Review & Analysis of 1984 (New Classic Edition) by George Orwell

Narrated by: Simon Prebble
Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
Release date: 05-02-07
Original Publish date: 8th June 1949

Meta Irony

Interesting that this version is called: ‘The New Classic Version’.  I wonder if that was done in irony in keeping up with the themes of the book, or that was just a happy coincidence.

(The department that the main character Winston works in is all about re-writing / ‘updating’ news articles & books to keep the message in line with what is currently stated by the party)

For – “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Initial Thoughts

I originally read this as one of those high school mandated books for English studies.

It was probably one of the only mandated books that I actually found interesting and finished.

I feel like with current events going on in America and China this kind of book is becoming all the more relevant. Either the ‘big brother is watching you’ as it is in China, or the dumbing down or the population and a severe amount of sophistry being dispersed in the case of America…And of course the whole..  ‘We’re at war with these people…we’ve always been at war with these people.’  The kind of mentality that the country has to be constantly engaged in a war at any given time.

Fake news, or at least highly propagandised news as or opinionated news as is the case in both China and America… And knowing that sometime in the future these 2 countries are likely to go to war…. well a book that revisits these concepts seems appropriate.

Honestly great book. Very thought provoking. Although I’m now thinking this book was actually a propaganda book given to Western audiences to show the failures of Communism, or at least an authoritarian state… by exaggerating what they’re apparently all about.

Which …Is NOT actually the idea of Socialism/ Communism, but IS often the concept of an Authoritarian state.

The fact that George Orwell wrote this in 1950 and the nation that was most comparable to what was written was the Soviet Union many people have drawn the conclusion that Big Brother was about Communism, but in fact in the book never explicitly states Communism. The whole removing people from old photos as if they never existed IS the Authoritarian part of the Soviet Union though, plus the dumbing down of the population.

Yet in drawing those parallels today we could come to the conclusion that this could be both the USA or China, the whole surveillance state, dumbing down of the population, propaganda news (highly opinionated/ fake news). And China isn’t really Communist… Rather highly capitalistic with an Authoritarian government, and America is even more capitalistic but with a failing system that allows for more deregulation and thus for the rich to stay rich and in control, and the poor to stay poor.

Recommendation

Honestly if you’ve never read this book, or have pretended to have read it all this time…(As apparently many people do)…. then I would seriously recommend reading/listening to this book.

If you read this book a long time ago, then I would still definitely recommend that you re-read/ re-listen to this book to see current parallels with today’s world.

I would also recommend <The kid that ran for president> as stated on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, the parallels with Drumpf’s run for president is uncanny.

The only thing is that the last 40 mins is just a dictionary or rather the progression of words in the new age.
You can tell George Orwell put a lot of effort into creating this world, however… honestly this part is just plain old boring.  I would recommend skipping the last 40 mins of the book that’s about dictionary progressions.

Interesting things that I noted and some decent quotes

Asking rhetorical questions. And self-answering them.  >> Strong parallel to how Chinese have been taught to speak & argue

Inner-party coffee. Access to the better coffee and everything >> Very much like China there with access to premium Baijiu (rice spirits) that is not available for consumption by the common people.

‘Equality threatened the destruction if a hierarchical society’

A hierarchal society was only possible in the basis of poverty and ignorance. >> Parallels to many states that claimed to be Communist ended up doing.  In reality, they were not communist, but Authoritarian.

‘Sanity is not statistical.’

The future plans outlined toward the end of the book, as stated by O’Brien to Winston sounds a very much like China’s Cultural Revolution.

“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.” >>  Also very relevant in today’s world where most people only watch the news from the side they agree with, and books which reinforce their own beliefs, thus reinforcing it more.

“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”  >>  I honestly think that’s very true.  Combined with this:

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”

People want a happy life for themselves, and if there’s suffering going on in the world, they’d prefer not to know about it, they’d prefer to be ignorant if it means they can be happy.  And freedom might mean too many choices, have structure means guidance, means more simplicity, means greater chance to find happiness in this guided channel.

“I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”

I found this particularly funny.  I think there’s a few situations where you come across people that fit this description.  Very clever people, with little morality, or somehow draw way different conclusions to the same situation and same logic applied.  Very apt quote.

“We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.” >> Completely agree, that can be in the form of social engineering, people manipulation… and provided it doesn’t actually hurt them, I don’t see anything wrong with it.

For this next one, I can’t help but think those regimes like Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge was thinking along these lines.

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

Fun fact – The book 1984 is not banned from purchase in mainland China, despite the fact that many things in this book poke fun at regimes like China’s from 1950-1978.  (1978 being the time that Deng Xiaoping took control and they went on the economic reform and opening up model.)

Here’s some links of the different versions you can buy in fact.

http://item.jd.com/11912041.html  & http://item.jd.com/11450627.html

You can even get the ‘Animal Farm’ & ‘1984’ in a bundle.  Hooray!

That being said, in a few years’ time it will be given to school children to read to showcase the USA’s system.

Listen to a sample or buy on audible of 1984 by George Orwell