Author: FyreHaar

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Dystopia, classic, disturbing.

This review contains spoilers.

Winston Smith is dead. He is dead because he has committed thoughtcrime and thoughtcrime is death. In his dead but not-dead state he becomes free to act in a manner that disregards his personal safety. He falls in love with Julia and they have an affair. They know the affair is doomed but they pursue it anyway. Julia and Winston are caught by the Thought Police. They are tortured and made to confess all their crimes. They are afraid to die but the goal of the Thought Police, in fact, the whole government of Airstrip One is not to kill people; it is to control them. To control the circumstances of their entire existence not through exterior means, through force or extortion or the threat of physical pain. They want to control people by completely shaping and knowing their thoughts. To inculcate doublethink into the populace so firmly that a person cannot even think of rebelling against the system. Complete hegemonic control is the goal, effected through the manipulation of culture, information and language. Winston and Julia are not tortured to death, they are tortured into complete submission. They give up every secret place inside their souls and in the end they become the property of the Party.

After I finished reading Nineteen Eighty-Four I read the news. I wanted to scream “It’s doublethink!!!” The cognitive dissonance on display was suddenly transparent to me. I was able to see through to the motivation of “culture warriors” who speak without logic. They seemed to be purposefully obtuse. The purpose is to avoid logical interpretation, to breed frustration to the point that people stop trying to interpret or argue and give in to illogic because they are too tired to try and make sense of the messages anymore.  The end goal is not temporal power or even political ascendancy. The goal is control. Control is not imposed but flows from within a culture. When a group can take control of the language of a culture they don’t have to fight for power any more. They own the consciousness of the culture.

I used to wonder when my father would be incredibly offended when he thought someone was engaging in revisionist history. Now I know. When public figures espouse an opinion and a month or a year later espouse a completely different one without explanation or acknowledgement they are trying to say that the past doesn’t matter. Now I know why The Daily Show continuously exposes these incidents. This sort of exposure shouldn’t get old. The contradictions, the desire to own the narrative of history, to try to recast, revise or just erase history, these are all facets of the control that Orwell plays out to a possible conclusion.

Ninety Eight-Four is a classic novel for a reason. It is frightening because it is possible. I feel like I am watching people try to implement Newspeak in the present day. Would public figures utilizing the tools of the Party in the novel be so adept in their use of these concepts if he had not written this? Would the populace be more vulnerable if he had never written about what he saw happening?

Forewarned is forearmed, as far as I’m concerned.

-fh

 

….aaaaaand we’re back!  The last quarter of 2010 (and the first quarter of 2011) was way too exciting in real life for us to post here. Now that life is more boring we’ll be posting more.  On to the trashy novels!

Crave by J.R. Ward – Fallen Angels #2. Paranormal Romance/Thriller.

Jim Heron is back. He is the catalyst in the struggle between heaven and hell. Seven souls are in play and whoever gets the most, wins. If four of the chosen humans choose virtue, Heaven will triumph. If they fall to sin the world will be subsumed into Hell.

In play is Jim’s old Covert Operations buddy, Isaac. Isaac is trying to get out of Covert Ops.  As the usual way to exit the business is in a body bag, Isaac is taking the path less traveled and has gone AWOL. He’s tired of killing people for a living. He uses an underground, bare knuckle boxing ring in Boston as a vehicle for raising money to stay on the run. He gets arrested during a match and lands  pro-bono defense attorney Grier Childe  – how awesome is that name? She’s a high class, blue blood lawyer trying to somehow work off the guilt she feels over not being able to save her brother from heroin addiction.

Aside from the ass kicking, hot sex and “boy tries to give girl up for her own good but is fated to be with her” plot, there is a moral to the story. In the end, the soul that is in play is not judged on the consequences of its actions but on its intent. It’s a disappointment to the characters in the book but it resonated with me.  For all one’s pontificating and protesting about a righteous life, when we go to our final judgment it will be our hearts that our judged. A lot of people put on a front to make people think they are good or righteous. They are forgetting that it is not people who will be weighing their lives in the end. An odd place to find that message but welcome nevertheless.

 

-fh