Nineteen Eighty-Four (and briefly of Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

I was at one of the local libraries recently. There's a shelf for newly returned books, divided into genres. I checked the scifi/fantasy section to see what people were reading and to my amusement was reminded of a picture (or two) I had seen of someone moving George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four from their fiction section to non-fiction. I didn't move the book to non-fiction but instead picked it to read it myself as I had never done so.

I don't know why I was surprised to find the novel such an effortless read. Maybe because the previous book I had read out of an impulse had been Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I mean I technically read it --  I got very little out of it. It was like the novel had been written by a madman, sentences often broken by dashes, full of aphorisms and references I had no clue of, all shouted out in short bursts between the author's migraine attacks.

I think a better way to read such a piece of literature would be to have it full of commentary by a more knowledgeable person, footnotes on every page on what the author (possibly) meant. The print did have a foreword by its translator and a couple of notes but that was far from enough. Of course, with someone else's commentary on a philosophical novel, there's a danger you're reading a misinterpretation. But at least it would you give something to start with and I reckon that with Nietzsche you will need all the help there is. I did later read a book by Arto Riihimäki on the meaning of Nietzsche's work and it helped a bit on understanding Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

I enjoy reading forewords. They often give you more insight and/or a suggestion on how to approach the given novel. As I have always read mainly genre fiction, forewords are not that common unfortunately -- mostly found in anthologies. The print of 1984 I read had a foreword. Not by the translator but by some Finnish journalist and critic.

The foreword noted among other things how hugely influential and even prophetic the novel by Orwell has been. Controversial too -- apparently the first Finnish translation in 1950 (the original novel was published in 1949) had all references to The Soviet Union removed, which is ironic as hell with what the book is about. Oddly enough this translation didn't mention The Soviet Union either -- it was just Russia. Maybe to keep the novel up to date or something.

The foreword also mentioned in everyday Finnish conversations used, a real example of Newspeak coined in the novel: yhteistoimintaneuvottelut or yt-neuvottelut for short (lit. 'co-operation negotiations'). The word gives an expression of a discussion with equal sides when in reality it's just someone telling who's getting fired.

It was odd, even eerie, how so many of the words and concepts by Orwell were already familiar to me even without having read the novel before. That is an undeniable proof the book is an absolute classic.

1984 is set in dystopian London, in Airstrip One, a province of Oceania, one of the three superstates controlling the world and which take turns in allying and warring each other. Or so is to be believed.

The novel follows Winston Smith, an outer circle member of the Party. He works in the Ministry of Truth (propaganda) or Minitrue, correcting past documents to fit current facts. He is skilled at his job but secretly opposes the Party, all the while fearing Big Brother's thoughtpolice catches him.

The first part of the novel made me want to buy and play We Happy Few whose first chapter's protagonist works in a similar profession, if I recall correctly. I think We Happy Few also took influence from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In Huxley's novel the ruling state apparently uses "softer" methods for controlling the population. I've seen people saying it might be a better depiction of the current Western world than 1984. I should probably check it out at some point.

Like I mentioned at the start of the post, 1984 is easy to read, even entertaining regardless of the bleak setting. Evidently Orwell's -- or Eric Arthur Blair's -- work is marked by lucid prose. The novel does change a bit in the second part, however, when Winston gets his hands on 'the book' or The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. There's a real possibility the whole novel was written to just get a framework for the manifesto which is just slapped in there.

I didn't mind it -- like the whole novel, the book slab was effortless to read. I found the theory of a cyclical class struggle fascinating. How the High caste gets eventually overthrown by the masses of the Low caste lead by the Middle. A new High caste forms from the old Middle, a new Middle caste from a mix of the old Middle and Low, and most of the Low stay Low. And how the cycle can be stopped by a conscious effort: by controlling the Middle caste and preventing them from ever riling up -- the Low caste never revolts on its own.

I was bothered though how the second chapter of the book is never featured. Winston starts on the first chapter, Ignorance is Strength, skips to read the third, War Is Peace, and then returns to read the first one. After that, the thoughtpolice comes to arrest him.

That scene was odd. A secret telescreen behind a painting was revealed and a voice coming from it started repeating what Winston was saying, like that the house is surrounded. It was getting almost surrealistic and I wondered where the novel was going. It didn't become any weirder than that, though. Winston just gets thrown in jail to be tortured and to become a proper member of the Party.

If the end was trying to convey anything more than the hopelessness of the setting, I didn't get it.

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."

I did however learn that the four lights of that one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was a reference to this novel.