Exploring George Orwell's 1984

I’m reading George Orwell’s 1984. I want to look specifically at “newspeak” and other ways Big Brother tries to control language to control people. I’d like to look at the spread of information in digital culture today and compare that with Big Brother’s suppression of information and texts.

Preview

I noticed the chapters do not have titles, and the book is divided into different sections. The lack of chapter names probably goes along with the bleak theme of the storyline and possibly the suppression of information and texts by Big Brother. There is the appendix at the end with The Principles of Newspeak. I started skimming the appendix, and there Orwell outlines the rules of Newspeak: the vocabulary, morphology, grammar, etc. Apparently Newspeak was created to diminish the overall English vocabulary and limit thought. I’m interested to see how Newspeak is actually used in the novel.

Early Social Proof

I put up a Facebook status on Tuesday morning telling my friends I was reading 1984, and I asked if they had read it or had any thoughts about it. I mentioned that I saw connections between Big Brother’s use of language and today’s politically correct language. I got a few thoughtful responses. My high school AP English teacher said, “The recent Snowden leaks about the NSA make me realize Big Brother is watching us at all times. We also are seeing the simplification of language. Have acronyms everywhere... Even shorter than contractions like "minipax." Torture was big a few years ago. Orwell was just 30 years ahead of his time.” A girl from my homeward said, “I think that the ‘perpetual war’ of 1984 is akin to the perpetual conflict between major political parties. It is a self-sustaining industry that keeps people busy and gives the impression of progress without really changing much.”

Similar Books

I searched Amazon and Google. Both sites recommended other books by George Orwell, but Amazon recommended some others that had similar themes to 1984. Amazon recommended Brave New World by Aldus Huxley, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, and Fahrenheit 451: A Novel by Ray Bradbury. Both Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 are set in dystopian futures. The Lord of the Flies deals with the reality of the brutal aspects of human nature. All three books are cautionary tales about the possibilities of the future.

Who Cares?

I searched for “George Orwell 1984” on Facebook and Google+. Facebook informed me that 1,118,543 people “like this topic.” On Google+ I found a lot of posts from newspapers and individuals talking about the NSA surveillance scandal, PRISM, and how sales of 1984 have skyrocketed since news of the government spying broke out in the media. Apparently 1984 is still very relevant to today since people are actively talking about it, and more people are reading it with all of the concerns about big government.

Formal Reviews

I searched for reviews on the library webpage. There were several, but one I thought that was really relevant to digital culture was countering another reviewer’s claims that Orwell was not a genius. In his “Homage to George Orwell” published in the Midwest Quarterly, Peter Firchow writes, “All of his work, let me repeat, even including some minor, transitory pieces like reviews, is still in print, and his fiction and major essays a, along with much of his journalism, have been translated into just about all of the major Western languages.” He cites the availability and circulation of Orwell’s texts as a sign of Orwell’s genius as a writer. This reminded me of today where the mass circulation of someone’s words and writings can be so common that it would not necessarily distinguish them as a genius. But then again all of Orwell’s writings were published into print, and many of them are available online. One of the things that Firchow thinks is characteristic of Orwell’s literature is the tendency to create an environment that exists in the real world but to not have many specific cultural or other references to that place. In this way, Orwell creates a timelessness and a situation that everyone can place themselves in. He does this is 1984 too, where you know the main character is in England, but the character could really be in any dystopian city or country. It makes the story very applicable and powerful that way.

Informal Reviews

One review I particularly enjoyed on Goodreads gave a synopsis of the book through a completely modern lens. The reviewer says, “In George Orwell's 1984, Winston Smith is an open source developer who writes his code offline because his ISP has installed packet sniffers that are regulated by the government under the Patriot Act. It's really for his own protection, though. From, like, terrorists and DVD pirates and stuff. Like every good American, he drinks Coca-Cola and his processed food has desensitized his palate to all but four flavors: (sweet, salty-so-that-you-will-drink-more-coca-cola, sweet, and Cooler Ranch!(tm)). His benevolent overlords have provided him with some war happening somewhere for some reason so that he, and the rest of the population, can be sure that the government is really in his best interests.” This really brought the story home for me. It is obvious that 1984 can be compared to our day, but I think review is a creative way to analyze the story in today’s context and to provide social commentary.

Multimedia

A lot of media has been created about 1984. I searched tried searching for George Orwell 1984+digital culture, but I didn’t get the greatest results, so I simplified my search to 1984. I found a lot of remix images of 1984 themes and today’s politics like this picture.

 To be continued . . .