It really blows my mind that this book was written in 1949. This is my second time reading Orwell’s dystopian novel. Safe to say I got a lot more out of it now than I did at the age of 14. On my first read I appreciated the novel for the story and the dark vision it painted of the future (even though I read it in 1991, which was technically the future). But reading this today, it’s almost impossible not to draw parallels between Orwell’s world and with what’s happening around us: the pervasiveness of surveillance, the diminishing amount of privacy, and the move towards united global superpowers. Orwell wrote this book more as a warning of what totalitarian government could bring and less about the loss of privacy, implying that the first would bring about the second. But today it seems like just the opposite is possible.
“In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
“For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
“To these people the war is simply a continuous calamity which sweeps to and fro over their bodies like a tidal wave. Which side is winning is a matter of complete indifference to them. They are aware that a change of overlordship means simply that they will be doing the same work as before for new masters who treat them in the same manner as the old ones.”
“You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable.”
* I picked up this version of the book with a cool Obey cover, but love this retro version (courtesy of So Much Pileup).
