George Orwell's 1984

[wyattstorch42]

• "WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."
  (The three party slogans that are so blatantly hypocritical I cringe every time I read them with some kind of morbid fascination.)'
  -
  
• "Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed — would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper — the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever."
  (Reminds me of Anthem in many respects, "It is a sin to write this" being the opening lines. Winston opens a diary, which is a similar situation.)
  -
  
• "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."
  (Always an interesting take on the Party's complete and utter subjectivism.)
  -
  
• "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
  (Except the Party defeats logic in a horrific way.)
  -
  
• "The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc."
  (As always, evil is anti-human; therefore, anti-reason.)
  -
  
• "There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad." "Sanity is not statistical."
  (I love that last one. No matter how many people deny that two and two make five, they always do.)
  -
  
• "'The command of the old despotisms was Thou Shalt Not. The command of the totalitarians was Thou Shalt. Our command is Thou Art.'"
  (Gives me the creeps. What if the Party could actually get in anyone's head? There's a point where anyone breaks, even John Galt... OK, maybe not John Galt.)
  -
  
• "'The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.'"
  (Reminds me much of power-hungry Ellsworth Toohey.)
  -
  
• "'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.'"
  (Again, so creepy to think that the object of evil is simple destruction of productivity and individual thinking.)
  -
  
• "To die hating them, that was freedom."
  (Jeez, hate to point out the totally depressing ending.)
  

I feel like this book is often discredited because Orwell was actually a socialist. If you look beyond that at the simple messages of the book, at a fundamental level he is just a misguided Objectivist. Of course, a much less uplifting book, but much more psychological and disturbing. And to be perfectly honest, I think Orwell is a superior writer to Rand in conveying a more thematic environment and deeper characters. Then again, as always, Rand is a Romantic, so her characters are perfect and on-the-surface, whereas Winston and Julia are dismal and inevitably fall to the all-powerful Party and ruthless O'Brien, who fascinates me the most.

[Selene]

If you look beyond that at the simple messages of the book, at a fundamental level he is just a misguided Objectivist. Of course, a much less uplifting book, but much more psychological and disturbing. And to be perfectly honest, I think Orwell is a superior writer to Rand in conveying a more thematic environment and deeper characters. Then again, as always, Rand is a Romantic, so her characters are perfect and on-the-surface, whereas Winston and Julia are dismal and inevitably fall to the all-powerful Party and ruthless O'Brien, who fascinates me the most.

Matt:

Now that highlighted statement causes me to ask for you to "flesh out" you perception. I see some similarities in terms of being anti state, but I want to hear more.

Out of curiosity, what do you do to support the state? Worker slave? or Student slave in training?

Adam

[Philip Coates]

I don't remember my impressions of "1984". It was too long ago. But Orwell's "Animal Farm" is wonderful, brilliantly and cleverly written and just as good literarily and psychologically on its own level as "Anthem". I was amazed that even sixth graders, having dealt with bullies and manipulators, understand it and enjoy it.

(I spent a half of one year teaching literature and history to gifted middle schoolers...we also did "Tom Sawyer" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel." Less successfully, we did "The Old Man and The Sea"....leave it to Mr. inarticulate Hemming-and-Haw Way to bore the piss out of kids just as much as he can do to adults.)

Edited April 15, 2011 by Philip Coates

[studiodekadent]

I feel like this book is often discredited because Orwell was actually a socialist. If you look beyond that at the simple messages of the book, at a fundamental level he is just a misguided Objectivist.

To some extent I agree with you.

Orwell argued that irrationalism/anti-realism, social metaphysics/consensus reality, and altruism of the Comtean variety ("Obliteration of the Self") were all core ingredients to Totalitarianism. He also argued that totalitarian invocation of moralities like "concern for the sufferring" etc etc. were merely rationalizations for much darker motives. In all cases he shares this with Rand.

Orwell was a Democratic Socialist (or Fabian Socialist). He argued for the peaceful use of democratic politics to advance State Socialism. Otherwise I see quite little on which Rand and Orwell disagree.

Read O'Brien's speech and tell me it doesn't sound creepily like Ellsworth Toohey's.

[syrakusos]

The fundamental problem pointed out by Ayn Rand is that a society so totalitarian, so oppressive, could not function at the level of technology portrayed. True, if, as claimed, the Revolution seized power, then whatever level attained at that point becomes theirs. But when this book was written, the telephone system in the Kremlin was the one installed by a Swedish firm for the czar's govenment. Back in 1984 I wrote for Loompanics an essay calling for the export of US IBM-PCs to the USSR to destablilize it. That led to further research on Soviet computer technology which I wrote for Loompanics but which was reprinted and paid for by Defense Computing magazine. Some of my research requests were nicely answered by the CIA. Computing in the USSR was nearly non-existent. What they had, they stole from the West, either transshipped through intermediaries or copied at the patent level.

Our society today can transistion to greater state power. We see this. But the trade-off must be a loss of efficiency, eventually resulting in total collapse. Monetary profit is the only rational allocation of material resources. Yes, you can like vanilla more than chocolate because it makes you feel good. But if you want to build an ice cream factory, you must admit that most people prefer chocolate to vanilla, regardless of your feelings. The State misallocates resources. It destroys resources. A genius who spends his time writing computer programs to sift cellphone calls looking for traitors is wasting his time and the resources at this command. Google Analytics is the opposite of that. Time invested creating that tool, delivered marketable marginalities to millions. The profits of Google make the waste of the NSA possible. In a society with no Google and all NSA, downhill is the only way to go.

The numerical facts and the simple arithmetic are undeniable. Ayn Rand identified the "muscle mystics" as the worshippers of inanimate matter: mills produce steel; we seize the mills; we produce steel. It does not work like that.

Here in America, the "malaise" of the Ford-Carter years was rooted in the inflation of the 1960s, but intensified by the "turn on, tune in, drop out" philosophy of that same time. Millions of highly educated and nominally creative young people did not enter the corporate world. We sought other avenues; worked other jobs; found other (personal) rewards.

With the Reagan Revolution, we enjoyed a renaissance. Suddenly, hippies were yuppies (Young Urban Professionals). It was the Me Generation back to work.

Now, intensify that. The "muscle mystics" - both conservative and liberal - claim that "if only..." then Hitler could have won World War II. But that is not true. Germany was decapitated by the loss of (Jewish) intellectuals, Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics.

No totalitarian state is truly unified. Realize that Winston Smith was not a prole: the was in the Outer Party. Party purges were not personal quirk of Stalin: when the German Army offered an easy truce, Hitler killed Roehm and disbanded the SA. Factionalism based on power and ideology is highly inefficient. Consider the differences in outcome between the GOP/Democrat presidential primary process and the creation of Silicon Valley. Read about Shockley, Fairchild, the "Fairchilden" i.e., the competent and entreprising vice presidents and managers who bridled at Shockley's management style and started their own firms. It is the story of Silicon Valley - and America. But politics is winner take all moderated by compromise with your opponents. Thus, Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State.

The market works differently. I have both an Apple Macintosh White Book and a "PC-compatible" HP Pavillion. I can use either or both any time I want. Other people make other choices. Everyone gets whatever they are willing to pay for. That leads to efficiencies. It not just "being nice" or "humanism" or "toleration" - it is how reality works. Do anything else and you are inefficient.

[*]"WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

(The three party slogans that are so blatantly hypocritical I cringe every time I read them with some kind of morbid fascination.)'

Actually, they are oxymorons, not hypocricies. They are explained within the text.

-

The Thought Police ... Thoughtcrime, they called it.

Actually from Japan. "Special Higher Police established in 1911 in Japan, specifically to investigate and control political groups and ideologies deemed to be a threat to public order... roughly equivalent to the FBI in the United States in terms of combining both criminal investigation and counter-espionage functions." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Police follow the link from Other Uses.

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

(Always an interesting take on the Party's complete and utter subjectivism.)

We all interpret reality as we perceive it, Sumerian history no less than the next traffic light. One of the blessings and curses of the Internet is that no one agency controls the content. In the old days, I used to wonder if libraries could be restocked with different stories. And they can. As a numismatist, I have investigated the so-called "Panic of 1857" relying on 19th century books by William Graham Sumner, James Ford Rhodes, and others. (See my blog here.) Modern schoolbooks teach this as fact. "Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." ... Robber barons... Social Darwinism... Conspicuous Consumption... The Gilded Age... The Great Depression of 1929...

"The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc."

I just went through five years of college and university education, 2005-2010. The socialism in undergraduate classes was capped with post-modernism in graduate school: there is no such thing as science, only a "scientistic discourse" created by eurocentric phallocentric exploiters.

The command of the old despotisms was Thou Shalt Not. The command of the totalitarians was Thou Shalt. Our command is 'Thou Art.'

(Gives me the creeps. What if the Party could actually get in anyone's head? ...

You are Gay. She is Black. We are Midwest Votes. I am a Babyboomer. The Police profile Hyphenated-Americans. Litigation Attorneys support this proposal. America's first Latino Woman Appointed to the Office of Officeholder.

Who are you?

Rand is a Romantic, so her characters are perfect and on-the-surface, whereas Winston and Julia are dismal and inevitably fall to the all-powerful Party ...

No. Rand's characters identify their self-interest and take a rational course of action. The Party is not all-powerful, but they do want you to think they are. Realize that they depend on you. Withdraw your sanction. Withdraw your support. And - unlike Bernard von NotHaus - do not confront them directly. Leave them alone. Laissez faire. "The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals."

Edited April 15, 2011 by Michael E. Marotta

[BaalChatzaf]

Now, intensify that. The "muscle mystics" - both conservative and liberal - claim that "if only..." then Hitler could have won World War II. But that is not true. Germany was decapitated by the loss of (Jewish) intellectuals, Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics.

Positively. The A-bomb was a gift to the U.S. made by Adolf Hitler. We beat them to it (despite a three year head start for Germany) because our Jewish Physicists were better than their Jewish Physicists.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited April 15, 2011 by BaalChatzaf

[jriggenbach]

I don't remember my impressions of "1984". It was too long ago. But Orwell's "Animal Farm" is wonderful, brilliantly and cleverly written and just as good literarily and psychologically on its own level as "Anthem". I was amazed that even sixth graders, having dealt with bullies and manipulators, understand it and enjoy it.

(I spent a half of one year teaching literature and history to gifted middle schoolers...we also did "Tom Sawyer" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel." Less successfully, we did "The Old Man and The Sea"....leave it to Mr. inarticulate Hemming-and-Haw Way to bore the piss out of kids just as much as he can do to adults.)

I wouldn't try to teach The Old Man and the Sea to 13-year-olds. It's not "age-appropriate," as they say. The main thing that needs teaching about the book centers around issues of literary style, and few people in that age range are even capable of understanding what is meant by "literary style," much less capable of taking an interest in it. I don't really think Hemingway is a good choice for that age group at all. It isn't just The Old Man and the Sea; it's his entire oeuvre. (Nor, of course, is the situation improved by giving the kids a teacher who has apparently missed the point of what Hemingway was doing, so that he finds Hemingway's work "boring" himself.)

JR

[Brant Gaede]

I don't remember my impressions of "1984". It was too long ago. But Orwell's "Animal Farm" is wonderful, brilliantly and cleverly written and just as good literarily and psychologically on its own level as "Anthem". I was amazed that even sixth graders, having dealt with bullies and manipulators, understand it and enjoy it.

(I spent a half of one year teaching literature and history to gifted middle schoolers...we also did "Tom Sawyer" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel." Less successfully, we did "The Old Man and The Sea"....leave it to Mr. inarticulate Hemming-and-Haw Way to bore the piss out of kids just as much as he can do to adults.)

I wouldn't try to teach The Old Man and the Sea to 13-year-olds. It's not "age-appropriate," as they say. The main thing that needs teaching about the book centers around issues of literary style, and few people in that age range are even capable of understanding what is meant by "literary style," much less capable of taking an interest in it. I don't really think Hemingway is a good choice for that age group at all. It isn't just The Old Man and the Sea; it's his entire oeuvre. (Nor, of course, is the situation improved by giving the kids a teacher who has apparently missed the point of what Hemingway was doing, so that he finds Hemingway's work "boring" himself.)

The Old Man and the Sea is the only Hemingway novel I ever read. I liked it but not enough to propel me into his other novels. Everytime I tried to go there I soon stopped with the realization his titles were better than what was inside--for me, that is.

--Brant

how do you forget 1984?

[caroljane]

I don't remember my impressions of "1984". It was too long ago. But Orwell's "Animal Farm" is wonderful, brilliantly and cleverly written and just as good literarily and psychologically on its own level as "Anthem". I was amazed that even sixth graders, having dealt with bullies and manipulators, understand it and enjoy it.

(I spent a half of one year teaching literature and history to gifted middle schoolers...we also did "Tom Sawyer" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel." Less successfully, we did "The Old Man and The Sea"....leave it to Mr. inarticulate Hemming-and-Haw Way to bore the piss out of kids just as much as he can do to adults.)

I wouldn't try to teach The Old Man and the Sea to 13-year-olds. It's not "age-appropriate," as they say. The main thing that needs teaching about the book centers around issues of literary style, and few people in that age range are even capable of understanding what is meant by "literary style," much less capable of taking an interest in it. I don't really think Hemingway is a good choice for that age group at all. It isn't just The Old Man and the Sea; it's his entire oeuvre. (Nor, of course, is the situation improved by giving the kids a teacher who has apparently missed the point of what Hemingway was doing, so that he finds Hemingway's work "boring" himself.)

The Old Man and the Sea is the only Hemingway novel I ever read. I liked it but not enough to propel me into his other novels. Everytime I tried to go there I soon stopped with the realization his titles were better than what was inside--for me, that is.

--Brant

how do you forget 1984?

Brant, I agree with your Hemingway experience. I read the Old Man and have forgotten most of it, The Sun Also Rises, Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. I did not connect with them although I appreciated the writing - it seemed he was writing in an esoteric argot, understandable only to American men, and ultimately talking about things I did not really understand. (I read them all between ages 16-22, probably an excuse).

1984 I read at 17 in school and again at 21 at university. The shock of reality and connection was immediate both times. As an artist he goes beyond philosophy and politics.

For ND, I read all of Anthony Burgess at around the same time period (I especially like the Malaysian trilogy) and kept up with him afterward, he is so underrated now. Ebert was sloppy and silly to so dismiss A Clockwork Orange. Lastly for whoever liked Barry Lyndon, I loved that movie, better than the book, and I liked the book a lot.

Carol

Orwell/Burgess/Thackeray fan

[jriggenbach]

1984 I read at 17 in school and again at 21 at university. The shock of reality and connection was immediate both times. As an artist he goes beyond philosophy and politics.

For ND, I read all of Anthony Burgess at around the same time period (I especially like the Malaysian trilogy) and kept up with him afterward, he is so underrated now. Ebert was sloppy and silly to so dismiss A Clockwork Orange. Lastly for whoever liked Barry Lyndon, I loved that movie, better than the book, and I liked the book a lot.

I first read Nineteen Eighty-four in 8th grade, when I was, I guess, about 13 ( I believe I read The Fountainhead for the first time in that same semester). I've read both novels numerous times since then.

Anthony Burgess is a great favorite of mine; I think he's one of the most accomplished prose writers (in our language) of the 20th Century.

http://mises.org/daily/5089/Some-Further-Notes-on-Libertarian-Science-Fiction

And, unbeknownst to most of the ignoramuses who comment on his work, Barry Lyndon is Stanley Kubrick's greatest film (and Kubrick was one of the top half dozen authentic geniuses among 20th Century film directors).

JR

[9thdoctor]

And, unbeknownst to most of the ignoramuses who comment on his work, Barry Lyndon is Stanley Kubrick's greatest film (and Kubrick was one of the top half dozen authentic geniuses among 20th Century film directors).

Hmm, I'd split my vote between Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and A Clockwork Orange, but I liked Barry Lyndon too. Particularly the music, I can't hear the 2nd Schubert Piano Trio without thinking of that film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FE1Y8TwhBY&feature=related

Now here's a piece that deserves a comparable treatment:

Has this ever been used in a film? This clip starts in the middle section of the second movement.

Edited April 15, 2011 by Ninth Doctor

[caroljane]

1984 I read at 17 in school and again at 21 at university. The shock of reality and connection was immediate both times. As an artist he goes beyond philosophy and politics.

For ND, I read all of Anthony Burgess at around the same time period (I especially like the Malaysian trilogy) and kept up with him afterward, he is so underrated now. Ebert was sloppy and silly to so dismiss A Clockwork Orange. Lastly for whoever liked Barry Lyndon, I loved that movie, better than the book, and I liked the book a lot.

I first read Nineteen Eighty-four in 8th grade, when I was, I guess, about 13 ( I believe I read The Fountainhead for the first time in that same semester). I've read both novels numerous times since then.

Anthony Burgess is a great favorite of mine; I think he's one of the most accomplished prose writers (in our language) of the 20th Century.

http://mises.org/daily/5089/Some-Further-Notes-on-Libertarian-Science-Fiction

And, unbeknownst to most of the ignoramuses who comment on his work, Barry Lyndon is Stanley Kubrick's greatest film (and Kubrick was one of the top half dozen authentic geniuses among 20th Century film directors).

JR

ee

I do agree with you here. I so remember the bewitchment of Barry Lyndon. It made me see that the moment lasts forever, and the life gallops past in a flash, and that everything we are is what we always only have in the end. Kubrick was indeed a genius.

[Philip Coates]

> a teacher who has apparently missed the point of what Hemingway was doing, so that he finds Hemingway's work "boring" himself. [Jeff, #7]

They were indeed fortunate to have a teacher who was not taken in by Hemingway's pretentious - and boring- bullshit in that novel. Emperor has no clothes much? [The choice of "Old Man" was not mine: I would have chosen better and more age-appropriate books.]

From what Hemingway and Steinbeck I've read so far: H. is overrated and -way- too influential on modern writers.

He's not half the writer Steinbeck is in "Grapes of Wrath". Anyone who actually understands literature.....

Edited April 16, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Brant Gaede]

1984 I read at 17 in school and again at 21 at university. The shock of reality and connection was immediate both times. As an artist he goes beyond philosophy and politics.

For ND, I read all of Anthony Burgess at around the same time period (I especially like the Malaysian trilogy) and kept up with him afterward, he is so underrated now. Ebert was sloppy and silly to so dismiss A Clockwork Orange. Lastly for whoever liked Barry Lyndon, I loved that movie, better than the book, and I liked the book a lot.

I first read Nineteen Eighty-four in 8th grade, when I was, I guess, about 13 ( I believe I read The Fountainhead for the first time in that same semester). I've read both novels numerous times since then.

Anthony Burgess is a great favorite of mine; I think he's one of the most accomplished prose writers (in our language) of the 20th Century.

http://mises.org/dai...Science-Fiction

And, unbeknownst to most of the ignoramuses who comment on his work, Barry Lyndon is Stanley Kubrick's greatest film (and Kubrick was one of the top half dozen authentic geniuses among 20th Century film directors).

JR

I think I've seen all of Kubrick's movies except Barry Lyndon. I'll have to get it. I always thought 2001 was great (I love waltzes) and I thought the end of it was a great tie up. Paths of Glory was almost as harrowing to me as an adult back from a war as The Creature From the Black Lagoon* had been to me as a 16-yo in the theater (I kept going out to the lobby). Kubrick said Tom Cruise and Co. ruined his last movie over-running it with their arbitrary star power.

--Brant

*yes, children, it's not his flick

[jriggenbach]

> a teacher who has apparently missed the point of what Hemingway was doing, so that he finds Hemingway's work "boring" himself. [Jeff, #7]

They were indeed fortunate to have a teacher who was not taken in by Hemingway's pretentious - and boring- bullshit in that novel. Emperor has no clothes much? [The choice of "Old Man" was not mine: I would have chosen better and more age-appropriate books.]

From what Hemingway and Steinbeck I've read so far: H. is overrated and -way- too influential on modern writers.

He's not half the writer Steinbeck is in "Grapes of Wrath". Anyone who actually understands literature.....

Hemingway is overrated in some senses. At his best, he was a much finer writer than John Steinbeck ever was, but Hemingway wasn't always or even usually at his best - and he was never, except intermittently, at his best in his novels. He was never able to sustain what he was capable of at his best if he had to fill 200 pages or more. He doesn't even sustain it (though he comes much closer) through the 130-odd pages of The Old Man and the Sea.

What you think of as Hemingway's influence on modern writers is really the influence of earlier writers, chiefly Mark Twain and Gertrude Stein, as refined through Hemingway, who basically learned everything he knew about writing from those two profound influences during the years of his youth. In part, also, what you're calling the influence of Hemingway on modern writers is really the influence of the plain style - what Gore Vidal used to call the "demotic" style - in 20th Century writing in our language on both sides of the Atlantic. Cyril Connolly goes into this in considerable detail in his Enemies of Promise (1938), contrasting the plain style with what he calls the "mandarin style" that began going out of fashion in the early years of the 20th Century. He offers a fascinating paragraph, which he has cobbled together from the works of half a dozen contemporary writers (including Hemingway and Orwell) to illustrate his contention that practitioners of the plain style end by making themselves stylistically indistinguishable from their fellow practitioners - something Hemingway At His Best never did.

I should add, for the sake of clarifying my earlier point, that the most common reason people feel bored by something is their own failure to understand the point of that something.

JR

Edited April 16, 2011 by Jeff Riggenbach

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jeff,

I agree that The Old Man and The Sea is not for kids. Until you have created something of great importance and watched others destroy it because you didn't know what to do to stop them--i.e., until you have had your own hard-won prize fish eaten by the sharks--you don't have any experience to relate it to. Until that happens, it just seems like a story about, say, a somewhat crazy fisherman's stubbornness and bad luck.

I love that work.

Michael

[wyattstorch42]

If you look beyond that at the simple messages of the book, at a fundamental level he is just a misguided Objectivist. Of course, a much less uplifting book, but much more psychological and disturbing. And to be perfectly honest, I think Orwell is a superior writer to Rand in conveying a more thematic environment and deeper characters. Then again, as always, Rand is a Romantic, so her characters are perfect and on-the-surface, whereas Winston and Julia are dismal and inevitably fall to the all-powerful Party and ruthless O'Brien, who fascinates me the most.

Matt:

Now that highlighted statement causes me to ask for you to "flesh out" you perception. I see some similarities in terms of being anti state, but I want to hear more.

Out of curiosity, what do you do to support the state? Worker slave? or Student slave in training?

Adam

Um, I read your comment a few times wondering if you were being hatefully sarcastic to me. I am now going to assume you're not.

Speaking from a metaphysical or epistemological level, the Party continually denies the existence of a concrete reality. For example, O'Brien "proves" that, once the photograph of the leading Party members who were later considered traitors and executed is destroyed, it had never existed. Anything only exists as long as it is remembered. History can not only be rewritten, but actually altered, because the Party controls reality collectively. Winston is confident that the Party is NOT all-powerful and that, unlike as O'Brien claims, O'Brien cannot simply supersede the law of gravity and start levitating if the Party collectively wished it. Winston believes that "A is A" and reality is objectively independent of the State. O'Brien believes that man invented the Universe in his mind and that, once the mind becomes slave to the Party, the Party controls any aspect of the Universe as it sees fit. The real question is, since the Party ultimately triumphs over Winston, is Orwell attempting to stand by some kind of sick, twisted reasoning, or is he just depicting for us the consequences of complete totalitarianism? I would choose the former, but maybe I'm just an optimist. In any case, he believes in Objective reality and in individualism, he just didn't take the final step to rational self-interest and continues in the direction of socialism.

I'm a public (gasp! but I do pay for it either way, so I might as well) high school senior and full-time warehouse worker, so I guess both.

I feel like this book is often discredited because Orwell was actually a socialist. If you look beyond that at the simple messages of the book, at a fundamental level he is just a misguided Objectivist.

To some extent I agree with you.

Orwell argued that irrationalism/anti-realism, social metaphysics/consensus reality, and altruism of the Comtean variety ("Obliteration of the Self") were all core ingredients to Totalitarianism. He also argued that totalitarian invocation of moralities like "concern for the sufferring" etc etc. were merely rationalizations for much darker motives. In all cases he shares this with Rand.

Orwell was a Democratic Socialist (or Fabian Socialist). He argued for the peaceful use of democratic politics to advance State Socialism. Otherwise I see quite little on which Rand and Orwell disagree.

Read O'Brien's speech and tell me it doesn't sound creepily like Ellsworth Toohey's.

It does, doesn't it? Only I find O'Brien more fascinating than Toohey. I really do think that Orwell is a fantastic narrator; Rand just has much more well-rounded, complete ideas.

[Selene]

Um, I read your comment a few times wondering if you were being hatefully sarcastic to me. I am now going to assume you're not.

In any case, he believes in Objective reality and in individualism, he just didn't take the final step to rational self-interest and continues in the direction of socialism.

I'm a public (gasp! but I do pay for it either way, so I might as well) high school senior and full-time warehouse worker, so I guess both.

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

[Philip Coates]

> Hemingway wasn't always or even usually at his best - and he was never, except intermittently, at his best in his novels. [Jeff, #15]

Okay, well then where was he at his best if not in the novels?

I assume you're saying there is a particular short story or two which is better than anything Steinbeck does in "Grapes of Wrath"?

[jriggenbach]

> Hemingway wasn't always or even usually at his best - and he was never, except intermittently, at his best in his novels. [Jeff, #15]

Okay, well then where was he at his best if not in the novels?

I assume you're saying there is a particular short story or two which is better than anything Steinbeck does in "Grapes of Wrath"?

Have you ever encountered anyone who argued that Hemingway's best work was in his novels? I've never encountered anyone who took that position. What I said is really a commonplace in the world of Hemingway criticism. There are passages here and there in the novels, though. 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. I know of nothing to rival it anywhere in Steinbeck, even in the more successful (perhaps because more economical) of his famous stories about the Great Depression in rural California, Of Mice and Men.

Actually, the entire first chapter of A Farewell to Arms is worth quoting here (it's very brief):

"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.

"The plain was rich with crops; there were many orchards of fruit trees and beyond the plain the mountains were brown and bare. There was fighting in the mountains and at night we could see the flashes from the artillery. In the dark it was like summer lightning, but the nights were cool and there was not the feeling of a storm coming.

"Sometimes in the dark we heard the troops marching under the window and guns going past pulled by motor-tractors. There was much traffic at night and many mules on the roads with boxes of ammunition on each side of their pack-saddles and gray motor trucks that carried men, and other trucks with loads covered with canvas that moved slower in the traffic. There were big guns too that passed in the day drawn by tractors, the long barrels of the guns covered with green branches and green leafy branches and vines laid over the tractors. To the north we could look across a valley and see a forest of chestnut trees and behind it another mountain on this side of the river. There was fighting for that mountain too, but it was not successful, and in the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain. The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with the autumn. There were mists over the river and clouds on the mountain and the trucks splashed mud on the road and the troops were muddy and wet in their capes; their rifles were wet and under their capes the two leather cartridge-boxes on the front of the belts, gray leather boxes heavy with the packs of clips of thin, long 6.5 mm. cartridges, bulged forward under the capes so that the men, passing on the road, marched as though they were six months gone with child.

"There were small gray motor cars that passed going very fast; usually there was an officer on the seat with the driver and more officers in the back seat. They splashed more mud than the camions even and if one of the officers in the back was very small and sitting between two generals, he himself so small that you could not see his face but only the top of his cap and his narrow back, and if the car went especially fast it was probably the King. He lived in Udine and came out in this way nearly every day to see how things were going, and things went very badly.

"At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army."

As I have indicated elsewhere, Hemingway isn't able to sustain the purity of his rhetoric in this extraordinary passage for the entire length of the novel. In fact, arguably, he never reaches that peak again in the remaining pages of the novel. But the ending is almost equally memorable, and the novel conveys with considerable power the futility and tragic absurdity of World War I as it looked to a young volunteer in Northern Italy (the novel is autobiographical in this respect). Whatever one may think of the merits of this way of looking at World War I, it is of considerable historical interest, since it dominated public opinion in this country throughout the 1920s and 1930s, in no small part because of Hemingway's writings on the subject.

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.

JR

[Selene]

JR:

You are indeed a pleasure to read. Effective, evocative and efficient with your use of the written word.

Thanks.

Adam

Edited April 17, 2011 by Selene

[Brant Gaede]

The Killers was made into a movie, one of Burt Lancaster's firsts if not his first. The New York Times in its celebrated one or two line movie reviews in its TV listings called the first ten minutes, "pure Hemingway."

--Brant

[Philip Coates]

[This was a careless and foolish post by me...i retract/apologize in #27 below.] ===>

Subject: Where is Ernest Hemingway at his best?

> Hemingway wasn't always or even usually at his best - and he was never, except intermittently, at his best in his novels. [Jeff, #15]

> Okay, well then where was he at his best if not in the novels? I assume you're saying there is a particular short story or two which is better than anything Steinbeck does in "Grapes of Wrath"? [Phil, #19]

You said in another thread that unlike me, you "don't claim knowledge you don't possess".

Then you make a sweeping claim that Hemingway is not usually at his best in his novels. Then when you are quite naturally asked for a -single short story- where he -is- at his best, all you can do is cite one of his novels.

Which you've already said is not where he is usually at his best.

So, can you actually name (do you actually have enough knowledge of Hemingway) to name a specific short story or two or three of his where he is at his best?

Edited April 17, 2011 by Philip Coates

[jriggenbach]

Subject: Where is Ernest Hemingway at his best?

> Hemingway wasn't always or even usually at his best - and he was never, except intermittently, at his best in his novels. [Jeff, #15]

> Okay, well then where was he at his best if not in the novels? I assume you're saying there is a particular short story or two which is better than anything Steinbeck does in "Grapes of Wrath"? [Phil, #19]

You said in another thread that unlike me, you "don't claim knowledge you don't possess".

Then you make a sweeping claim that Hemingway is not usually at his best in his novels. Then when you are quite naturally asked for a -single short story- where he -is- at his best, all you can do is cite one of his novels.

Which you've already said is not where he is usually at his best.

So, can you actually name (do you actually have enough knowledge of Hemingway) to name a specific short story or two or three of his where he is at his best?

I already named three, Phil. If you spent nearly as much time reading as you do fuming, you'd know that. But you aren't really interested in finding out what I have to say on this subject, are you? All you're interested in is "proving" me wrong and "proving" that your uninformed impressions, based on reading a few of Hemingway's better known novels, makes you some kind of expert on Hemingway and insures that you understand exactly how his fiction should be comprehended and evaluated.

JR

[Brant Gaede]

Subject: Where is Ernest Hemingway at his best?

> Hemingway wasn't always or even usually at his best - and he was never, except intermittently, at his best in his novels. [Jeff, #15]

> Okay, well then where was he at his best if not in the novels? I assume you're saying there is a particular short story or two which is better than anything Steinbeck does in "Grapes of Wrath"? [Phil, #19]

You said in another thread that unlike me, you "don't claim knowledge you don't possess".

Then you make a sweeping claim that Hemingway is not usually at his best in his novels. Then when you are quite naturally asked for a -single short story- where he -is- at his best, all you can do is cite one of his novels.

Which you've already said is not where he is usually at his best.

So, can you actually name (do you actually have enough knowledge of Hemingway) to name a specific short story or two or three of his where he is at his best?

I already named three, Phil. If you spent nearly as much time reading as you do fuming, you'd know that. But you aren't really interested in finding out what I have to say on this subject, are you? All you're interested in is "proving" me wrong and "proving" that your uninformed impressions, based on reading a few of Hemingway's better known novels, makes you some kind of expert on Hemingway and insures that you understand exactly how his fiction should be comprehended and evaluated.

JR

After the generosity of JR's #20, Phil, you have the nerve to come back like this? Instead of saying, "Thank you"? Let me help: Thank you, Jeff, I'll read those stories.

--Brant

how it's done