Although I understand how the novel could succeed in creating a palpable climate of fear, there are two problems have with Nineteen Eighty-Four:
1. As described below in other reviews (and acknowledged to some extent in this one), the antagonists (and the entire setting) can appear downright cartoonishly evil, to the point of harming Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
2. The entire work just seems cynical in the worst way possible. If 1984 was intended as some kind of call to action, I believe it failed to be a very good one, because the situation is portrayed as so hopelessly bleak as to be unchangeable and impossible to fight against, or at least the Party is capable of adequately convincing any naysayers as such. This does not by any means make the narrative itself any less engaging or worth reading, but it does come across as though Orwell is simply ranting for a while before throwing up his hands amd walking away, rather than attempting to convey anything particularly useful or applicable in real life.
1. A familiarity with the atrocities of history and the hate visited between people everyday makes the antagonists and the setting appear to be realistic in respect to their cruelty. One might argue that many real world atrocities are ostensibly goal oriented, but the actions of the Party *are* goal-oriented: they are to maintain the dominance of the ruling class and the state no matter what. It is fascism in its purest form, and I would wager that the depth of their philosophy (English Socialism) was intentionally purged much as the shades of nuance and meaning were eliminated in Newspeak.
2. I also think this is a problem in interpreting it. People shouldn't think of this as an article about the problems that can emerge with fascism and what you can do about it, although it has Applicability. On that point, a work by H.P. Lovecraft doesn't make one more prepared or encouraged to fight an Eldritch Abomination, but that doesn't diminish it. A work of fiction doesn't derive its value from its use or applicability; it is valuable onto itself, for what it is. You don't look at The Persistence of Time and criticize it for not being a blueprint for clocks with assembly instructions. For the same reasons, 1984 should be respected for the pathos it creates and the literary tools it uses to accomplish that.
My problems with this book:
1. As an aspiring linguist, the idea that a government could limit people's thoughts to the extent the book claims simply by altering their language is ludicrous.
2. This book paints a very unflattering picture of the lower classes. They are portrayed as almost animalistic, concerned only with their own pleasure to an absurd degree. As a socialist, Orwell should have known that most revolutions come from the bottom of society, yet the book shows it as impossible.
3. The government is ludicrously competent. There are shortages, but they are all the result of the Party's planning. It's a good thing no real-life fascist or communist regimes were ever this efficient.
4. The idea that the bad guys would do what they do without any thought to the greater good, and admit this to others, is the least believable of all. I thought this book was aimed at adults?
"What's out there? What's waiting for me?"
For number 2 he was probably reflecting the most immediately obvious revolution of the time. Marxist's had talked about the inevitably of a worker uprising but in the end the prime instigators and leaders were fairly middle class.
My knowledge of history isn't good enough to be sure, but I thought this often ended up being the case. Gandhi, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Robespierre, Caesar, Napoleon, Cromwell, Lenin, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, Buddha, were all well-educated and reasonably middle-class or higher.
4 is a problem I have too, but I suppose it could be a stylistic thing. Maybe it's not meant to be a realistic portrayal as much as a philosophical pondering on revolution and the class system and thats particularly reflected in the motivations of the ruling government
@doctrainAUM "1. As an aspiring linguist, the idea that a government could limit people's thoughts to the extent the book claims simply by altering their language is ludicrous."
The linguistic science was fair for its day, as the Sapir-Worf hypothesis had yet to be conclusively disproven. I don't think you can claim Orwell didn't do the research when he could well have and still come away with the wrong conclusion from our modern perspective. One could also justify it in that we don't know if Newspeak actually works, it's just the Party's belief that it could.
2. I don't disagree with you that the depiction of the underclass could be a lot better, but I don't think he missed the point that the proletariat is vital for a socialist revolution. To quote the novel, "If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it. And yet —!"
3. How do we know the Party *is* that competent? They could very well be making themselves look good, always claiming that they meant to do that so they appear to be infallible. It doesn't break my Suspension of Disbelief to think that a regime would try to obscure its shortcomings even in its inner circle.
@doctrainAUM: "4. The idea that the bad guys would do what they do without any thought to the greater good, and admit this to others, is the least believable of all. I thought this book was aimed at adults?"
The Party only admits this in private to Winston, who is being tortured into conforming. And to wit:
Otto Strasser: What is the program of the NSDAP? Hitler: The program is not the question. The only question is power and the fact that this is all fake. Strasser: Power is only the means of accomplishing the program. Hitler: These are the opinions of the intellectuals. We need power!
-John Toland's Adolf Hitler (1976)
I would also note that most autocratic regimes in the ancient world thrived because most of the masses lacked education and resources to accomplish a revolution. So the fact that the Proles have not successfully revolted against the Party. They might have tried, but why would such rebellions be recorded by the Party?
More Adolf Hitler quotes that harmonize with the Party's methods and intents:
"National socialism is the determination to create a new man. There will no longer exist any individual arbitrary will, nor realms in which the individual belongs to himself. The time of happiness as a private matter is over." As quoted in Joachim C. Fest (1974), Hitler. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. 533.
"I have not come into this world to make men better, but to make use of their weaknesses." Quoted in the essay "The Mind of Hitler" by H. R. Trevor-Roper
@Empress:
2. And then Winston is proven wrong almost immediately. What's your point?
3. That interpretation could only come from realizing that the way the Party is presented is unrealistic and finding some justification for it. Except the justification is not even implied in the book and is the opposite of the most literal reading of the story.
4. That's strange. I could've sworn that Hitler saw himself as a savior to the human race and honestly believed he was doing the right thing. If so, obtaining power was merely a means to that end. Maybe I was wrong, though.
"What's out there? What's waiting for me?"
2. I was showing that Orwell was at least acknowledging the role of the underclass in shaping revolutions. Then again, why would the proles ever rise up? They have everything they want (alcohol and porn) and have little intrusion from the Party for the most part. Furthermore, there's plenty of real world examples where the underclass doesn't lead a revolution against their totalitarian governments, or in fact help to usher them.
3. Why would you try to find the most literal reading of a story that has the alteration and malleability of the truth by those in power as a central theme?
4. Quotes from him outside of the regime's propaganda suggests that he was really just in it for the power and glory.
2. It was possible that Orwell was saying that the underclass in this case were people who only cared for themselves, and I took it to mean that he felt the same way about the underclass in all historical cases.
3. When you put it like that, one can make any theory they want and say, "The character and narrator might have been lying". Maybe it's the story's fault for allowing that. But, I can not accept such justifications, which can lead one anywhere, especially as they were never hinted at in the story.
4. Yeah, the only sources I have are testimonies of those from Hitler's last days, from a book, Der Untergang, and several assorted writings. In all of them, he saw himself as a messiah figure, who would lead Germany to a new age. He internally compared himself to ancient Germanic heroes. But perhaps my sources are faulty.
When I read this in High School, the sheer implausibility of the Mary Suetopia broke my suspension of disbelief very often.
"What's out there? What's waiting for me?"
2. I would say that this was more of a result of what the Party did to the Proles, in making them less aware and less full of individual spirit.
"There is something queerly familiar in the atmosphere of these chapters [of Gulliver's Travels], because, mixed up with much fooling, there is a perception that one of the aims of totalitarianism is not merely to make sure that people will think the right thoughts, but actually to make them less conscious." -Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels by George Orwell.
3. This would be true in a general sense, but I have a supporting quote from Orwell that implies that the Party intentionally covers up its mistakes to appear infallible: "A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then, again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revaluation of prominent historical figures." -The Prevention of Literature by George Orwell.
4. He could very well have been after power, and saw the institution of a society where power is the key virtue a noble feat akin to salvation.
Your Mileage May Vary (and clearly does), but I don't think this work was implausible enough to break one's suspension of disbelief for myself. If you had a different experience with that, I respect that, but I still debate the truth of your points in support of that conclusion.
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A Masterful Work of Societal Horror
Nineteen Eighty Four is a great societal horror book, and George Orwell is a pivotal Trope Codifier for the genre. The goals of societal horror are to present a plausible extrapolation of the world as it could be that stirs up dread and terror. Orwell postulates a fascist United Kingdom ostensibly under the rule of a greater regime that takes up the whole of the Anglosophere, where the impoverished masses are living in the rubble of an intentionally perpetual war. The main 'monster' of this book are the members of the Party collectively, who wish to maintain and revel in their power by whatever means they deem necessary.
What makes Nineteen Eighty Four terrifying is that the Party members are not individual sadists or slashers of Psychological Horror, who could only target so many people, and they are not the demons, ghosts, vampires, zombies or aliens of Gothic Horror, Religious Horror and Cosmic Horror respectively, which all are of dubious veracity. The Party is an inescapable threat that is also parsimonious: all of the elements needed for the Party to arise in real life are known (they have even been made reality in nations like North Korea) and if such a threat does arise on the scale described in this work, it would be to the detriment of almost everyone.
This is why the world's geography and the societal pyramid are important; not only because they're interesting ways to develop a Constructed World, but they emphasize who no one is safe from at least one of these fascist super states. The inescapable nature of these regimes is one of the prevailing themes of the book, in that the hope that they will fall is also slowly and deliberately squelched by the Party to Winston and the audience. On that point, Winston functions more like a device for the audience to project themselves onto, which is justified in that the work's pathos is being developed more through horror than drama.
The flaw is perhaps that it's not as plausible as it could be, which is the key advantage that societal horror has over other forms in scaring the audience, but the presentation of the world is visceral enough to languish in the imaginations of most reader and fill them with a dread of fascism, and more broadly, a horrified and somber respect for the cruelties that people can inflict upon one another.