Religion in *1984*?

"For that matter, even religious worship would have been permitted if the proles had shown any sign of needing or wanting it." https://books.google.com/books?id=uyr8BAAAQBAJ&pg=PT59 A thought: Maybe somewhere in Oceania, religion is tolerated among the proles, and Baptists or Catholics pray for Big Brother and victory over Eurasia/Eastasia. Sure, in Airstrip One, religion had already declined enough by the time of the Revolution that this was not necessary. But maybe in parts of what had been the American South or Latin America? Note that in Orwell's previous anti-Stalinist satire, Animal Farm, the pigs eventually came to tolerate the preaching of the raven Moses about Sugarcandy Mountain...
 
Sure, it would be allowed to exist in theory. But it isn't a literary necessity, so Orwell doesn't mention it. Even if it does focus on a dystopian setting, placing more focus on said setting than usual, 1984 is still a novel.
 
That is if Oceania actually controlled territory outside Airstrip One.
An alternate theory is that the UK became a pariah state and there was no unending war. It was all part of theBig Brother plan to control the populace.
 
Even in Nazi Germany people managed to listen to Radio BBC and learn how the world really worked outside of nazi propaganda. You can't tell me that wouldn't work if Oceania was restricted to the British Isles. France would be even closer to S England than Britain to Germany.
 
Even in Nazi Germany people managed to listen to Radio BBC and learn how the world really worked outside of nazi propaganda. You can't tell me that wouldn't work if Oceania was restricted to the British Isles. France would be even closer to S England than Britain to Germany.

True. It would be extremely hard to hide truth even in totalitarian dictatorship. During Soviet occupation Estonians listened Finnish radio channels altough it wasn't surely allowed and might be that they listened Swedish radio channels too. And in the novel there is not any hint that world would be divided by three gigantic empires who are in war against each others would be just lie.
 
True. It would be extremely hard to hide truth even in totalitarian dictatorship. During Soviet occupation Estonians listened Finnish radio channels altough it wasn't surely allowed and might be that they listened Swedish radio channels too. And in the novel there is not any hint that world would be divided by three gigantic empires who are in war against each others would be just lie.

Yes, this theory has surfaced from present day North Korea which has foreign contacts to a degree not displayed in 1984.
 
Eurasia: orthodoxy with stalinist characteristis
East Asia: some combination of maoism and buddhism with anything humanistic removed. More or less a death cult.
 
Note that in Orwell's previous anti-Stalinist satire, Animal Farm, the pigs eventually came to tolerate the preaching of the raven Moses about Sugarcandy Mountain...

I think, though, that Animal Farm is specifically about the USSR, whereas 1984 is a combination of various hell-holes, but especially the mid-20th Century UK.

In one of his more anglophiliac cultural essays(maybe England Your England?), Orwell opines that the Anglican faith basically remained popular with the ruling classes only, and never really gained a wide following among the masses. I don't think it's too much of an extrapolation from that to saying that he regarded the English as generally irreligious. This possibly accounts for why Christianity is almost non-existent in Airstrip One, either as a Stalinist-style propaganda vehicle, or as a sincerely held underground faith. The proles, for example, who are generally left by the state to live as they please, evince absolutely no interest in religion.
 
And in the novel there is not any hint that world would be divided by three gigantic empires who are in war against each others would be just lie.

Julia suggested that there is no war, and the governments shoot rockets on their own cities to make people think so. (But they do execute real foreign soldiers sometimes...)
 
Julia suggested that there is no war, and the governments shoot rockets on their own cities to make people think so. (But they do execute real foreign soldiers sometimes...)

Or perhaps some of those taken by the thought police are broken and dressed in funny uniforms...
 
Whatever status religion might have, its not allowed to have power of any kind outside the party. Recently read this book and the one thing i did learn from life in Oceania is this: Big Brother IS God and always was.
 
That is if Oceania actually controlled territory outside Airstrip One.
An alternate theory is that the UK became a pariah state and there was no unending war. It was all part of theBig Brother plan to control the populace.

I subscribe to that theory, myself. If anything, it's even scarier because it's more realistic...

True. It would be extremely hard to hide truth even in totalitarian dictatorship. During Soviet occupation Estonians listened Finnish radio channels altough it wasn't surely allowed and might be that they listened Swedish radio channels too. And in the novel there is not any hint that world would be divided by three gigantic empires who are in war against each others would be just lie.

Bear in mind, we only see things through Winston's POV, and he has an exceptionally limited knowledge range. For all we know, a lot of the unpersons were 'vaporised' because they listened to foreign radio or whatever, but that fact is carefully hidden so Winston doesn't know. And if Winston doesn't know, we don't know either.
 
Why do you think so?
Not many East Asians living on Oceanian territory.
I don't have my copy in reach currently, but from the top of my head, Julia was very much painted as a naive, selfish person, in resistance mostly due to selfish motives and very much buying into the propaganda of Oceanias regime, only misjudging their motives, projecting her own onto them and breaking immeadiatly under Miniluv torture. The conspiracy theory that the Inner Party is able to exert enough power to simulate a war falls into this, as does nearly everything else she does.
 
And just to answer OP also: I think that that specific quote is mostly there to showcase the Proles dismissal by both the Party as a whole and Winston Smith in particular. There might well be religion in Oceania; the Party just does not care enough to find out, and prefers to project their own attitude of atheism/ the Inner Party as effectivley God.
 
In one of his more anglophiliac cultural essays(maybe England Your England?), Orwell opines that the Anglican faith basically remained popular with the ruling classes only, and never really gained a wide following among the masses. I don't think it's too much of an extrapolation from that to saying that he regarded the English as generally irreligious. This possibly accounts for why Christianity is almost non-existent in Airstrip One, either as a Stalinist-style propaganda vehicle, or as a sincerely held underground faith. The proles, for example, who are generally left by the state to live as they please, evince absolutely no interest in religion.

This is probably exactly right as the explanation behind Orwell's thinking in that sentence.

(I'm less confident about Orwell's time, but certainly today in this country there is a class bias amongst regular church attenders. I grew up in a very irreligious 'prole' household, not because of anyone's policy/antagonism to religion, but just because religion was 'other' and not really of particular concern to anyone.)
 
I always wondered if the Party's dismissal of the proles was a sample of (perhaps unconscious) classism on Orwell's part.
Certainly not unconcious. But this is a dystopia by someone who saw communism as propagated by the communist parties of his time for what is was:"Some are more equal than others." He put the classes on purpose there as a double criticism on his own country and on the false pretensions of Communism to get rid of that.
 
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