1984?

[Tired]

Just asking the question, anyone here not read '1984'? Perhaps our international board members...

[anawim]

Just asking the question, anyone here not read '1984'? Perhaps our international board members...

It was not on my h. s. reading list. It was for other students.
I never knew why there were multiple reading lists. Some teachers assigned 1984, and others didn't Perhaps the teachers were given possible lists, and they picked and chose what they wanted to assign.

[Doom]

Multiple times, and also Animal Farm and several other books by George Orwell, what's your point?

[Kage_ar]

I've read most, if not all, of the classic dystopian speculative fiction. I still hold "Lord Of The World" as my favorite.

[Stella]

It's a novel that definitely circulates in the Australian scene. Not on any school reading lists that I know of. Both my sons have read it but those kinds of stories just weren't my cup of tea. I prefer 'happy' stories. Lol.

[aussie_aussie_oi_oi]

Yes have read 1984 and Animal Farm. Was required as high school reading in the 1970s in my part of Australia.

[Tired]

busy work week (or more), sorry for the delay.

@Doom - not necessarily a point. That and Animal Farm are both pretty good books and timely (probably always timely). I have several daughters, two have read both, the other two not (though they are on the long reading list they've compiled). I just wondered how many people these days are bothering to read such (very good) books.

[gherkin]

I've taught it a few times and there's some deep stuff in there. However, I find Brave New World far more relevant. If we consider the books as attempts at prophecy, Huxley was more on the money than Orwell, given the collapse of Stalinist- and Maoist-style communism. (I don't know enough to say whether someone from China would agree with me on that.) For the most part, we're governed by a soft totalitarianism that simply trades on our happily accepting bread and circuses in exchange for freedom, just like Huxley saw it.

[Doom]

I've taught it a few times and there's some deep stuff in there. However, I find Brave New World far more relevant. If we consider the books as attempts at prophecy

No, no, no, no, no, no 100,000 times no. Not a prophecy, not a prediction, a description of the way things actually were at the time the books were written. I cannot understand how anyone can miss this fairly obvious point. Neither Orwell nor Huxley was saying "This is something that could happen in the future", rather they were both saying "This is the way things are today at this very moment."

This is especially obvious in the case of 1984 a book where the face of "Big Brother" is described and it is exactly the face of Joseph Stalin. Re-writing history was not something he was warning could happen, he was saying it was something that actually WAS happening. Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union were in the process of re-writing history, Communist Party officials were being airbrushed out of official photographs, real Communist heroes like Trotsky were first turned into traitors, and then, in the final version, these people never even existed. Many commentators have noticed that even the title seems like a clear indication of intent, "1984" is just "1948" (the year the book was written) with the last two numbers of the year inverted.


The same is true of Brave New World, it was never a prediction, it was a symbolic description of the actual state of the world, as Huxley saw it, in the year it was written.

Dystopian fiction is NEVER really about the future, it is ALWAYS, always, always, a commentary on the present,

[gherkin]

If 1984 is only a symbolic description of 1948 (or whenever it was written) then it kind of loses interest for us, all this time later, except as--what?--a bizarre recounting of historical events? This work is not so timebound. (That may not be true of Animal Farm, which may indeed be pretty timebound, but then it's been a long time since I read it.)

Is Brave New World is only a symbolic commentary on the 30's (or whenever exactly it was written) and NOT IN ANY SENSE a reflection on the potentialities of the rising technologies and attitudes Huxley saw around him? Hah. That's just silly.

Of course the books are commentaries on their authors's times and not mere predictions about the future. And indeed they needn't be thought of as predictions in any literal sense in order to nevertheless be prophetic. At least part of the point of having students read works like this is to help them see the relevance of the ideas to right now. And that "right now" will continue to shift along with the present as time goes by.

[Tired]

I guess I should have explicitly included Animal Farm as it is equally as relevant to this post. Brave New World - and others - are certainly relevant as well.

I'm not sure 'prophecy' is the right word. I would classify instead as exceedingly 'teachable', at all times but even more so (X1000) in today's landscape. Perhaps what I'm primarily disappointed in is that these books aren't more widely read. But heck, I'd say that about Theology and Sanity as well.

[BobCatholic]

I read it during the summer. It on my "summer reading list" for high school - but the English class wound up not using it.