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Twentieth Century Interpretations of 1984: A Collection of Critical Essays
Essayists and reviewers assess the political and social significance of Orwell's novel as well as it's literary merit
117 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1972
18 people want to read
About the author
Samuel Hynes
58 books12 followersA scholar and literary critic, Samuel Lynn Hynes Jr. attended the University of Minnesota before serving in the United States Marines as a torpedo bomber pilot during the Second World War. After completing his degree at the University of Minnesota, he earned his masters and doctorate degrees from Columbia University. Hynes taught at Swarthmore College from 1949 until 1968, Northwestern University from 1968 until 1976, and Princeton University from 1976 until his retirement as Woodrow Wilson professor of literature emeritus in 1990.
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June 18, 2023
Dry, stuffy, and exactly what I was looking for to sharpen my understanding of George Orwell’s classic text. This crusty old series does a good job of tying together certain academic articles that respond to and complicate each other even if there is a little too much summary in some of the introductory pieces. (Come on, if you’ve made it far enough to pick up a copy of this book, then you know the layout of 1984.)
One of the main focal points is Orwell’s famous statement that “all art is propaganda” and the tension that exists between politics and aesthetics. How do you imbue a work with a message without it becoming a diatribe? How do you justify spending time on what’s merely beautiful when the world appears to be burning around you? The standard critical refrain has been that Orwell’s strength was always in his polemics and not in his narrative artistry. But some of the contributors dispute that notion, positing that, particularly with 1984, Orwell found he must come at the writing in a way that fit his immediate purposes and eschew novelistic conventions lest his last work become a failure like his earlier novels.
Another point of contention is the reason for Orwell’s especially bleak vision of the future. The most simplistic answer is that this was the vision of a man who knew he was dying. The more dressed-up version is that he had become cynical after Stalin’s form of communism turned into an irrational mess and, therefore, could only imagine a blistering future where power works toward its own perpetuation without any veneer of benevolence.
However, considering Orwell attributed much more goodwill and intelligence to the common man than did a satirist like Jonathan Swift, it makes sense that the devastating world of 1984 was meant to activate citizens when they began losing some of the tenuous freedoms they had. As George Kateb clarifies, “By predicting the future it may help to defeat its predictions; for that tactic to work, exaggeration is probably necessary. An image of pure evil must be presented, in order to sicken the decent man and make him more passionate in his attachment to the kinds of political good he still may be fortunate enough to enjoy.” And so one of the worst dystopian nightmares was meant to shock people into producing a better outcome.
One of the main focal points is Orwell’s famous statement that “all art is propaganda” and the tension that exists between politics and aesthetics. How do you imbue a work with a message without it becoming a diatribe? How do you justify spending time on what’s merely beautiful when the world appears to be burning around you? The standard critical refrain has been that Orwell’s strength was always in his polemics and not in his narrative artistry. But some of the contributors dispute that notion, positing that, particularly with 1984, Orwell found he must come at the writing in a way that fit his immediate purposes and eschew novelistic conventions lest his last work become a failure like his earlier novels.
Another point of contention is the reason for Orwell’s especially bleak vision of the future. The most simplistic answer is that this was the vision of a man who knew he was dying. The more dressed-up version is that he had become cynical after Stalin’s form of communism turned into an irrational mess and, therefore, could only imagine a blistering future where power works toward its own perpetuation without any veneer of benevolence.
However, considering Orwell attributed much more goodwill and intelligence to the common man than did a satirist like Jonathan Swift, it makes sense that the devastating world of 1984 was meant to activate citizens when they began losing some of the tenuous freedoms they had. As George Kateb clarifies, “By predicting the future it may help to defeat its predictions; for that tactic to work, exaggeration is probably necessary. An image of pure evil must be presented, in order to sicken the decent man and make him more passionate in his attachment to the kinds of political good he still may be fortunate enough to enjoy.” And so one of the worst dystopian nightmares was meant to shock people into producing a better outcome.
Displaying 1 of 1 review