samcster94
Banned
Just an FYI:North Korea, the real world's analog to 1984, does have a religion, only said religion is Juche(a racist personality cult around the dictator).
That is a very good point. Since Big Brother controls all media, including radio and tele, we may assume Winston can not legally use or possess a radio that can receive worldwide broadcasts. The foreign radio of the real world has been totally silenced in 1984, by controlling receivers.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.
That is a very good point. Since Big Brother controls all media, including radio and tele, we may assume Winston can not legally use or possess a radio that can receive worldwide broadcasts. The foreign radio of the real world has been totally silenced in 1984, by controlling receivers.
I never understood the asymmetry among the 3 empires. Oceania is always at war with one empire and ally with the other. If this is true, what makes Oceania special that it is never at war with Eurasia and Eastasia at the same time?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.
I never understood the asymmetry among the 3 empires. Oceania is always at war with one empire and ally with the other. If this is true, what makes Oceania special that it is never at war with Eurasia and Eastasia at the same time?
Orwell died not long after finishing 1984. I wonder if he didn't have sequels in mind (1985, 1994) set elsewhere (New York, Rome) that illustrated his world of the time from different viewpoints.I never understood the asymmetry among the 3 empires. Oceania is always at war with one empire and ally with the other. If this is true, what makes Oceania special that it is never at war with Eurasia and Eastasia at the same time?
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.
In my opinion, Orwell was a person who many times shows moments of absolute independent thinking, but at other times is also influenced by his own society. He thinks in classes in a typical English way. I find it much saying that there's so little interaction between Winston and the proles. Another interesting English thing i noticed in his writing (his letters and reviews etc.), is his mistrust of Catholicism. It looks sometimes if he sees all catholics as ultramontans, pawns of the pope. To link this to the O.P. question, i think catholicism would be forbidden in airstrip one, no foreign control over the minds.Interesting. Having read up on Orwell a little this afternoon, I wonder if he was mocking the classism of the bourgeois "socialists" he himself detested.
Juche is not a religion and it's quite ridiculous to seriously suggest that it is one.Just an FYI:North Korea, the real world's analog to 1984, does have a religion, only said religion is Juche(a racist personality cult around the dictator).
I never understood the asymmetry among the 3 empires. Oceania is always at war with one empire and ally with the other. If this is true, what makes Oceania special that it is never at war with Eurasia and Eastasia at the same time?
One theory is that all three empires collude with each other to keep the war going, in order to maintain their totalitarian ideals. Back home, I suspect Eastasia and Eurasia use the same policies.
P
Of course, that assumes that there even is a war in the first place...
Although O'Brien can be an unreliable narator and thruth has no meaning in Oceania, so you will never really know, i think you're right.Orwell was one of the first to understand the impact of the atomic bomb. In his essay, written in 1945 "You and the atomic bomb" He describes a world of superpowers, the have's, who will not attack each other directly as it is too distructive, but at the same time bully the havenot's with the bomb (First mention of the word Cold War ever). Cue a few years thinking about the subject later, and you arrive at the world of 1984 as depicted by Goldstein.re: whether or not the war is real, or, as Julia thinks, is just a hoax.
I believe Goldstein's book(which is almost certainly more of an authorial voice than any one character in the book, O'Brien possibly an inverted exception) states that the war is basically real, but that the various governments all recognize that no one is ever going to win.
In Isaac Deutscher's introduction to an edition of 1984, he mentions a conversation with Orwell in which Orwell stated the view that, after World War II, the Soviets and Americans sat down and deliberately planned out a cold-war, thinking that such an arrangment would be mutually beneficial. Deutscher found this view a little far-fetched, though it does sort of jibe with how Orwell portrays the world situation in his book.
Both @lionhead and @theg*ddam*hoi2fan have mentioned this, but Big Brother is the only religion.
Even if it is never stated in the book.
It is all a cult of personality that had evolved over time into an undeclared religion. Big Brother is both God and the messiah. Goldstein is the Devil, nemesis, and adversary, out there tempting good little proles and Outer Party members with instant gratification of freedom from the State. The daily Two-Minute-Hate is a religious prayer session. The Ministry of Love is the church itself, and while separate, the Ministry of Truth is really just another sect of monks/priests of Miniluv. The use of fear as control of the populace is the same as the Catholic and Orthodox churches used earlier in our history, and the same with most of the Protestant churches later on with the talk of hell as fire, brimstone, and eternal torture. Fear what we say. Do what we say. And you life will be fine...blah, blah, blah
T(And personally, I've always found it somewhat odd that the Inner Party would dedicate so much time to propagandizing the Outer Party, but leave the proles, who constitute 85% of the population, to live as they pleased. I wonder if Orwell regarded that as the common arrangement in totalitarian regimes, or if(as seems more likely) he was satirizing left-wing political parties in the UK who spent all their time inflicting ideological orhtodoxy on their own members, while never being able to reach the workers themsevles.)