It was a fantastic read, and I’m really glad I finally read it, although some parts were really boring (like the never-ending and revolving description of an old woman singing while hanging up laundry to dry). There was a suspense throughout the book because you KNEW Winston would get caught, it was just a question of when. It read kind of like a horror story where you know the terrible ending from the beginning, but can’t change it.
I’m surprised though at how crude it turned out to be. Not the book itself, but the government described in the book.
The Party is describes to be intelligent, all-knowing and sophisticated. So when Winston is captured, I imagined all sorts of terrible futuristic things happening to him.
Imagine my surprise when what they did was kick and hit him. It was the Party saying: obey us or we will kick you for days! We will torture you with rats!
The punishment for resistance was so primitive. And for me It was enlightening, because so much power is upheld just by someone having more force than the other. In the end the Partys power had nothing to do with intelligence. In the end, power was just about the crudeness of physically abusing someone until they agreed.
Any thoughts?
by ginas95
4 Comments
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I think the crudeness of the punishments is to emphasize that it *can* happen. There is nothing in Orwell’s descriptions that did not happen in a 20th century gulag or a 19th century Katorga.
It’s also important to understand this book as a profoundly Marxist novel. Marx’s fundamental theory is that history is a struggle of social classes, which will leave only one class—or classless society, equivalently. Orwell proposes a system by which that process can be stopped cold, and a class-conscious ruling elite can hold onto power indefinitely—Stop the evolution of the human race in its tracks, forever. Note that Winston is arrested the moment he comes to the realization that the outer party can team with the proles to overthrow the inner party—Winston tried to revive class struggle. I found that reading the Communist Manifesto first enhanced my enjoyment of the book, as a result.
Why waste resources creating a robot to kick someone in the face when there’s thousands of psychos who will do it for free?
Technology may advance, Winston, but the flaws of the human form remain unchanged. The only invention The Party required was a closed fist.
It’s been a while, I might need to read it again.
The party is all lies. The surveillance is human, the tech (tvs with cameras and microphones) are defeated by a heavy blanket. But tampering with the obvious equipment is an offence. Enforced by people who, if they don’t enforce, are committing an offence. Everyone is watching everyone else, to the point that there isn’t any more freedom as you climb the power structure, there’s less.
You don’t need the punishment to be sophisticated, it’s better that it isn’t. A sophisticated punishment might make people think that innovation and change to the status quo is possible and good, but the power structure is based around a strictly maintained status quo with the propaganda that any alternative will be worse. So when anyone challenges that message they need to be shown that the only alternative is strictly worse.
It is better to let big brother watch than be eaten by rats. It is better to know that 2+2=5 than be kicked in the ribs and eaten by rats. There is only obedience or re-education.