Book Club

I think it would help to stimulate discussion of the book if you would re-read it, even though you didn't enjoy it. You can be a different voice in the discussion and your views may help some of the rest of us to look at the story with a different lens.

Yaaaah an audio version..your my hero, galetea.

You're welcome, I have not read it since high school, but I know it is kind of an oppressive book to read. Maybe listening to it will be better.

It was Eurasia when it wasn't Eastasia, except it was always Eastasia, at least when it wasn't Eurasia.

He does intermittently recall memories of his family, although they/his dreams aren't laid out much in the first chapter (as best as I can remember, anyway).

Lol. I'm sending you to room 101 to refresh your memory, Willie.

Who reads 1984 before the year 1984....
You Hipster

I thought about it, but realized I was going to LIVE it in about 10 or 12 years....

Why read it, when I can just watch the Jetsons?

Besides, I was more into Louis L'Amour, and Richard Sapir/Warren Murphy during that time frame..

So we open this grim tale with Winston coming home. Winston lives in Air Strip One, or London, a province of Oceania. Winston works for the Ministry of Truth. Winston is a member of the ruling Party. We meet the caricature of Big Brother whose posters are everywhere and whom is either the leader or merely a symbol of the Party. Winston's world is a total world of lies as we see from Doublethink, and the contradictory nature of the four Ministries he briefly details. Everywhere people live in Victory Mansions, but from Orwell's description we can tell it is a total slum. Winston as a Party Member and elite of the society is despairingly poor having only a small ration of bread, Victory gin and Victory cigarettes. The Party provides and takes care of the people bringing them victory. Party members are discouraged to buy from the "free market" but have no other choice but to do so for basic amenities.

Winston had bought a diary and a pen from the free market, which he takes great care in concealing from an apparatus in his apartment that is always watching him and always propagandizing to him. It is not illegal to own diary because there are no laws in this society, but Winston knows that if he is caught writing a diary there will be dire consequences. Winston with trepidation begins writing in his diary despite his fears. Winston is a flawed narrator and character because Winston can't fully remember the truth, in fact Winston isn't even sure how old he really is or what year it really is, but he supposes it to be 1984.

Winston's first entry is about a movie he saw. The movie is violent, and supposedly real. The Party members loved the movie for depicting a fat man being shot to death in the ocean and a raft of refugees being blown up by a helicopter. This triggers a prole woman's emotions and he notes she is removed from the theater, but her outburst is of no consequence because it is considered typical prole behavior. The proles are the underclass in this society, while the proles are disregarded one can see that the proles have more freedom than the elite members of the Party.

This triggers in Winston another memory of earlier that day. Winston encountered a woman that worked for the Fiction Department. She is also a member of the Anti-Sex League, a group of hot young women. Winston doesn't trust the hot young women because they are the most zealous for Party orthodoxy and are used as spies and informants. Winston felt fearful of her simply for a look she gave him, fearing her to be a member of the Thought Police. Winston also introduces us to O'Brien whom is a member of the Inner Party, an elite and secretive faction of the elite Party. Winston likes O'Brien because he does not think O'Brien is as rigidly orthodox.

We then see the Two Minute Hate which is ushered in with a jarring noise. The Two Minute hate always features Emmanuel Goldstein. Emmanuel Goldstein is not a foreign enemy, Emmanuel Goldstein is a renegade a leader of the Brotherhood. Goldstein was once a leader in the Party, or so we're told. Goldstein is even the equivalent to Big Brother. Just like Big Brother, Goldstein is everywhere and is always watching and conspiring against the Party. He is everything that is wrong with the Party. He is always plotting just like Big Brother. We are also introduced to Eastasia and Eurasia whom Oceania is always at war with or at peace with and whom Goldstein is always in league with.

Anthony Goldstein and the Two Minute Hate is the catharsis for the inner hatred against the Party that its members feel allowing them to safely vent their frustrations with the Party, with each other, and with themselves and at the same time makes them more loyal to the Party reinforcing their notions that the Party is correct.

As the Two Minute Hate ended with Big Brother saving them from Goldstein on the telescreen and the crowd chanting B-B, Winston and O'Brien's eyes caught each other, and Winston felt a bond with O'Brien though he cannot confirm it. Winston shows in his thoughts he is beginning to be disillusioned and to hate the Party. Winston comes back to his thoughts and notices he has been writing in the diary while recalling these events. Winston has been writing subversive thoughts "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER!" Winston now feels a little fear and considers destroying the diary, but he doesn't do so because now Winston realizes he is committed to being against the Party and so he introduces us to the Thought Police and Thought Crimes. Thoughtcrimes are thoughts against the Party and against the Party's orthodoxy and this is where all crimes come from in this universe and is itself the biggest crime of all. The Thought Police are a secret police that arrest, abduct, and "vaporize" subversives to the Party.

We end the chapter with Winston in great fear, but still he scrawls out his subversive thoughts committing himself against the Party when suddenly there is a knock at the door.

In fact there would have been unpleasant consequences for him even having a blank diary. "Even with nothing written in it, it was a compromising possession." His Victory cigarettes are so stale that when he holds one upright, all the tobacco falls out of it. He is prompted to write in the diary because of his meeting with O'Brien, believing or hoping that the man's political orthodoxy might be as irreverent as his own.

Of the four ministries that comprised the governmental apparatus, the Ministry of Love was the most forbidding and unapproachable. "It was a place impossible to enter except on official business,and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons."

Two things struck me from reading the first chapter- the face of Big Brother is a mustachioed, dark, handsome man. I immediately thought of Stalin, I'm pretty sure this was intentional on Orwell's part.

The Party is worshipped rather than a religion- the sandy haired girl called Big Brother "My Savior!" and uttered a prayer toward the screen. The Party has taken place of religion. People are meant to worship the government and nothing else. I realize Orwell is an atheist, and may not have meant to actually paint Christianity in a good light- but he is obviously saying that worshipping a government is wrong. The Two Minutes of Hate is like a worship service.

Yes Stalin is the inspiration for Big Brother and the USSR is pretty generally the inspiration for the whole government.

Yes the Party is the religion in 1984. Big Brother's graven image is always watching. Emmanuel Goldstein is also basically their satan, the source of all their heresies and unorthodoxies. But then again both Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein might not even be real, but merely tools of the Party used to control the population.

It's kinda hard to even call it a government, there's no laws but yet there is, there is no real leader of the government but Big Brother is the symbol over all. There is no central government, but yet the society is controlled by the Party. the Party controls the behaviors of the Party members, but yet the proles are allowed freedoms that the members of the Party are not. There is even an Inner Party that is kept largely secret from the rest of the Party and the society at large. Oceania is at war with Eurasia always and friends with EastAsia, Oceania is always at war with EastAsia and friends with Eurasia. Does EastAsia and Eurasia even exist? It's one big clusterbomb of lies.

I think the anti Semitism of the government is worthy of note- I the movie the child and woman who are torpedoed are Jewish, as is Emmanuel Goldstein. Anti Semitism is always evil, and connotes an evil government.

Even though there are no laws, it is actually worse than a government with laws because a person could be summarily executed for thoughts against the government- shadowy stuff. This is why it is so important to construe law strictly- not have any judge just make whatever judgment according to what he thinks the law says, but to adjudicate according to what the law ACTUALLY says.

So, Winston Smith, you have a diary and are writing private thoughts- that seems like a subversive spirit- off to be vaporized! This is the danger in following the "spirit of the law" rather than the actual "letter of the law".

Yes the anti-Semitic imagery is noted indeed. I think this also a reference to Nazi Germany and the USSR. At the same time though Emmanuel Goldstein, if he is even real, was once a leader of the party on the same level as Big Brother.

Well it's all a contradiction, it's moreso about Truth vs Lies rather than law. There is no law indeed. It's a lawless society, in a lawless society there is no real government and there is no real rules. But at the same time every member has to adhere to strict behavioral codes, there is a Party and institutions that control the society. There are consequences to breaking the culture. The main crime is thoughtcrimes, literally to acknowledge truth is a crime.

The three basic laws of the 1984 society are total contradictions:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Winston owning a diary is bad enough but not for any spirit of the law or letter of the law, because there is no law against having a diary or writing in a diary. It's because all ready Winston has committed thoughtcrimes against the Party. Winston's sin is he has made a commitment in his mind from before he put that pen to the paper to his thoughtcrimes against the Party.

Yes, I was clumsily trying to get at this- now, there is a large segment of the population that believes we should be governed by the spirit of the law, rather than the letter. It's kind of a short trip to having no law at all, but a culture. And if you are in the minority to what the culture says is truth, it is a "thought crime". Some of this is happening now. I heard on the radio that a Christian hospital is being sued for refusing to perform a sex change operation on a person. The hospital is in effect, being charged with a "thought crime" against the culture- thinking that sex change operations are not good medicine. The case is going to federal court and may end up before the Supreme Court.

I think it is implied that part of Winston's crime is having private thoughts (even if they are not necessarily subversive). After all, his first entry was to praise the hideous movie he saw in the theater. He's also out of sight of Big Brother in his little alcove, so he is having thought crimes simply by not being visible to the telescreen all the time. Possession of the diary at all is a little like a thought crime- why would he need to write down thoughts if they corresponded to the party line? Are we saying the same thing, here?

Well compared to our society, I don't see much of 1984 in it. We should've went with Brave New World if we were going to make comparisons to America. Though there's minor things close to it, lol the election cycle and two party system makes for a perpetual Two Minute Hate. Obama was once Big Brother, now he is Emmanuel Goldstein just like Bush before him and just like Trump will be when he is replaced. The Anti-Sex League is pretty much the modern feminists today, all made up to look sexy to elicit sexy thoughts from men then inform and destroy a man for thoughtcrimes. And are the feminists not also the most zealous for the American orthodoxy of uber-individualism indeed? Then you have a very fake and sarcastic society indeed, truth is the big casualty in America. Truth is abhorrent, to be honest is a thoughtcrime, to be sarcastic and ignorant is highly regarded. And then of course we have always been at war with Eurasia my whole lifetime and always been at peace with EastAsia.

I didn't think he was so much praising the movie, but rather the major thing in that event that stood out to him was the prole woman's reaction. Winston's private thoughts are indeed thoughtcrimes, and as such they are subversive to the Party. He hides in the alcove because he knows his thoughtcrime of the diary is subversive. He bought the diary because he is all ready committed to the thoughtcrime of subverting the Party. Winston is aware that he is committing thoughtcrimes. I think we're basically saying the same thing.

I disagree with you that there are few corollaries to America today and the London of 1984. I think there is a LOT to the thought crimes- more than we even know. A few years ago, there was a huge scandal because the IRS went after people who belonged to the Tea Party movement and audited them aggressively because they are people who commit "thought crimes", thinking that government is too big and that taxes should be severely limited.

Also, people who own small businesses are being prosecuted for "thought crimes"- sued for not baking a wedding cake for a homosexual couple, or pharmacies being sued for not selling the morning after pill or other birth control pills that are actually abortifascients - these things can be termed "thought crimes" because the people are thinking differently from what the culture at large has accepted as good behavior. Right now, it is just hurting people's pocket books- they are not being thrown in jail, but they are being punished for thinking differently.

I don't think feminists are individualistic at all, they seem to have a collective mind set- mostly focused on abortion.