Other books I’ve been re-reading lately are “Animal Farm” and “1984” by George Orwell. (All right, I’ve got a small confession to make. I’m not physically reading all these books; I’ve got them on CD. Same with the previously mentioned “Tale of Two Cities”. But I’m absorbing them nonetheless.)
Orwell has got to be one of the most quoted and least read authors around. He has become the darling of the American right, many of whom don’t even know that, although Orwell’s later works were certainly anti-communist, Orwell himself was a democratic Socialist. For instance Ann Coulter, right wing columnist, quotes Orwell in her books without ever mentioning he’s a Socialist.
I should admit I’m no expert on the exact state of Orwell’s political evolution at the time he wrote “Animal Farm” or “1984”, but a simple reading of the books is evidence enough that Orwell would be in awkward company with today’s right wing.
For instance his main criticism of communism in “Animal Farm” is that the communist abandon their original ideals to imitate the capitalists. The return of organized religion is what Orwell regards as the final corruption of the communist regime. And at the end of the book, the ultimate horror is that the communists morph into the capitalists they replaced.
As for “1984”, a large part of this book deals with the sexual suppression enforced by the totalitarian regime. The first step towards rebellion against totalitarianism is sexual freedom. Hardly the ideology of today’s religious right.
Conservatives love to apply “1984” to liberal big government programs, but from my re-reading of the book, the most shocking comparisons are to the Bush administration. I know I’m not the first person to point this out, and that the whole debate about “Who does ‘1984’ apply to more?” is a childish game, but just for fun consider these comparisons:
1. Anyone who has actually read “1984”will remember the 3 slogans of the party, “War is Peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength.” Now is it just me, or does this sound remarkably similar to the speech George W. Bush gave in which he actually said, “When we talk about war, we are really talking about peace.” Of course this was a reflection of a larger conservative argument which was popular at the time. The argument went that anyone for peace was really only delaying an inevitably conflict, and so those of us for peace were really “pro-war.” Now how Orwellian is that? The only way you can be for peace is to support the war? The people in favor of invading a foreign land that had never attacked us, were actually the people for peace?
(Appearently I'm not the only one who thinks this is a bit too close to 1984)
2. In “1984”, the government deliberately keeps the country in a constant state of warfare in order to be able to appeal to the spirit of patriotism and self-sacrifice as an excuse for giving up freedoms. Sound familiar?
3. In “1984” the world has been reduced to only 3 super powers. At any given time the government is always at war with one of them, and at peace with the other. Since enemy at the time is always defined as the definition of pure evil, it stands to reason there could never have been any alliances in the past, and so the history books are always being changed so that the country the government is currently fighting becomes the country the government has always been fighting, and has never been aligned with.
Now, granted in the US we aren’t physically changing the history books yet, but it does seem that in preparation for the Iraq War, and in the need to define Saddam as the ultimate evil, US support of Iraq during the 1980s was brushed under the rug a bit.
4. And of course there is the comparison between the “1984” government’s campaign to abolish the sex drive, and Bush’s push for abstinence education. (All right, admittedly this last one is a bit of a stretch. If you think I’m stretching here just go up and re-read the first 3).
So, I put it to you, of all the conservatives who love to quote Orwell, how many of them do you think have actually read his books?
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8 comments:
Hey Joel,
You might really like a new book by Emma Larkin entitled _Finding George Orwell in Burma_. Larkin travels for a year in Burma, and finds that it mirrors the horrors predicted by Orwell. A good read
I like Orwell because his style is very simple, no which, no that. Top down sentences. He did not like to use French-Latin origin words.
So, let' s think about the title. Animal Farms. A farm is a place to cultivate something to eat. Animals, including human beings, are cultivated there.
You know every things from this title after reading this novel.
All humans may become animals if they do not know something. But many are/
Your last sentence seems to have gotten cut off, but I agree with you that Orwell is a delight to read. Animal Farm in particular is written in very easy to understand prose, as you point out.
1984 is awesome. I find the idea of doublethink was the most important part of the book, as opposed to simply being a critique of Stalinism (which is what the conservatives harp on). It's truly fascinating how Orwell builds a system based on continuous deceptive consciousness, that at the same time carries enough implicit (and constantly alternating!) recognition of reality to keep functioning. I feel that doublethink is to some extent present in all people/cultures and in fact unavoidable, because its power draws from our need to reconcile the instinct to learn and change with the desire for stability and identity.
I agree, double Think is one of the most fascinating concepts Orwell introduced. I was just thinking of it the other day, actually, and I think a lot of Double Think (the concept of holding to opposing views simultaneously) can be applied to the way religious people will often try and reconcile their theology with their real world knowledge. But that's just one example. You can apply it to a lot of things across the board
[It's hard to explain why do I feel the need to give all this stuff a middle finger, but consider this my way to give back all the hatred I have for life, and towards all the English I have had to learn just to end up with nothing of value to my life that isn't replaceable with Japanese. I can go on a long tangent about my hatred for politics - but perhaps this sort of comment serves better to convey a part of what I have to say. I'm not proud of my own comments, but there are the very opposite jackasses whose own opinions are nothing special and far from any enlightened but they still love to preach - not helping people isn't the worst thing, giving them advice they have issues with while refusing to help with their core issues is worse. I can go on and on, but my post shall speak partly for itself.]
I will not hide my hate for Orwell here. On my first streak of reading Western literature, his works were disruptive - in the sense of making me fail to finish a single novel the first time. I have read 1984 up to the point Winston met some strange girl, and Animal Farm up to some part. If Marx and Engels were to the West co-founders of Marxism, then Orwell and Hugo were to the West co-founders of Narcissism. His essay 'Shooting an elephant' is a prime exemplar.
Doublethink is just simply the human capacity of not being so primitive to the point of not being able to advance civilization like other kinds of bacteria. Has anybody ever asked themselves how the humankind would be like without doublethink? It would actually lead easier to the kind of horrifying reality that Orwell and others love to make issues out of. You can no longer hold contrary opinions at the same time, then you have to absolutely hate people at one moment and nothing else - thus you can't even restrain yourself, rulers don't even need to tell you to kill people when you already do that beforehand. A normal human being has to realize they don't single-mindedly have one single kind recognition for other beings, we are not bacteria, otherwise we would just 'interact' with other kinds.
Hypocrisies pointing is simply a cheap way to point out how other people fail short of their supposed morals. Writing novels based on your own incessant complaints about how life sucks is just making your metaphors cheap insults.
Greenhorns replacing the old order just to find themselves do a much worse job is nothing new in life. That's why in Chinese culture they all force people to respect the elder unconditionally until they get old enough to prove themselves of being better leaders. So the lesson there is that people should have some humility. What is Orwell's supposed lesson from his novels? Maybe he just meant them as a jab toward Stalinism - but does he realize that to people in several corners of the world, we just don't see much difference between Stalinism with Liberalism, Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, and so on? Not hard to see why his critique just easily deteriorates to "Communism bad".
Hopefully this shall be the last I have to say about Orwell or any kind of Western literature at all. I can't just keep complaining about things on one single place all the time. It's time for me to move on and find better places to let out my stuff. Although what a waste of time trying to read Western literature all those years just because my ego was so big and my pretentiousness was unmatchable.
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