows a highly dogmatic, inflexibel, extreme and ultra-repressive version of the original ideology of it's parent-empire. To the point whereby it's regime is so entrenched, so incapable of reforming - even when it's parent empire has itself abandoned that form of government - that it's paranoid elite will cling on for years afterwards ruling an islolated, ultra-totalitarian hermit-kingdom. Britain in the 1984 TL, North Korea in OTL.

This raises the question of what eventually becomes of Ingsoc-ruled Britain? Does it fall as a result of an internal coup or popular revolution? Or does it end up embroiled in some real war (assuming the endless Oceania/Eastasia/Eurasia is just propaganda to fool the masses) that it just cannot win owing to it's dilapidated military technology, and thus ends up invaded and "regime changed" Iraq-style? In which case; does Britain then descend into Iraq-style chaos with repeated bombings and attacks by "Ingsoc remnants/loyalists" (and/or other anti-occupier motivations) against the occupiers?

[sunsurf]

One of the big themes is the rewriting of history, which US textbooks do routinely...and it's not just the US, of course. But we can't trust much of anything we're told. Maybe the situation in the novel is restricted to one city. How would Winston ever know?

There have been parodies, also. The Soviet Union wasn't efficient, and collapsed from within, so the tyrannies of the novel might not have lasted long either.

Somebody wrote a sequel to 1984, with the fall of Big Brother.

http://www.altculture.org/ccult/ccult30.html

www.orwellian.net