George Orwell's 1984

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Since when does Phil have to read a post in order to criticize it?

After all, he's Phil.

Michael

[Philip Coates]

Well, Jesus, I screwed up!!

I missed the short stories Jeff recommended at the bottom of the long chapter from the novel.

I was saving the chapter to read later and missed the reference to the stories!

Sorry about that, Jeff...and sorry about any sarcasm in my 'fuming' post. [i also went back and appended it in #24 above]

Edited April 17, 2011 by Philip Coates

[wyattstorch42]

Matt:

Lol. Thank you for the presumption of innocence, I am not sure I am worthy of it!

I was certainly not being hatefully sarcastic.

Interesting idea though picking out those three similarities between a radical socialist and a "misguided objectivist." My understanding of socialism would not tolerate individuality that went against the greater good as determined by the "group," the "collective," and, or, the central authority/class. Sooner or later, you are going to arrive at one class of statists who are better than any other group.

The Animal Farm argument.

However, it is a position worth considering. It might work in a left anarchist community.

What do you plan to do when you escape the states High School penitentiary?

Adam

I love how the nature of this topic has completely transitioned to Hemingway, save you and me. It is quite amusing. I've never finished a Hemingway novel myself....

As I've reiterated, Orwell obviously did not completely define his ideas. I think that, like many who haven't read or understood Rand, he probably believed that capitalism leads to a class-based system. He defines capitalists in the book through the "history books" released by the Party--men who had whatever they wanted and manipulated the working class to their advantage: greedy, corrupt, blah blah blah. Capitalism is nearly always criticized, and Orwell probably took such a notion that laissez-faire leads to oligarchy for granted.

I'll be going to ASU (Arizona State) to major in Computer Science and minor in Business. I'd like to start a software engineering business someday. I also would love to teach.

Edited April 17, 2011 by wyattstorch42

[Philip Coates]

> I've never finished a Hemingway novel myself....

Unfortunately, I've finished more than one. And a number of his short stories. Contra Hemingway, I've always been impressed by Orwell, both novels and short pieces.

The reason is simple:

Orwell (like Rand, like Dickens, like Steinbeck - like many of the greatest authors in literature) has something to say, and what he has to say is both eloquent and of transcendent importance. The same cannot be said for Hemingway.

Edited April 17, 2011 by Philip Coates

[jriggenbach]

> I've never finished a Hemingway novel myself....

Unfortunately, I've finished more than one. And a number of his short stories. Contra Hemingway, I've always been impressed by Orwell, both novels and short pieces.

The reason is simple:

Orwell (like Rand, like Dickens, like Steinbeck - like many of the greatest authors in literature) has something to say, and what he has to say is both eloquent and of transcendent importance. The same cannot be said for Hemingway.

Not by you anyway.

As I've noted before, if you don't understand what you've read, you'll likely regard it as boring and be unable to name the ideas it formulates.

JR

[Selene]

Matt:

Ok. From Orwelle's time and place, that would be the presumptive or default position on capitalism. Hell today, I practically jump out of my skin when I hear people talk about capitalism causing the recent crisis, or Bush's laissez faire capitalism.

Heck we did not have that from the beginning of this Constitutional republic!

Separation of state and economics would be a great addition to federal law with a ten (10) year sunset provision just to see if it would work as well as I think it would.

Glad you have a solid plan. Just watch yourself in those college clinches.

I can remember when I started teaching at college when I was twenty, I took the department's syllabus for the class and tore it in half and dropped it in the waste basket beside the podium and said, "Ok, now we are going to learn by each and every one of you picking a topic that you choose to devote the entire term to developing. This is a "speech one" course, we will be using Aristotle's Rhetoric as the basic course text. The skills that we will work with will be applied to what your chosen topic is."

Any questions...? There were lots of questions. lol.

Adam

Edited April 17, 2011 by Selene

[Xray]

Here's the opening paragraph of A Farewell to Arms:

"In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves."

This is exquisite. I have never seen a passage that so perfectly encapsulates and merges what Hemingway learned from Twain and what he learned from Gertrude Stein. It is poetic to an extraordinary extent. Anyone sensitive to the music of prose will grasp this immediately.

How is this "music of prose" effect achieved?

Is it through the paratactic structure using the conjunction "and", rhythmically leading the reader along as he encounters a panopticum of movement in all kinds of form: the swiftly moving river, the troops marching down the road, the rising dust, the falling leaves, stirred by the breeze?

Like the leaves which "fell early", many a life is going to end before its time in a war.

The dust blight-like powdering the leaves also connotes lifelessness and death; with the "bare and white" road speckled with dark leaves I associated bloodstains on a deadly white corpse.

But yes, it is a commonplace that Hemingway's best work is in his short stories. "A Clean, Well Lighted Place" is often cited, but I think this particular short story is overrated. I would nominate two of the Nick Adams stories - "Big Two-Hearted River" and "The Killers" - and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." It is necessary to be cautious in approaching these works, however. I have seen readers at every level of sophistication fail to grasp these stories properly because, in effect, they demanded things of them they were never designed to provide. In effect, these readers missed the points of the stories and faulted the stories for their own inadequacies as readers.

Are you referring to Hemingway often deliberately omitting elements, demanding mental activity by the reader to fill in the blanks?

Edited April 25, 2011 by Xray