Orwell's 1984, why he wrote it, read in schools all over; still considered "fiction"

I just read Orwell's message on why he wrote 1984 and it amazed me. A man born generations before us knew this was coming, and did wrote one of the greatest books of all time.

Students across the country have read this book in school, and teachers use it as a "what would happen if?" type thing. Well that what if is already a "now what" type of subject. It amazes me that people do not take this book seriously or feel a sense of fear when they read it. I recently read it for the first time because I was considered "below average" when it came to education. Thanks Public school, for teaching me nothing so I could teach myself everything I need to know to survive.

I am assuming everyone here has read this book, or at least gotten the grip of what the message is.

This is the one book that in schools that I believe can help society, but it is still being dubbed as "fiction" the fact is, it is no longer that way.

Orwell is turning in his grave as we speak.

have a great day,

Keep being awesome everyone.

Here's a link to the article with the letter for those like me who were wondering.

www.thedailybeast.com...

One of my favorite bits:

On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin. Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history2 etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side.

Lesser of two evils, dictators, secret police, re-writing history....all very relevant to today.

One of my favourite books, I own a 1952 paperback edition I have read a few times.
So much of it is so tragically relevant to our current times, from telescreens to thought-crime to switching sides in conflict and 'who is our current enemy' etc... Orwell was a visionary writer.

Sorry if this is to off topic but I think "Brave New World" also holds a wealth of valuable information pertinent to our present lives. I always associate those two books because my 11th grade English teacher had us read them back to back. Thanks for the post. I had never seen that before. Very interesting!

a reply to: solemind4

excellent read



the answers in the proles? I wonder what he was trying to tell us

funbox

A great book and visionary author indeed. reply to: solemind4

a reply to: grainofsand

That's awesome! The one I have I inherited from my mother, it includes Text, Sources and Criticism. From the 60s or 70s.

I don't think 1984 is fiction. I think it's a way of tuning us into the future they already planned for us. Like Star Trek or Brave New World.

a reply to: solemind4
A final warning from Eric Blair, aka George Orwell

a reply to: solemind4

That's because it IS fiction. It may be a good metaphor for current events, but the events that happen in 1984, aren't happening in the real world. That is why it is considered fiction. You may be able to move it over to historical fiction or something though, but at no point will 1984 ever STOP being fiction.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

may have improved? I think the xbox + peripherals are a vast improvement on the telescreens , at least resolution wise, Mario cart and donkeykong.. no chance in orwels time , and don't forget all the double plus ungoodness to be ungained from all that sneaky back door advertising product promotion

so much surpassed these days

funbox

a reply to: Cogidubnus

There is a great cartoon comparison of the too and BNW wins by a landslide although you can see both coming forward.

I first read 1984 after smuggling a copy into basic training...what a mind # back then trying to read that when I could while in basic training.

as I see it, what orwell was writing about was not only the acceptance of stalin, but the installation of the post-war world.
where a government became ever more detached from the population due to permanent state of war/military readiness.

It was from the betrayal of the anarcho-syndicalists, and other non-soviet-aligned socialists that he saw in the Spanish Civil War.

We had to read both 1984 and Brave New World - And of course you can see manifestatins of both dystopian novels in our contemporary world. But the fact is it is more like Brave New World than 1984 - What they are creating is a 'fools paradise'.
In 1984 happiness was virtually outlawed - In the world of today 'they' want everyone to be happy and to have the illusion of freedom. They have drugs, pills, and entertainment to keep the masses happy and by enslaving everyone to money while giving them choices that make them feel free their objectives of total world control are meet with less resistance. And of course you don't need a camera in everyone's house to monitor you like in 1984 as your computer and cell phone that make you feel free also can be used to monitor everything you do. Welcome to 'The New World Order'

Brave New World and 1984 ate both fantastic reads. Is it any coincidence that leading up to the seeming implementation of a fascist police state America experienced a nearly decade long obsession with dystopian and apocalypse. Collective consciousness anyone?

Just today on the way to work Faith Middleton on NPR made a statement along the lines of "we know all that over the top dystopian stuff is intended for foolish young adults". I paraphrased heavily and inserted my bias but it's basically what she said.

The American people (in general) have had it so good for so long that the idea of the government or just reality itself can cause things to collapse overnight. The last great example of this is the great depression but it was so long ago that the people who remember it are mostly dead.

My family had our grandfather live with us during his last few years and he carried the scars of the great depression to his last day. He would clip coupons obsessively and buy quantities of food to the point it would mostly end up rotting. When he showered he would turn on the water just long enough to get wet then turn it off to soap up then turn it on just long enough to rinse.

Since we've relegated our elderly to die alone in hospitals or live in nursing homes or perhaps with hired help in their home we've lost the collective wisdom of the last generation of Americans to know what real problems and suffering is like while simultaneously marginalizing history and fiction stories to the point where every American I deal with thinks even the possibility of societal collapse is not only impossible but laughably ridiculous to even consider.

America is not the land of opportunity or progress anymore. The collective conciousness of our people realizes this subconsciously but we've trained ourselves to ignore that. America is now the nation of ostriches. We bury our head in the sand on everything. When the self delusion bubble pops we'll all wish we were still dealing with the silly housing/tech bubbles of recent decades.

a reply to: Cogidubnus

That's another book that I am eager to read, I'm excited to read it because it is mostly about a media ran world..... just like ours. Mind blowing how much the past new that the future kinda sat back and let happen.

a reply to: tavi45

Perfectly said my friend, I could not agree more.

My grandmother lived with me for about 10 years after my grandfather passed away. She is currently in a nursing home due to dimensia. When I was younger, in Jr. high and High School, she would always clip coupons and attempt to give them to me but I wouldn't use them because I didn't understand how much they actually helped. We could learn so much from that generation, even the baby boomers, especially those of which who were considered "hippies".

your last paragraph is so spot on, I don't even need to comment

It all in the format and its presentation. It is presented as a work of fiction with a story one of the descriptions of it is "classic novel in content plot and style" . If it were presented with more of a context of say a school textbook people might take it a bit more seriously. Many people do not take religious texts seriously, and why should they when they are presented as a story, well so is 1984, present it like facts and the attitudes might change.

Nsa + Facebook = big brother

apps, tv's, game systems that listen and watch + surveillance cameras everywhere tracking your every move = Telescreen (don't forget to wave hello kiddies)

omg, ru, lol = Newspeak

patriot act = doublespeak

a media run by the government for the "people" = doublespeak

passages taken from books + the banning of many books also equals = Newspeak and Newspeak = Dumbing down of society

Those are truths, period, we are living very close to 1984, just a step away.

I think that in order to have people look at this as the future already begun they need to know it is so. A publisher should republish this over and over again with the story intact from beginning to end but with the front, back and first and last pages in words than state clear as day...... these things are truth, period. Then people will be more likely to think of it as more than a classic novel and one of the sad truth that it already is. It is true that people are told this already but there is just something about the written word and seeing them layed out clear as day, they effect your brain differently than when you simply hear someone talk. All governments are scared of the written word, words stand for something, they stand up for you and show you the way to stand up for yourself, they last through time when properly taken of but most importantly is that words teach.

Change the presentation stop with the " just a book about a guy named Winston", front, back cover, inside front and back page with stated facts of our time...while preserving the book and more people will clue into it as truth.

The thing I love about books like 1984 is how they mirror our society today. I know it isn't as "bad" as in the book but we're almost there.

My favorite thing about 1984 is the viewer. Only those part of Big Brother can turn it off. Know what it reminds me of?

Camera phones, built in webcams for "convenience", CCTV.

And the propaganda, the substandard mass-produced food. The Victory Gin (reminiscent of the junk they give us to "relax"). Not knowing who's in on the spying or not. Brainwashing, kids selling parents out for speaking against Big Brother.

The garbage complexes they forced people to live in, reminds me of many big cities. The rallies, the Ministries deciding what is released and what isn't.

The workers riddled with health problems but unable to get adequate care (Winston Smith suffered from a varicose ulcer on his leg).

Being forced to participate in health exercises. It's starting to be a "shame the chubbies, meat eaters" mentality.

Manufactured enemies, alliances, wars.

Brave New World is just the same. Introducing sexual knowledge to young people, mass production, genetic engineering, society defined on classes of people. The suppression of Native beliefs, the manipulation of nature (they eradicated some if not all insects), the inculcation methods, the arrogance of the system, etc.

The Giver too, I won't list the reasons though. So why are the young children exposed to books like this by the system?

To show them their future is already written out. Slaves from day one. No hope. And, to make the people angry at the system (laying the path to a future manufactured rebellion).

I remember a college professor thinking Brave New World was amazing because there were no worries, no true responsibilities, "true freedom", expression and understanding. He never backed up his beliefs just would repeatedly ask the same question "But if you're in the system and kept in bliss would you know?"

Honestly, many people know the system is a trap, an illusion. And that conspiracies are disinfo to divide and distract from the real causes/culprits. Just frightens me how the professors try to get people to put all their faith in the system. Put all trust and leave everything to them as long as the shiny toys keep coming at you, there's no need to question, worry and investigate.

OT: Sorry, Brave New World was the subject of a punk band from the 80s called Reagan Youth. They're not white supremists despite the band name and imagery. The song was called Brave New World. I don't buy into the punk is rebellion through buying records and looking like this, etc but the song sums up the book perfectly.

"I see a perfect alpha-plus
I see an epsilon-minus
Everybody in their place
I take a soma holiday
To be born without face
Problems conveniently erased
And the matter of sex and erotic play
I take a soma holiday
Is this utopia, the dream of mankind?
Livin' your life on a factory line
Is this utopia, dream of mankind?
Livin' your life from nine to five"

originally posted by: rockpaperhammock
a reply to: Cogidubnus

There is a great cartoon comparison of the too and BNW wins by a landslide although you can see both coming forward.

I first read 1984 after smuggling a copy into basic training...what a mind # back then trying to read that when I could while in basic training.

I could only imagine what that was like, probably made you question a lot of things.. then again that's why you are on this site because you enjoy to question everything.

Also do you have a link to that cartoon comparison? I saw it once on stumble upon but I cannot find it now. Thanks.

Great book for sure. You know, I have been reminded recently of the book due to our Middle East conflicts. For example, Al Queda and Islamic terrorists are the enemy. But then suddenly we are supporting similar groups in Libya and Syria, funding them against regimes we don't like, and everyone is all for it. Now it has flipped again, where suddenly we are against them in the form of ISIS and other groups. And magically, both the government and common person don't bat an eye, their views appear to be as if the current allegiance or enemy always was and never was any different. This is like the perpetual war in 1984, where suddenly allegiances are shifted and the government proclaims that it had always been that way, and then the Truth Ministry has to go back and delete all old references.