From the Bookshelf of On Paths Unknown…

For sometimes you may be fortunate enough to come across something that will not just inspire and hold sway for only a sheer flimsy swing of the pendulum, until the curtain is swept aside by a debonair ally. For Nineteen Eighty Four had such an elemental influence on me that I have not been able to formulate anything beyond a few garbled grunts of appreciation, even after years since I first picked this up. But armed with determination and a whole day ahead of me, paired with the bright prospect

For sometimes you may be fortunate enough to come across something that will not just inspire and hold sway for only a sheer flimsy swing of the pendulum, until the curtain is swept aside by a debonair ally. For Nineteen Eighty Four had such an elemental influence on me that I have not been able to formulate anything beyond a few garbled grunts of appreciation, even after years since I first picked this up. But armed with determination and a whole day ahead of me, paired with the bright prospect of endless cups of coffee from the spanking new coffee machine now gracing my kitchen, I urge my fingers to magically churn out something that might be to a crude degree intelligible of my deep and ardent admiration of Orwell and this masterpiece.

Nineteen Eighty Four primarily tells the story of one man Winston Smith, a common two legged product, and launches him headlong into a totalitarian society that is governed by an almost mystical invisible force. Invisible because it is everywhere. From the oppressive posters of Big Brother staring down from every corner and turn of the alley, to the telescreens that cannot be switched off and is used perhaps as further instrument to spy on the residents. This world is a far cry from the known. It is divided into superpowers and Airstrip One is what used to be England, now forms the mainland of Oceania and is where the story takes place.

The elite dictatorial oppressors of Oceania exercise an almost god like sway over the country, wherein they control not just the physical instruments of the society but also the psychological. So much so that thought is governed and any deviation from that prescribed by The Party is subject to execution. Minute inflexions in facial expressions and demeanor are monitored via the aforementioned telescreens, a hole in the wall, children who are but soldiers and everybody else in between and any suspicion of diversion from The Party dictated truths are sure to find themselves erased off existence. The oppression is complete. In 1984 power is absolute and total and in the hands of a few. It is a world where fear, isolation and morbidity need not veer their tentacles through shadows, but stare blankly through each solid moment of wakefulness, and for that matter even in sleep.

For those familiar with the story it is easy to derive examples of historical references to the story, to the Stalinist era, and as a warning against the dangers of a totalitarian communism but my interest lies in the stark limelight that the evolution of the social structure is thrown into. Like Animal Farm I am more interested in what this novel pertains of the future and perhaps even the present and certainly of the condition that is humanity that seldom bends with time. Most Dystopian fiction rely on the inevitable turn of the Giant wheel that brings whatever was and dresses it in the relevant garb of the century. Arguments have been made whether we are currently even living in Orwell’s 1984. Let’s face it, there is no absolute truth. Historical negation has never been a new term and history is but a few astute observations that had to be written down to be ‘accepted.’ Often, it is from the dictates of power that negation replaces with the next formidable truth. In 1984, Orwell uses the example of a transformative language –Newspeak that replaces the any advent of true expression that inevitable launches a society with a mental handicap. Such power is fluid and is strong, thus capable of replacing some truths with different truths, and the capacity to differentiate has been snatched long ago. To bestow on the propaganda, the media is vital to the many pronged attack. The loss of individualism purported from being told what to think, how to be, who to marry, how to live (any of that sound familiar?) becomes so apparent when Winston advents on the dangerous idea to put in ink the shadow of the thoughts that have been swirling around this head for some time, but when he starts about realizing this scheme, the pen feels unnatural to hold, the scribbles are childish and the act drives him into such a state of shock that the thoughts that he so sought to write of desperately and at such great risk to his life, almost escapes him.

Nothing is perhaps as fearsome as the loss of freedom. Many a war has been to preserve that vital necessity. But what of the freedom of thought? What remains, when that power is snatched from us.