कोई खेत बचेगा नहीं अब!
खेत बन जाने का मौका है!
1984 George Orwell - Full Movie - Hollywood best Greatest blockbuster movie Film
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZBnUt6rZ0
नजारा जार्ज आरवेल का 1984!
नजारा वही एनीमल फार्म!
1984 by George Orwell FULL Audiobook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auwRj4Yru-E
शुद्धता का सौंदर्यशास्त्र अस्पृश्यता और रंगभेद का व्याकरण है।शुद्ध नहीं है या स्तरीय नही है ,फतवा देकर निनाब्वे फीसद की अभिव्यक्ति के गर्भपात का अचूक यह रामवाण बहिस्कार और अस्पृश्यता की मनुस्मृति है।
भाषाई अशुद्धता हम डंके की चोट पर जी रहे हैं हैं क्योंकि चीखों की कोई भाषा होती नहीं है।
ब्राह्मण नहीं हूं लेकिन चाणक्य का अडिग अटल छात्र हूं।अछूत अश्वेत विरासत भी है खून की और शिक्षा दीक्षा भी ब्रह्मराक्षस की यही है कि अपने निजी दुश्मन को भले माफ कर दो,भूल जाओ उसका किया धरा,जिससे तुम्हारा बेड़ा गर्क हुआ हो,लेकिन जनता के दुश्मनों और देश दुनिया के दुश्मनों,इंसानियत और कायनात के दुश्मनों को शिकस्त दिये बिना चैन से बैठना नहीं है।
मर भी जाउंगा तो खाक में मिलकर भी तूफां बनकर लौट आउंगा क्योंकि हम यह दुनिया बेहतर बनाये बिना चोटी न हुई तो क्या,बिन चोटी कोई चोटी फतह किये बिना चैन से हरगिज नहीं बैठेंगे और न कभी बूढ़ा होंगे।
मुझे नफरत है उन सफेदपोश महंतों से जो जलवायु और मौसम और पर्यावरण जिंतन मनन मंथन के वैश्विक मंचों में आत्मरति से हलकान है और लिटरेटर कल्चर फेस्टिवल में सामाजिक समरसता पेलने से बाज नहीं आते और हमें नफरत है उनसे भी जो विचारधारा तो पेलते हैं खूब लेकिन बाजार के दल्ला हैं करोड़पति अरबपति। जिनने देश के सारे संसाधन नीलाम कर दिये और धर्म कर्म संस्कृति की शुद्धता से अपनी अपनी बिस्तर गर्म करने में लगे हुए है पुंसक नपुंसक दोनो किस्म के लोग लुगाई।नफरत जिनका कारोबार।फासिज्म जिनका राजकाज।खून खराबा दहशतगर्दी सियासत।इंसानियत को इन दरिंदों से मुझे सख्त नफरत है।
Animal Farm-George Orwell (Full Length Animated Movie 1954)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcKChE9VqMk
#हमीं लाल हमीं फिर नील#Honesty Exposed#As long as caste intact,no equality! NO Justice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sci3i_iUEBo
George Orwell: A Life in Pictures Full
Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuVYvkdTYWc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qe4uL8pJuE
Noam Chomsky on George Orwell, the Suppression of Ideas and the Myth of American Exceptionalism
पलाश विश्वास
1984 George Orwell Movie Trailer (1984) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4rBDUJTnNU
25/03/2008 - MisterMaxHeadroom द्वारा अपलोड किया गया
New trailer for 1984(1984) starring John Hurt. Edited by Lectorsmith.
1984 - The Literature Network
www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
1984 by George Orwell. Searchable etext. Discuss with other readers.
कोई खेत बचेगा नहीं अब।
खेत बन जाने का मौका है।
शुद्धता का सौंदर्यशास्त्र अस्पृस्य़ता और रंगबेद का व्याकरण है।शुद्ध नहीं है या स्तरीय नही है ,फतवा देकर निनाब्वे फीसद की अभिव्यक्ति के गर्भपात का अचूक यह रामवाण बहिस्कार और अस्पृश्यता की मनुस्मृति है।इसलिए भाषाई अशुद्धता हम डंके की चोट पर जी रहे हैं हैं क्योंकि चीखों की कोई भाषा होती नहीं है।
डीएसबी के हमारे प्यारे दोस्त फिल्मकार राजीवकुमार कोलकाता आये नई दिल्ली से अपने पुराने ठिकाने पर।मैं बाद में जाने की सोच रहा था लेकिन घुटने और कमर का दर्द पेन किलर से छुडा रही सविता ने फतवा दे दिया कि मंगलवार को छुट्टी है और राजीव मीन से मिलना जरुर है।डेढ़ साल बाद पट्ठा कोलकाता आया है।
फिर हम घर से निकले।निकलने से पहले केसरी कांड हो गया।वह लिखकर दागकर निकलने में देरी हो गयी।
बाय पास होकर जाते हुए हमने देखा सुरसामुखी कोलकाता के दांतों में फंसे हजारों एकड़ जमीन पर फसलें अब भी लहलहा रही है।
राजीव का फ्लैट जिस सिंहीबाड़ी में है,उसके और कालिकापुर के बीच सैकड़ों एकड़ खेत पर फसले हैं।खेत पर काम कर रहे किसान भी हैं।झीलें भी है जहां तहां और हरियाली भी बची हुई है।
पिछले दिनों हम टुसु से यही कह रहे थे कि सियासत यामजहब की मत सोचो,सोचो,सिर्फ यह सोचो की कायनात की रहमतें बरकतें और नियामतें सही सलामत रहें।
पिछले दिनों हम टुसु से यही कह रहे थे कि नदियां,झीलें,पहाड़ और समुंदर, जल जंगल जमीन पेड़ पौधे प्राणीजगत और इंद्रधनुष के तमामो रंग सहीसलामत रहे।
पिछले दिनों हम टुसु से यही कह रहे थे कि किस रंग का राजकाज है,कितनी रंगीन है सियासत,मत सोचो।
हम नहीं जानते कि हमारी विरासत बचेगी कि नहीं।लेकिन हमारे कार्यभार उत्तराधिकार के हवाले हैं।
यह मेरे पिता का सबक है जो मैं अपने बेटे को लौटा रहा था।
मेरे पिता हमारे लिए इस सबक के सिवाय कुछ भी नहीं छोड़ गये।
उनकी बनायी झोपड़ियां भी बसंतीपुर में अब नहीं हैं।
जमीन बची है या नहीं,हमने भाइयों से पूछा नहीं है।
बहरहाल उनकी कोई समस्या नहीं है,यह मेरे लिए सबसे बड़ी खुशी है।बाकी पिता के बाद उनकी झोपड़ियों के चले जाने के बाद बसंतीुर में वापसी के रास्ते बंद हैं।
अब सारा जहां अपना है।
कोई खेत बचेगा नहीं अब।
खेत बन जाने का मौका है।
कोलकाता को किसान की आंख से देखा तो देखा कि तमाम खेत लहूलुहान है और उनका दम टूटने ही वाला है जैसे हिमालय जब जब जख्मी और लहुलूहान होता है तो कोई जख्म हमारे दिलोदिमाग और वजूद में भी भयानक पीड़ा के साथ गंगोत्री से निकलती गंगा की तरह रिसती रहती है।
गोमुख से लेकर गंगासागर तक उन्ही जख्मों के साथ साथ मैं बह चला आया और नौबत अब सागरसमाधि की है क्योंकि सुंदरवन भी मर रहा है।
मर रहा है मैनग्रोव फारेस्ट।
चेन्नई और मदुरै और नागपुर में भी हमने दम तोड़ते खेत खलिहान देखे हैं। मेरठ में छह साल के लिए था तो राजधानी दिल्ली के सुरसामुख में समूचे पश्चिम उत्तर के सबसे बेहतरीन खेतों का समा जाते हुए देखता रहा।
बरेली को भी तेजी से बढ़ते देखा और धनबाद,रांची और जमशेदपुर में आदिवासियों को जमीन से बेदखल होते देखा।
अपने गृह जनपद का एक एक इंच जमीन बेदखल होते हुए और अपने गांव को सीमेंट के जंगल की लपलपाती जीभ से सिरफ दो इंच के दरम्यान पर ठहरे हुए बचे हुए देखते रहने की आजीवन अभिज्ञता है।
मेरे हिमालय की सुहावनी घाटियों के वे सीढ़ीदार खेत जहां सेस्वर्ग की सीढ़ियां निकलती हैं,डूब में शामिल हैं टिहरी की तरह या फिर एकादिकार पूंजी और पीपीपी माडल चूंते हुए विकास के हवाले हैं।
देश के हर आदिवासी इलाका में हमने यह नजारा देखा है।
हमने देखा है चंद्रपुर,दांतेवाड़ा और जगदलपुर,बस्तर और हमने देखा है रायपुर और नये रायपुर के दरम्यान सैकड़ों गांवों को जलती हुई मोमबत्तियों की तरह पिघलते हुए।
हमने नवी मुंबई और पनवेल का शहरी करण देखा है और जैतापुर,कुड़नकुलम, नरौरा,कोटो,कलपक्कम की रेडियएक्टिव बस्तियों में तब्दील परमाणु उर्जा में निष्मात खेत खलिहान और गांव भी देखे हैं।
हमने मरुस्थल और रण में भी खिलखिलात हुए बाजार देखे हैं।
हमने गुजरात नरसंहार की नींव पर विकास देखा है तो गैसत्रासदी के बाद बीमार पंगु भोपाल भी देखा है और अयोध्या और अमृतसर हमारी हरित क्रांति है तो फसल है मंडल कंमंडल गृहयुद्ध, निजीकरण,उदारीकरण,ग्लोबीकरण,एफडीआई और लहलहाती सेनसेक्स और विदेशी निवेशकों की आस्था और अबाध पूंजी।
मुझे नफरत है उन सफेदपोश महंतों से जो जलवायु और मौसम और पर्यावरण जिंतन मनन मंथन के वैश्विक मंचों में आत्मरति से हलकान है और लिटरेटर कल्चर फेस्टिवल में सामाजिक समरसता पेलने से बाज नहीं आते और हमें नफरत है उनसे भी जो विचारधारा तो पेलते हैं खूब लेकिन बाजार के दल्ला हैं करोड़पति अरबपति।
जिनने देश के सारे संसाधन नीलाम कर दिये और धर्म कर्म संस्कृति की शुद्धता से अपनी अपनी बिस्तर गर्म करने में लगे हुए हैं पुंसक नपुंसक दोनों किस्म के लोग लुगाई।
नफरत जिनका कारोबार।
फासिज्म जिनका राजकाज।
खून खराबा दहशतगर्दी सियासत।
इंसानियत के इन दरिंदों से मुझे सख्त नफरत है।
मजहब के इन शातिर दुश्मनों से हमें सख्त नफरत है।
अब सारा जहां अपना है।
कोई खेत बचेगा नहीं अब।
खेत बन जाने का मौका है।
किसानों का दिल्ली हिलेला आंदोलन भी लगातार देखा रहा।पर दिल्ली ने अगल बगल के तमाम यूपी हरियाणा के जिले निगल लिये और हजम कर लिये और दिल्ली की सेहत में अब हरियाली का नामोनिशां तक नहीं है।
न लहू कहीं है और न कातिलों के सुराग कहीं हैं।
इस डिजिटल रोबोटिक जादुई देश में अब न किसानों के लिए, नखेतिहर मजदूरों के लिए,न छोटे मंझोले कारोबारियों के लिए,न देशी काम उद्योग धंधे के लिए कोई जगह है।
जाने अनजाने हमारे जनादेश ने जो करतब ढाया है 1991 से, उसका नतीजा है,चूंता हुआ विकास और जार्ज आरवेल का 1984.
यानी चाहे बहती रहे खून की नदियां,चीखने की का कहे,उफ तक करने की कराहने या क्वाब देखने या सोचने की इजाजत भी नहीं है।
बाकी रियेलिटी शो है।संसदीय तमाशा है या दिलवाले या दंगल का प्रोमो है।सुविधा के मुताबिक सनी लिओन की सहिष्णुता है और फिर फिल्म के प्रमोमोशन के वक्त तक सुर्खियों में असहिष्णुता और ऐन रिलीज से पहले सहिष्णुता की बरखा बहार और छप्परफाड़ बाक्स आफिस कारोबार है।
यही मजहबी सियासत है या सियासती मजहब है।
बांग्ला में इस पर सिलसिलेवार सुबह ही लिखा है बेधड़क विजुअल के साथ।मेरे ब्लागों पर देख लें।
अब सारा जहां अपना है।
कोई खेत बचेगा नहीं अब।
खेत बन जाने का मौका है।
मित्रता भी बेहद काम की चीज है।उसकी अभिव्यक्ति अलग अलग होती है।मसलन हमारे इलाहाबादी मित्र शैलेंद्र से मित्रता 1979 से है।हम नैनीताल से उतरकर बरेली जंक्शन से सहारनपुर पैसेंजर पकड़कर इलाहाबाद रवाना हुए पीएचडी करने के मकसद से।
मैडम मधुलिका दीक्षित ने कहा था कि नौकरी सभी करते हैं,आप डिफरंट करो और यह कहा था कि डा.मानस मकुल दास की गाइडेंस में पोयट्री पर रिसर्च करना।
पैसे थे नहीं तो राह खर्च शेखर पाठक से ले लिया।नैनीताल में लिखकर ही लिख पढ़ रहे थे।भूल गये कि नैनीताल समाचार और पहाड़ का सहारा है।
सहारनपुर पैसेंजर में ही पुलिसवालों ने दाढ़ी और फटीचर बू मारती पहाड़ियत में माल कौड़ी खंगालने की कोशिश में थे।गनीमत है कि किताबों के सिवाय़ माल कौड़ी कुछ था ही नहीं।
किताबें हमारे साथ रहती रही हैं।जिन्हें मैं नहीं छोड़ता।शादी के बाद सविता ने जो गृहस्थी का सामान जोड़ना शुरु किया,वह सिलसिला अब भी जारी है।रोजाना कुछ न कुछ खरीदती रहती है और हम जानते हैं कि चले जाना है।
शादी से पहले हम झोला उठाकर शहर गांव छोजड़कर कभी भी कहीं भी जाने की हालत में थे।शादी के बाद रांची छोड़ना पड़ा तो छात्र जीवन की बहुत सारी हमसफर किताबें वहीं छोड़नी पड़ी।
अब सारा जहां अपना है।
कोई खेत बचेगा नहीं अब।
खेत बन जाने का मौका है।
इस घर में अब किताबों के अलावा कुछ है नहीं।
इन किताबों का एक बड़ा हिस्सा घर भर जाने की वजह से कबाडी़ के हवाले करना पड़ा जिसमें हमारी तमाम रचनाओं की पांडुलिपियों के साथ साथ अमेरिका से सावधान छपी पत्रिकाएं,अखबार और दूसरी प्रकाशित रचनाएं हैं।
अब सारा जहां अपना है।
कोई खेत बचेगा नहीं अब।
खेत बन जाने का मौका है।
प्रयाग स्टेशन पहुंचकर बटरोही के कहे मुताबिक शैलेश मटियानी के उस सीढ़ी वाले कमरे में ठहरने के लिए सुबह तड़के मुंह उठाये उनके घर पहुंच गये इस दम पर कि हम भी पहाड़ी है,बाकी वे हमें जाने सही न जाने।
शैलेश जी ने पहचान तो लिया लेकिन वह सीढ़ी वाला घर उनके भांजे के हवाले था।
बहरहाल नाश्ता करवाने के बाद मटियानी जी ने मुझे सीधे डा. ऱघुवंश के पास भेज दिया ताकि वे यूनिवर्सिटी में मेरे दाखिले में मदद करें।
रघुवंश जी ने कहा कि तुम तो हिंदी में लिखते हो तो अंग्रेजी में क्यों सोद करना हो तो हिंदी में करो।
वे अपने क्लास में मुझे टांगकर ले गये।वहीं शैलेंद्र बाबू कक्षा में मिले और उनसे फटाक से दोस्ती हो गयी।
बाद में मैं ममफोर्ड गंज में रहने लगा और हमारे साथियों में रामराज उर्फ उदित राज भी हुआ करते थे।
ममफोर्ड गंज में डा.दास और उनकी पत्नी बेहद लोकप्रिय लोग थे औऱ उनके घर के पाटक पर बड़ेवहरफों में लिखा होता था,जोरु का गुलाम।वहीं से मैं ट्यूशन करने पैदल चौक जाता था।
चूंकि शैलेश जी के पास रहने की जगह नहीं थी तो इलाहाबाद के दूसरे पहाड़ी दाज्यू शेखर जोशी के 100,लूकर गंज में इजा के परिवार में शामिल हो गया।
वहीं,लूकरंज में वीरेनदा,मंगलेश डबराल और नीलाभ का बसेरा था।
लूकरगंज और ममफोर्डगंज से अल्हापुर में शैलेंद्र का घर बहुत दूर पड़ता था तो क्या हमने पैदल पैदल हिमालय की तमाम चोटियों और घाटियों को मापा है और हमें तब मैदान में कोई दूरी मापने लायक भी नहीं लग रही थी।
अब सारा जहां अपना है।
कोई खेत बचेगा नहीं अब।
खेत बन जाने का मौका है।
हम जब नैनीताल से निकल रहे थे तो भारी वर्षा हो रही थी और ज्योलीकोट से ऊपर हम भूस्खलन में फंस गये रहे घंटों जबकि बारिश तम ही नहीं रही थी।
आगे भी भूस्खलन और पीछे भी भूस्खलन।
इसी तरह जब कोलकाता आये अक्तूबर 1991 में,हम ट्रेन में ही थे कि गढ़वाल में भूकंप ने कहर बरपा दिया।
भूस्खलन और भूकंप में भी हम जीने मरने के आदी रहे हैं तो भूख प्यास हमारे सरदर्द का सबब नहीं रहा है।
नैनीताल में हमारी टीम यूं किये मजनुओं की टीम रही है।
एक ही प्याली की चाय सुड़कने वाले,एक ही लिहाफ में सर्द रात से निपटने वाले लोग और हमारे गैंग लीडर थे गिरदा।
जहां हो संकट,हमारा काम था कि झोली उठाओ और निकल पड़ो वहींच।गिरदा वही करते रहे तजिंदगी।
हम लेकिन फिर वैसी जिंदगी जी नहीं सकें।
अब सारा जहां अपना है।
कोई खेत बचेगा नहीं अब।
खेत बन जाने का मौका है।
बाबू शैलेंद्र इलाहाबाद में हमारे पैदल साथी थे।वे इलाहाबाद में डा.रघुवंश की कक्षा में मिले पहले दोस्त भी थे और पिछले साल वे रिटायर करने वाले थे तो बूढ़ापे में यह दोस्ती बिखरने के अंदेशे से हम बेचैन हुए रहे।
बाबू शैलेंद्र कोलकाता में हमारे संपादक हैं सोलह साल से और हम मजे में अपना काम कर रहे हैं।उनकी कुर्सी पर बने रहने से हमें कभी कोई तकलीफ हुई नहीं।गनीमत है कि ओम थानवी ने हमारी गुहार मानते हुए उनका एक्सटेंशन कर दिया।
अबकी दफा जब हम रिटायर होने ही वाले हैं,ओम थानवी नहीं,दिल्ली में मुकेश भारद्वाज हमारे संपादक हैं।
हम थानवी से मिलते थे नहीं। मुकेश जी कोलकाता आये भी नहीं हैं और न उनसे हमारा कोई संवाद है।
वे खबरों का अखबार बना रहे हैं और हम कोलकाता में पेज बना रहे हैं।यह सिलसिला मई में ही खत्म होना है।
मेरी विदाई की ढंटी बजने लगी हैं और शैलेंद्र रोज हमें तकाजा दे रहे हैं कि छुट्टियां बर्बाद हो रही हैं,ले क्यों नहीं लते हैं।
कल भी उनने ऐसा कहा तो आज घर बैठ गया हूं।
वैसे बिना किसी खास मौके के मैं छुट्टियां नहीं लेता।कहीं दौड़ने की नौबत आती है तो कैजुअल लेता हूं।
कहीं तबीयत खराब हो ही गयी तो एक दो दिन का शिक लिव।
पीएल तो देशाटन पर खर्च होता है।इस साल कहीं गया नहीं हूं।
सचमुच छुट्टियां बेकार जा रहीं हैं।
पिछले साल सब एडीटर होकर भी हम शैलेंद्र के एक्सटेंशन के लिए ओम थानवी से कह रहे थे।इस साल शैलेंद्र खुद एक्सटेंशन पर हैं और दिल्ली के संपादक से उनका भी कोई संवाद हुआ हो तो हम नहीं जानते।
शैलेंद्र हमारे लिए कुछ भी करने की हालत में नहीं हैं।
तो न्यूनतम लाभ मैं उठा लूं क्योंकि सेवा जारी रहने की कोई उम्मीद है नहीं, हमारे सबसे पुराने मित्र का सरदर्द यही है।
अफसोस यह है कि मुझे तो काम करने में ही मजा आता है और काम करते रहने से ही मेरी सेहत बनती है,बिगड़ती नहीं और काम करते रहने के हालात में बूढ़ा होकर मरने का मेरा कोई इरादा भी नहीं है।1973 से ही लिखना पढ़ना हमारी जिंदगी है और बाकी जनता से निरंतर संवाद की हमारी आदत है।
हमारी कोई हैसियत नहीं बनी और न हम कभी कुर्सी में हुए तो हमारी वह अग्निपरीक्षा भी नहीं हुई है कि अगर हम हैसियत में होते या अगर हम कुर्सी में होते तो हम आदमी बने रहते या कुर्सी में कुर्सी बन जाते।हम बाजार के हो जाते या सत्ता दल के होते न होते, बाजार में हमारे भी घोड़े दौड़ते या नहीं,हमें इस परीक्षा में बैठना नहीं पड़ा वरना ना जाने कितना हम बदले बदले से नजर आते।
अब सारा जहां अपना है।
कोई खेत बचेगा नहीं अब।
खेत बन जाने का मौका है।
नैनीताल से मैं जो उतरा सिर्फ मेरी दाढ़ी गायब है,बाकी मेरा वजूद फिर वही पहाड़ी है जो तरह तरह की जुबान में पढ़ता लिखता बोलता है,बाकी फिर वहीं दिलोदिमाग है।
पहाड़ में जो मेरे दोस्त हैं,जो मर गये,वे तो गये,बाकी किसी को मेरी दोस्ती से निजात नहीं मिली है।
मेरी यह चंडाल आदत भी बहुत बुरी है कि दोस्त जो हुआ,उसे दोस्ती से रिहा किसी भी कीमत पर मत करो।
यह मेरे पिता का अटल आदेश है।
मैंने किसी को दोस्ती से कभी बर्खास्त किया नहीं है और न किसी को कभी दोस्ती तोड़ने का मौका दिया है।
ब्राह्मण नहीं हूं लेकिन चाणक्य का अडिग अटल छात्र हूं।
अछूत अश्वेत विरासत भी है खून की और शिक्षा दीक्षा भी ब्रह्मराक्षस की यही है कि अपने निजी दुश्मन को भले माफ कर दो, भूल जाओ उसका किया धरा,जिससे तुम्हारा बेड़ा गर्क हुआ हो, जनता के दुश्मनों औरदेश दुनिया के दुश्मनों,इंसानियत और कायनात के दुश्मनों को शिकस्त दिये बिना चैन से बैठना नहीं है।
मर भी जाउंगा तो खाक में मिलकर भी तूफां बनकर लौट आउंगा क्योंकि हम यह दुनिया बेहतर बनाये बिना चोटी न हुई तो क्या,बिन चोटी कोई चोटी फतह किये बिना चैन से हरगिज नहीं बैठेंगे और न कभी बूढ़ा होंगे।
1980 से नौकरी में हूं और लगातार काम करते रहने की आदत है।अब चंद महीने के लिए अपनी आदत बिगाड़ने का कोई इरादा नहीं है।
Science Fiction in India
जार्ज आर्वेल और उनकी साहित्यिक विरासत
जार्ज ओर्वेल की मशहूर कृति ,१९८४ शायद आप मे से किसी ने जरूर पढी होगी . अगर ना भी पढी हो तो कोईबातनही आज मैं आपको इस महान ब्रितानी उपन्यासकार के जीवन और कृतित्व के बारे मे बताने जा रहा हूँजिसनेसाहित्य के वैश्विक पटल पर कभी तहलका मचा दिया था , खासतौर पर विज्ञान कथा साहित्य दुनियां मे.
जार्ज आर्वेल और उनकी
साहित्यिक विरासत
जार्ज आर्वेल (1903-1950) एक वह छद्म नाम्नी शfख्सयत़ हैं, जिन्होंने अपनी मात्र दो औपन्यासिक कृतियों के जरिये विज्ञान कथाकारों के बीच `बिग ब्रदर´ का दर्जा हासिल कर लिया। `एनिमल फार्म´ और `1984´ उपन्यासों के रचयिता इरिक आर्थर ब्लेयर ने अपनी इन दोनों कृतियों के सहारे `जार्ज आर्वेल´ के छदम् नाम से रातो रात शोहरत के शिखर को छू लिया।
जीवन की झलकिया¡ :
भारत में ही 1903 में जन्में ब्लयेर इंडियन सिविल सेवा में कार्यरत एक अंग्रेज की सन्तान थे और खुद भी ब्रितानी हुकूमत के एक लम्बे अरसे तक मुलाजिम रहे। वे ब्रितानी हुकूमत के अधीन बर्मा और इटन शहर में कार्यरत रहे। उनकी माली हालत सरकारी सेवा के दौरान अच्छी नहीं रही। उन्होंने एक रचनाकार-लेखक के रुप में भाग्य आजमाना चाहा और संयोग से बात बन गई। अपनी खराब माली हालत के चलते वे अपने सेवाकाल में कभी भी भद्र/अभिजात्य अंग्रेज वर्ग की बराबरी में नहीं आ सके, जबकि ऐसे जीवन को वे तरस रहे थे। अभिजात्य अंग्रेजों के बीच अपनी हालत को लेकर वे `हीनता ग्रfन्थ´ के शिकार भी हो गये थे और उनके (उच्च अंग्रेज वर्ग के) प्रति उनमें एक तरह का विद्रोह पनप रहा था। अमेरिका में तो `हिप्पी´ संस्कृति की शुरुआत 1960 के दशक में हुई थी, किन्तु इस ब्रितानी रचनाकार ने 1920 के दशक से ही हिfप्पयों जैसा रहन सहन और वेष भूषा अपना ली थी। उन्हें लन्दन और पेरिस की झोपड़ पटि्टयों में रहने का चस्का लगा जहा¡ की मानवेतर स्थितियों से उन्हें अपनी पुस्तकों की पृष्ठभूमि सामग्री मिलती गयी। वे मूलत: समाजवादी विचार धारा के पोषक थे किन्तु स्पेनी साम्यवादियों, अराजक विचारकों के आगे उन्हें झुकना पड़ा। स्पेन के संगठित साम्यवादियों से जान का खतरा भा¡पते हुए उन्होंने आखिरकार स्पेन को अलविदा कह दिया। साम्यवादियों के कथित दु:श्चक्रों से ऊब कर उन्होंने उनके विरुद्ध एक आजीवन रचनात्मक विद्रोह छेड़ा, जिसकी सुखद परिणति विज्ञान कथा साहित्य के ेमशहूर धरोहरों में हुई- `एनिमल फार्म´ और `1884´ ! अपनी इन दोनों कालजयी कृतियों के माध्यम से ब्लेयर ने शब्दों के बलबूते साम्यवादियों से वह लड़ाई जीतनी चाही, जिसे दरअसल वे व्यवहार में हार चुके थे। यहा¡ तक कि उनकी अपने ब्रितानी लेबर पार्टी से भी नहीं पटी और अपने खास समाजवादी विचारों के कारण उन्हें सेना में भरती से मना कर दिया गया।
एनिमल फार्म :
कम्युनिस्टों के प्रति उनके मन में विद्रोह की चिन्गारी सुलगती रही जो स्टालिन के साम्यवाद के खिलाफ शोला बनकर भड़क उठी। नतीजतन, उस समय जबकि ब्रितानी सेना रुसी सेना के सहयोग से नाजियों के विरुद्ध जूझ रही थी आर्वेल ने `एनिमल फार्म´ की रचना की जो रुसी क्रान्ति पर एक जोरदार व्यंग था। इस उपन्यास का एक जुमला बहुत प्रसिद्ध हुआ, ``आल एनिमल्स आर इक्वल, बट सम एनिमल्स आर मोर इक्वल दैन अदर्स´´। उपन्यास में एक दरबे में रहने वाले पशुओं का अपने मानव स्वामियों के विरुद्ध किये गये विद्रोह का कटाक्षपूर्ण रुपक चित्रित हुआ है।
ब्लेयर ने `एनिमल फार्म´ की रचना 1944 में पूरी कर ली थी। किन्तु ब्रिटेन पर सोवियत रुस के प्रभाव के चलते उन्हें इसका प्रकाशक ढूढ़ने में काफी मशक्कत करनी पड़ी। बहरहाल द्वितीय, विश्वयुद्ध के खत्म होते ही `एनिमल फार्म´ का प्रकाशन हो गया और इस उपन्यास ने ब्लेयर के लेखकीय कैरियर को सहसा ही उछाल दिया। इस उपन्यास से अर्जित धन और सम्मान ने उन्हें अपनी अगली विश्व विश्रुत कृति, `1984´ के लिए प्रेरित किया।
बहुचर्चित कृति, ``उन्नीस सौ चौरासी´´ :
`1984´ का प्रकाशन 1949 में हुआ, जिसमें स्टालिन जैसे तानाशाह के अधीन शासित 1930 के दौर के रुसी साम्राज्य के विश्वव्यापी फैलाव की आशंकाये व्यक्त हुई थीं। यह साम्यवादी और विरोधी राजनीतिक विचारों के द्वन्द्व को अभिव्यक्त करती एक अद्भुत कृति मानी गयी, जिसमें बर्बर नाजियों और यातनागृहों के उल्लेख के साथ ही हतभाग्य यहूदियों की दीन दशा भी वfर्णत हुई है।
यह विशुद्ध रुप से एक स्टालिन (वाद) विरोधी-कृति मानी गयी - यद्यपि कालान्तर में इसे किसी भी तानाशाही प्रवृत्ति या नागरिकों के निजी जीवन में बढ़ते सरकारी हस्तक्षेपों के विरुद्ध आवाज उठाने वाली एक प्रभावशाली कृति के रुप में मान्यता मिलने लगी। `बिग्र ब्रदर इज वाचिंग यू´ (देखो, खूसट दादा/बुड्ढा देख रहा है) इसी उपन्यास से निकला हुआ जुमला है जिसका इस्तेमाल प्राय: निजी जीवन में किसी के हस्तक्षेप-ताक झांक के प्रयासों के समय किया जाता है। यह वाक्य-जुमला निजता में हस्तक्षेप के विरुद्ध कुछ न कर पाने की असहायता को भी इंगित करता है। एक तरह से `1984´ का `बिग ब्रदर´ महज एक राजनीतिक बड़बोलेपन को ही रुपायित नहीं करता बल्कि उपन्यास में वfर्णत विज्ञान, श्रमिक सभी कुछ बड़े ही हैं, जिनसे पार पाना सम्भव नहीं है। क्या उपन्यास में वfर्णत `1984 सरीखा ही होगा वास्तविक 1984? लोगों के मन प्राय: यह प्रश्न कौंधा करता।
1984 आया और चला गया मगर `आर्वेलियन´ `1984´ की दहशतनाक, हौलनाक तस्वीरें पूरी तरह से हकीकत में तब्दील नहीं हुईं। दुनिया¡ ने तब राहत की सा¡स ली थी, जिसमें इन पंक्तियों का लेखक भी था। मगर क्या 1984 की सारी सम्भावनायें एक सिरे से खारिज हो चुकी है? शायद नहीं। हाँ , उपन्यास ने एक विज्ञान कथात्मक साहित्य के रुप में नि:सन्देह अपार ख्याति अर्जित की, यद्यपि ब्लेयर स्वयं गौरव के इन क्षणों के भागीदार नहीं बन सके। वे लन्दन के एक टी0बी0 अस्पताल में इसी रोग से मात्र 47 वर्ष के अल्पायु में ही, जनवरी 1950 में चल बसे यानी `1994´ के प्रकाशन के बस चन्द महीनों के बाद। कहते हैं कि ब्लेयर की अवश्यम्भावी मृत्यु के पूर्वाभास ने भी 1984 के कथानक को और तिक्त बना दिया था।
1984 की कथावस्तु :
आइये `1984´ के विज्ञान कथा (वस्तु) का भी एक जायजा लिया जाय। आर्वेल एक ऐसे `ग्रेट ब्रिटेन´ की कल्पना करते नज़र आते हैं जहा¡ रुसी क्रान्ति सरीखा परिवेश है, जिसमें स्टालिन जैसे एक `बिग ब्रदर´ की तूती बोलती है- वह जो चाहता है, करता है एक निरंकुश, निष्ठुर आक्रान्ता की तरह। उपन्यास के लिखे जाने तक चू¡कि टेलीविजन का आगाज हो चुका था अत: इस कृति में लन्दन सरीखे शहर में जहा¡ सारी व्यवस्थायें फेल हो रही हैं, टी0वी0 बेखाख्ता चालू है स्विच हर पल, हर घण्टा वह आफ´ नहीं हो सकता क्योंकि इसी के सहारे तरह-तरह के सरकारी निर्देश हर क्षण प्रसारित हो रहे हैं। यह एक तरफा टी0वी0 संचार नहीं बल्कि दुतरफा संवाद वाला टी0वी0 है, जिसे देखने वाले भी कहीं से (बिग ब्रदर!) देखे जा रहे होते हैं। हर वक्त नागरिकों के निगरानी की सूझ, `1984´ की विशिष्ट दूर दृष्टि है। भले ही कोई बाथरुम में हो या निद्रा मग्न हो उसकी निगरानी जारी रहती है। अर्थात `होशियार! खूसट बुड्ढा देख रहा है´। हर कोई एक दूसरे को वाच कर रहा है- किसी का किसी पर भरोसा नहीं है, सभी सन्देह के दायरे में हैं।
विज्ञान कथा समीक्षकों की दृष्टि में `1984´ को आश्चर्यजनक रुप से एक `लो ग्रेड´ `साइंस फिक्शन´ का दर्जा मिला है, जबकि मुख्य धारा के साहित्य में इसकी सर्वत्र चर्चा हुई है, समादर हुआ है। आइज़क आसीमोव, जहाँ इसे एक `खराब साइंस फिक्शन´ का नमूना मानते हैं, अनेक अमेरिकी-ब्रितानी साहित्यकार इसे एक आँखें खोलने´ वाली कृति करार देते हैं। कहीं, आसिमोव सरीखा मसीहा विज्ञान कथाकार भी आर्वेल के `बिग ब्रदर´ वाली इमेज से खौफ तो नहीं खा गया- कहीं वे आशंकित तो नहीं हो उठे थे कि हो न हो आर्वेल अपनी एक कृति से ही कहीं `विज्ञान कथाकारों´ के `बिग ब्रदर´ न बन जा¡य। इतिहास साक्षी है वे `बिग ब्रदर बन ही बैठे।
1984 की ओर बढ़ रही है दुनिया¡!
एक कहावत है `जो बीत गई सो बात `गई´ मगर शायद आर्वेल की मशहूर कृति, 1984 के मामले में यह लागू नहीं होती। भले ही, 1984 तक `आर्वेल के दु:स्वप्न पूरी तरह से साकार नहीं हुए थे और जिसे देखने के लिए सौभाग्य से वे जिन्दा भी नही थे( `1984´ की कल्पित दुनिया¡ के वे कतिपय दहशतनाक पहलू जल्दी ही साकार होने लग गये थे जो हमारी अभिव्यक्ति और निजता की आजादी से सीधे जुड़े हुए हैं।
http://indiascifiarvind.blogspot.in/2007/09/blog-post_10.html
Nineteen Eighty-Four
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the George Orwell novel. For the year, see 1984. For other uses, see 1984 (disambiguation).
British first edition cover | |
Author | |
Cover artist | Michael Kennard |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | |
Published | 8 June 1949, London |
Publisher | |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Pages | 267 (1949 US edition) |
0-547-24964-0 (2013 edition) | |
823/.912 22 | |
PR6029.R8 N647 2003 | |
Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by English author George Orwell published in 1949.[1][2] The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the government's invented language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged elite of the Inner Party, that persecutes individualismand independent thinking as "thoughtcrime"[3]
The tyranny is epitomised by Big Brother, the Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality but who may not even exist. The Party "seeks power entirely for its own sake. It is not interested in the good of others; it is interested solely in power."[4] The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, who works for the Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue in Newspeak), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, so that the historical record always supports the party line.[5] The instructions that the workers receive specify the corrections as fixing misquotations and never as what they really are: forgeries and falsifications. A large part of the ministry also actively destroys all documents that have been edited and do not contain the revisions; in this way, no proof exists that the government is lying. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker but secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.
As literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Fouris a classic novel in content, plot and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101,telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, and memory hole, have entered into common use since its publication in 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjectiveOrwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.[5] In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.[6] It was awarded a place on both lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 13 on the editor's list, and 6 on the readers' list.[7] In 2003, the novel was listed at number 8 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.[8]
Contents
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History and title[edit]
A 1947 draft manuscript of the first page of Nineteen Eighty-Four, showing the editorial development.
George Orwell "encapsulate[d] the thesis at the heart of his unforgiving novel" in 1944, the implications of dividing the world up into Zones of influence that had been conjured by the Tehran Conference and three years later he wrote most of it on the Scottish island of Jura, from 1947 to 1948, despite being seriously ill withtuberculosis.[9][10] On 4 December 1948, he sent the final manuscript to the publisher Secker and Warburg and Nineteen Eighty-Four was published on 8 June 1949.[11][12] By 1989, it had been translated into sixty-five languages, more than any other novel in English at the time.[13] The title of the novel, its themes, theNewspeak language and the author's surname are often invoked against control and intrusion by the state, while the adjective Orwellian describes a totalitarian dystopia, characterised by government control and subjugation of the people. Orwell's invented language, Newspeak satirises hypocrisy and evasion by the state: the Ministry of Love (Miniluv) oversees torture and brainwashing, the Ministry of Plenty (Miniplenty) oversees shortage and rationing, the Ministry of Peace (Minipax) oversees war and atrocity and the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue) oversees propaganda and historical revisionism.
The Last Man in Europe was an early title for the novel but in a letter dated 22 October 1948 to his publisher Fredric Warburg, eight months before publication, Orwell wrote about hesitating between The Last Man in Europe and Nineteen Eighty-Four.[14] Warburg suggested changing the main title to a more commercial one.[15]
In the novel 1985 (1978), Anthony Burgess suggests that Orwell, disillusioned by the onset of the Cold War (1945–91), intended to call the book 1948. The introduction to the Penguin Books Modern Classics edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four,reports that Orwell originally set the novel in 1980 but he later shifted the date to 1982, then to 1984. The final title may also be a permutation of 1948, the year of composition.[16] Throughout its publication history, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been either banned or legally challenged, as subversive or ideologically corrupting, like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932),We (1924) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Kallocain (1940) by Karin Boye and Fahrenheit 451 (1951) by Ray Bradbury.[17] Literary scholars consider the Russian dystopian novel We by Zamyatin to have strongly influenced Nineteen Eighty-Four.[18][19]
Copyright status[edit]
The novel is in the public domain in Canada,[20] South Africa,[21] Argentina[22] Australia,[23] and Oman.[24] It will be in the public domain in Brazil in 2021,[25] and in the United States in 2044.[26]
Background[edit]
The banner of the Party in the 1984 film adaptation of the book. Party flags are mentioned, but never described in the actual novel.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in Oceania, one of three inter-continental superstatesthat divided the world after a global war. Most of the plot takes place in London, the "chief city of Airstrip One," the Oceanic province that "had once been called England or Britain."[27][28] Posters of the Party leader, Big Brother, bearing the caption "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU," dominate the city, while the ubiquitous telescreen(transceiving television set) monitors the private and public lives of the populace. The class hierarchy of Oceania has three levels:
(I) the upper-class Inner Party, the elite ruling minority, who make up 2% of the population.
(II) the middle-class Outer Party, who make up 13% of the population.
(III) the lower-class Proles (from proletariat), who make up 85% of the population and represent the uneducated working class.
As the government, the Party controls the population with four ministries:
the Ministry of Peace deals with war and defence.
the Ministry of Plenty deals with economic affairs (rationing and starvation).
the Ministry of Love deals with law and order (torture and brainwashing).
the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda).
The protagonist Winston Smith, a member of the Outer Party, works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth as an editor, revising historical records, to make the past conform to the ever-changing party line and deleting references tounpersons, people who have been "vaporised," i.e. not only killed by the state but denied existence even in history or memory.
The story of Winston Smith begins on 4 April 1984: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen" yet he is uncertain of the true date, given the régime's continual rewriting and manipulation of history.[29] Smith's memories and his reading of the proscribed book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein, reveal that after the Second World War, the United Kingdom fell to civil war and then was absorbed into Oceania, successor state to the United States and British Empire. Simultaneously, the USSR conquered mainland Europe and established the second superstate of Eurasia. The third superstate, Eastasia, comprises the regions of East Asia and South-east Asia. The three superstates wage perpetual war for the remaining unconquered lands of the world, forming and breaking alliances as is convenient. From his childhood (1949–53), Winston remembers the Atomic Wars fought in Europe, western Russia and North America. It is unclear to him what occurred first: the Party's victory in the civil war, the US annexation of the British Empire or the war in which Colchester was bombed. Smith's strengthening memories and the story of his family's dissolution, suggest that the atomic bombings occurred first (the Smiths took refuge in a tube station), followed by civil war featuring "confused street fighting in London itself" and the societal postwar reorganisation, which the Party retrospectively calls "the Revolution."
Plot[edit]
Oceanian society: Big Brother atop, the Party in middle, the Proles at bottom, in 1984.
Winston Smith lives in Airstrip One, the ruins of an England ravaged by war, civil conflict, and revolution. A member of the middle class Outer Party, Winston lives in a one-room London apartment on a diet of black bread, synthetic meals and "Victory"-branded gin. Telescreens in every building, along with hidden microphones and cameras, permit the Thought Police to identify anyone who might endanger the Party's régime. Children are indoctrinated to inform on suspected thought criminals, especially their parents.
Winston works at the Ministry of Truth, or "Minitrue," as an editor responsible for historical revisionism. He rewrites records and alters photographs to conform to the state's ever-changing version of the truth, rendering the deleted people "unpersons"; the original documents are incinerated in a "memory hole." Winston becomes fascinated by the true past and tries to learn more about it. In an alcove beside his flat's telescreen where he believes he cannot be seen, he begins writing a journal criticising the Party and its enigmatic leader, Big Brother, which, if discovered by the Thought Police, warrants certain death.
At the Ministry, Julia, a young woman who maintains the novel-writing machines and whom Winston loathes, surreptitiously hands Winston a note confessing her love. Winston realises she shares his loathing of the Party. Winston and Julia begin a love affair, at first meeting in the country, and eventually in a rented room atop an antiques shop in a proletarian neighbourhood of London where they believe they are safe, as the room has no telescreen.
Winston approaches the Inner Party member O'Brien, whom Winston believes is an agent of the Brotherhood, a secret organisation that intends to destroy the Party. After discussion, O'Brien gives Winston "The Book," The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein, the publicly reviled leader of the Brotherhood. The Book explains the concept of perpetual war, the true meanings of the slogans WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, and how the régime of the Party can be overthrown by means of the political awareness of the proles.
The Thought Police capture Winston and Julia in their rented room and deliver them to the Ministry of Love (Miniluv) for interrogation. Mr. Charrington, the shopkeeper who rented the room to them, reveals himself as an officer of the Thought Police. O'Brien is also a Thought Police agent, part of a sting operation used by the Thought Police to root out suspected thoughtcriminals. O'Brien tortures Winston with electroshock, showing him how, through controlled manipulation of perception, Winston can "cure" himself of his "insanity" – his manifest hatred for the Party. O'Brien explains the Inner Party's motivation: complete and absolute power, mocking Winston's assumption that it was somehow altruistic and "for the greater good." Winston confesses to crimes he did and did not commit, implicating anyone and everyone, including Julia; but O'Brien understands that Winston has not betrayed Julia as he had not stopped loving her. O'Brien sends him to Room 101for the final stage of re-education, the most feared room in the Ministry of Love, which contains each prisoner's worst fear. As a wire cage holding hungry rats is fitted onto his face, Winston shouts "Do it to Julia!" thus betraying her.
After being reintegrated into Oceania society, Winston encounters Julia in a park. She reveals that she was also tortured, and each admits betraying the other. Later, Winston, now an alcoholic, sits by himself in the Chestnut Tree Cafe, troubled by memories which he is convinced are false. A news bulletin announces Oceania's "decisive victory" over Eurasian armies in Africa. A raucous celebration begins outside, and Winston imagines himself a part of it. As he looks up in admiration at a portrait of Big Brother, Winston feels he has at least ended his "stubborn, self-willed exile" from the love of Big Brother – a love Winston happily returns.
Characters[edit]
Characters Constellation
Principal characters[edit]
Winston Smith—the protagonist who is a phlegmatic everyman.
Julia—Winston's lover who is a covert "rebel from the waist downwards" who publicly espouses Party doctrine as a member of the fanatical Junior Anti-Sex League.
Big Brother—the dark-eyed, mustachioed embodiment of the Party who rules Oceania.
O'Brien—a member of the Inner Party who poses as a member of The Brotherhood, the counter-revolutionary resistance, in order to deceive, trap, and capture Winston and Julia.
Emmanuel Goldstein—ostensibly a former leader of the Party, counter-revolutionary leader of the Brotherhood, and author of The Book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, Goldstein is the symbolic Enemy of the State—the national nemesis who ideologically unites the people of Oceania with the Party, especially during the Two Minutes Hate and other fearmongering. While Winston eventually learns that The Book is the product of an Inner Party committee that includes O'Brien, whether Goldstein or his Brotherhood are real or fabrications of Party propaganda is something that neither Winston nor the reader is permitted to know.
Secondary characters[edit]
Aaronson, Jones, and Rutherford—Former members of the Inner Party whom Winston vaguely remembers as among the original leaders of the Revolution, long before he had heard of Big Brother. They confessed to treasonable conspiracies with foreign powers and were then executed in the political purges of the 1960s. In between their confessions and executions, Winston saw them drinking in the Chestnut Tree Café — with broken noses, suggesting that their confessions had been obtained by torture. Later, in the course of his editorial work, Winston sees newspaper evidence contradicting their confessions, but drops it into a memory hole. Eleven years later, he is confronted with the same photograph during his interrogation.
Ampleforth—Winston's one-time Records Department colleague who was imprisoned for leaving the word "God" in a Kipling poem as he could not find another rhyme for "rod"; Winston encounters him at the Miniluv. Ampleforth is a dreamer and intellectual who takes pleasure in his work, and respects poetry and language, traits which cause him disfavour with the Party.
Charrington—An officer of the Thought Police posing as a sympathetic antiques dealer.
Katharine Smith—The emotionally indifferent wife whom Winston "can't get rid of." Despite disliking sexual intercourse, Katharine married Winston because it was their "duty to the Party." Although she was a "goodthinkful" ideologue, they separated because she could not bear children. Divorce is not permitted, but couples who cannot have children may live separately. For much of the story Winston lives in vague hope that Katharine may die or could be "got rid of" so that he may marry Julia. He regrets not having killed her by pushing her over the edge of a quarry when he had the chance many years previously.
Tom Parsons—Winston's naive neighbour, and an ideal member of the Outer Party: an uneducated, suggestible man who is utterly loyal to the Party, and fully believes in its perfect image. He is socially active and participates in the Party activities for his social class. Although friendly towards Smith, and despite his political conformity, he punishes his bully-boy son for firing a catapult at Winston. Later, as a prisoner, Winston sees Parsons is in the Ministry of Love, because his daughter had reported him to the Thought Police, claiming she overheard him speak against the Party whilst he slept.
Mrs. Parsons—Parsons's wife is a wan and hapless woman who is intimidated by her own children, who are members of the Party Youth League and represent the new generation of Oceanian citizens, without memory of life before Big Brother, and without family ties or emotional sentiment; the model society visioned by the Inner Party.
Syme—Winston's colleague at the Ministry of Truth, whom the Party "vaporised" because he remained a lucidly thinking intellectual. He was a lexicographer who helped develop the language and the dictionary of Newspeak, in the course of which he enjoyed destroying words, and wholeheartedly believed that Newspeak would replace Oldspeak (Standard English) by the year 2050. Although Syme's politically orthodox opinions aligned with Party doctrine, Winston notes that "He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly." After noting that Syme's name was erased from the members list of the Chess Club, Winston infers he became an unperson.
The world in 1984[edit]
Ingsoc (English Socialism)[edit]
Main article: Ingsoc
In the year 1984, Ingsoc (English Socialism), is the regnant ideology and pseudophilosophy of Oceania, and Newspeak is its official language, of official documents.
Ministries of Oceania[edit]
Main article: Ministries of Nineteen Eighty-Four
In London, the capital city of Airstrip One, Oceania's four government ministries are in pyramids (300 metres high), the façades of which display the Party's three slogans. The ministries' names are antonymous doublethink to their true functions: "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation." (Part II, Chapter IX — The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism)
Ministry of Peace
The Ministry of Peace supports Oceania's perpetual war.
The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work.
Ministry of Plenty
The Ministry of Plenty rations and controls food, goods, and domestic production; every fiscal quarter, the Miniplenty publishes false claims of having raised the standard of living, when it has, in fact, reduced rations, availability, and production. The Minitrue substantiates the Miniplenty claims by revising historical records to report numbers supporting the current, "increased rations."
Ministry of Truth
The Ministry of Truth controls information: news, entertainment, education, and the arts. Winston Smith works in the Minitrue RecDep (Records Department), "rectifying" historical records to concord with Big Brother's current pronouncements, thus everything the Party says is true.
Ministry of Love
The Ministry of Love identifies, monitors, arrests, and converts real and imagined dissidents. In Winston's experience, the dissident is beaten and tortured, then, when near-broken, is sent to Room 101 to face "the worst thing in the world" — until love for Big Brother and the Party replaces dissension.
Doublethink[edit]
Main article: Doublethink
The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
— Part II, Chapter IX — The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
Political geography[edit]
Main article: Nations of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Perpetual War: The news report Oceania has captured Africa, 1984.
Three perpetually warring totalitarian super-states control the world:[30]
Oceania (ideology: Ingsoc, i.e., English Socialism); its core territories are theWestern Hemisphere, the British Isles, Australasia, and Southern Africa.
Eurasia (ideology: Neo-Bolshevism); its core territories are Continental Europeand Russia, including Siberia.
Eastasia (ideology: Obliteration of the Self, i.e., "Death worship"); its core territories are China, Japan, Korea, and Indochina.
The perpetual war is fought for control of the "disputed area" lying "between the frontiers of the super-states," it forms "a rough parallelogram with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin and Hong Kong,"[30] thus Northern Africa, the Middle East, India and Indonesia are where the super-states capture and utilise slave-labour. Fighting also takes place between Eurasia and Eastasia in Manchuria, Mongolia and Central Asia, and all three powers battle one another over various Atlantic and Pacific islands.
Goldstein's book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, explains that the superstates' ideologies are alike and that the public's ignorance of this fact is imperative so that they might continue believing in the detestability of the opposing ideologies. The only references to the exterior world for the Oceanian citizenry (the Outer Party and the Proles) are Minitrue maps and propaganda ensuring their belief in "the war."
The Revolution[edit]
Main article: The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
Winston Smith's memory and Emmanuel Goldstein's book communicate some of the history that precipitated the Revolution; Eurasia was established after World War II (1939–45), and obviously also after George Orwell's "present" of 1948-1949. It would seem that when US and Imperial soldiers withdrew from continental Europe, the USSR conquered Europe against slight opposition. Eurasia does not include the British Empire because the US annexed it, as well as Latin America, thus establishing Oceania and gaining control over a quarter of the planet. The annexation of Britain occurred about the same time as the Atomic Wars that provoked civil war, but just who was fighting whom in this war is left unclear. It may have been a brief, inconclusive nuclear confrontation between the Soviet Union and the US in connection with their aggressive expansion to form Oceania and Eurasia, respectively. Bombs fell on Britain, a nuclear attack on Colchesterbeing referenced in the text.
Per the Party, it was not a revolution but a coup d'état that installed a ruling élite derived from the native intelligentsia.Eastasia, the last superstate established, emerged only after "a decade of confused fighting" (perhaps very roughly 1955-1965). It comprises the Asian lands conquered by China and Japan. Although Eastasia was prevented from matching Eurasia's size, its larger populace compensates for that handicap.
Precise chronology is unclear, but most of the global societal reorganisation occurred between 1945 and the 1960s. Winston and Julia once meet in the ruins of a church that was destroyed in a nuclear attack "thirty years" earlier, suggesting 1954 as the year of the atomic war that destabilized society and allowed the Party to seize power. It is stated in the novel that the "fourth quarter of 1983" was "also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan," implying that the first quarter of the first three-year plan began in July 1958. By then the Party was apparently in control of Oceania.
The War[edit]
See also: Perpetual war
In 1984, there is a perpetual war among Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia, the superstates which emerged from the atomic global war. "The book," The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein, explains that each state is so strong it cannot be defeated, even with the combined forces of two superstates—despite changing alliances. To hide such contradictions, history is re-written to explain that the (new) alliance always was so; the populaces accustomed todoublethink accept it. The war is not fought in Oceanian, Eurasian or Eastasian territory but in the arctic wastes and a disputed zone comprising the sea and land from Tangiers (northern Africa) to Darwin (Australia). At the start, Oceania and Eastasia are allies combatting Eurasia in northern Africa and the Malabar Coast.
That alliance ends and Oceania, allied with Eurasia, fights Eastasia, a change which occurred during Hate Week, dedicated to creating patriotic fervour for the Party's perpetual war. The public are blind to the change; in mid-sentence an orator changes the name of the enemy from "Eurasia" to "Eastasia" without pause. When the public are enraged at noticing that the wrong flags and posters are displayed, they tear them down—thus the origin of the idiom "We've always been at war with Eastasia"; later the Party claims to have captured Africa.
"The book" explains that the purpose of the unwinnable, perpetual war is to consume human labour and commodities, hence the economy of a superstate cannot support economic equality (a high standard of life) for every citizen. By using up most of the produced objects like boots and rations, the "proles" are kept poor and uneducated so that they will not realize what the government is doing and they will not rebel. Goldstein also details an Oceanian strategy of attacking enemy cities with atomic rockets before invasion, yet dismisses it as unfeasible and contrary to the war's purpose; despite the atomic bombing of cities in the 1950s the superstates stopped such warfare lest it imbalance the powers. The military technology in 1984 differs little from that of World War II, yet strategic bomber aeroplanes were replaced with Rocket Bombs, helicopters were heavily used as weapons of war (while they did not figure in WW2 in any form but prototypes) and surface combat units have been all but replaced by immense and unsinkable Floating Fortresses, island-like contraptions concentrating the firepower of a whole naval task force in a single, semi-mobile platform (in the novel one is said to have been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands, suggesting a preference for sea lane interdiction and denial).
Living standards[edit]
The society of Airstrip One and, according to "The Book," all of the world, lives in poverty; hunger, disease and filth are the norms. Ruined cities and towns are commonplace—the consequence of the civil war, the atomic wars, and purportedly enemy (but quite possibly self-serving Oceanian) rockets. Social decay and wrecked buildings surround Winston; aside from the ministerial pyramids, little of London was rebuilt. Members of the Outer Party consume synthetic foodstuffs and low-quality luxuries such as oily gin and loosely packed cigarettes, distributed under the "Victory" brand (taken from low-quality Indian-made "Victory" cigarettes that were widely smoked in Britain and by British soldiers during World War II). Winston describes something as simple as the repair of a pane of broken glass as requiring committee approval that can take several years. All Outer Party residences include telescreens that serve as both outlets for propaganda and devices through which to monitor the Party members; they can be turned down, but they cannot be turned off.
In contrast to their subordinates, the Inner Party upper class of Oceanian society reside in clean and comfortable flats in their own quarter of the city, with pantries well-stocked with foodstuffs such as wine, coffee, and sugar that are denied to the general populace.[31] Winston is astonished that the lifts in O'Brien's building function, that the telescreens can be switched off, and that O'Brien has an Asian manservant, Martin; indeed, all of the Inner Party are attended to by slaves captured in the disputed zone, and "The Book" suggests that many have their own motorcars or even helicopters. Nonetheless, "The Book" makes clear that even the conditions enjoyed by the Inner Party are only relatively comfortable and would be regarded as austere by the standards of the pre-revolutionary elite.[32]
The proletariat, or "proles," live in poverty and are kept sedated with alcohol, pornography and a national lottery (whose actual winnings are never paid out, a fact obscured by propaganda and lack of communication between various parts of Oceania). At the same time, the proles are freer and less intimidated than the middle class Outer Party; they are subject to certain levels of monitoring but are not expected to be particularly patriotic, lack telescreens in their own homes, and often jeer at the telescreens that they see. "The Book" indicates that this state of things derives from the observation that the middle class, not the lower class, traditionally started revolutions. The model demands tight control of the middle class, with ambitious Outer Party members neutralised via promotion to the Inner Party or "reintegration" by Miniluv, while proles can be allowed intellectual freedom because they lack intellect. Winston nonetheless believed that "the future belonged to the proles."[33]
The standard of living of the populace is low overall. Consumer goods are scarce, and those available through official channels are invariably of low quality; for instance, despite the Party regularly reporting increased boot production, upwards of half of the Oceanian populace goes barefoot. The Party claims that this poverty is a necessary sacrifice for the war effort, and "The Book" confirms this is partially correct, since the purpose of perpetual war is consuming surplus industrial production. Outer Party members and proles occasionally gain access to better-quality items through the market, dealing in goods pilfered from the residences of the Inner Party.[citation needed]
Themes[edit]
Nationalism[edit]
Nineteen Eighty-Four expands upon the subjects summarised in the essay "Notes on Nationalism"[34] about the lack of vocabulary needed to explain the unrecognised phenomena behind certain political forces. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Party's artificial, minimalist language 'Newspeak' addresses the matter.
Positive nationalism: Oceanians' perpetual love for Big Brother; Neo-Toryism, Celtic nationalism and British Israelismare (as Orwell argues) defined by love.
Negative nationalism: Oceanians' perpetual hatred for Emmanuel Goldstein; Stalinism, Anglophobia and antisemitismare (as Orwell argues) defined by hatred.
Transferred nationalism: In mid-sentence an orator changes the enemy of Oceania; the crowd instantly transfers their hatred to the new enemy. Transferred nationalism swiftly redirects emotions from one power unit to another (e.g.,Communism, Pacifism, Colour Feeling and Class Feeling). This happened during a Party Rally against the original enemy Eurasia, when the orator suddenly switches enemy in midsentence, the crowd goes wild and destroys the posters that are now against their new friend (Eurasia) and many say that this must be the act of an agent of their new enemy (and former friend) Eastasia. Even though many of the crowd must have put up the posters before the rally, they now say that the enemy has always been Eastasia.
O'Brien concludes: "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
Futurology[edit]
In the book, Inner Party member O'Brien describes the Party's vision of the future:
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.
— Part III, Chapter III, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Censorship[edit]
A major theme of Nineteen Eighty-Four is censorship, especially in the Ministry of Truth, where photographs are modified and public archives rewritten to rid them of "unpersons" (i.e., persons who have been arrested, whom the Party has decided to erase from history). On the telescreens figures for all types of production are grossly exaggerated (or simply invented) to indicate an ever-growing economy, when the reality is the opposite. One small example of the endless censorship is when Winston is charged with the task of eliminating a reference to an unperson in a newspaper article. He proceeds to write an article about Comrade Ogilvy, a made-up party member, who displayed great heroism by leaping into the sea from a helicopter so that the dispatches he was carrying would not fall into enemy hands.
Surveillance[edit]
The inhabitants of Oceania, particularly the Outer Party members, have no real privacy. Many of them live in apartments equipped with two-way telescreens, so that they may be watched or listened to at any time. Similar telescreens are found at workstations and in public places, along with hidden microphones. Written correspondence is routinely opened and read by the government before it is delivered. The Thought Police employ undercover agents, who pose as normal citizens and report any person with subversive tendencies. Children are encouraged to report suspicious persons to the government, and some even denounce their parents. Surveillance controls the citizenry and the smallest sign of rebellion, even something so small as a facial expression, can result in immediate arrest and imprisonment. Thus, citizens (and particularly party members) are compelled to obedience.
The Newspeak appendix[edit]
Main articles: Newspeak and List of Newspeak words
"The Principles of Newspeak" is an academic essay appended to the novel. It describes the development of Newspeak, the Party's minimalist artificial language meant to ideologically align thought and action with the principles of Ingsoc by making "all other modes of thought impossible." (For linguistic theories about how language may direct thought, see the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.)
Whether or not the Newspeak appendix implies a hopeful end to Nineteen Eighty-Four remains a critical debate, as it is in Standard English and refers to Newspeak, Ingsoc, the Party, et cetera, in the past tense (i.e., "Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised," p. 422); in this vein, some critics (Atwood,[35] Benstead,[36] Milner,[37] Pynchon)[38] claim that, for the essay's author, Newspeak and the totalitarian government are past.
Sources for literary motifs[edit]
Nineteen Eighty-Four uses themes from life in the Soviet Union and wartime life in Great Britain as sources for many of its motifs. American producer Sidney Sheldon wrote to Orwell in the early 1950s, interested in adapting the novel to the Broadway stage. Orwell sold the American stage rights to Sheldon, explaining that his basic goal with Nineteen Eighty-Fourwas imagining the consequences of Stalinist government ruling British society:
[Nineteen Eighty-Four] was based chiefly on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office.[39]
The statement "2 + 2 = 5," used to torment Winston Smith during his interrogation, was a Communist party slogan from the second five-year plan, which encouraged fulfillment of the five-year plan in four years. The slogan was seen in electric lights on Moscow house-fronts, billboards and elsewhere.[40]
The switch of Oceania's allegiance from Eastasia to Eurasia and the subsequent rewriting of history ("Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete"; ch 9) is evocative of the Soviet Union's changing relations with Nazi Germany. The two nations were open and frequently vehement critics of each other until the signing of the 1939 Treaty of Non-Aggression. Thereafter, and continuing until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, no criticism of Germany was allowed in the Soviet press, and all references to prior party lines stopped—including in the majority of non-Russian communist parties who tended to follow the Russian line. Orwell had criticised the Communist Party of Great Britain for supporting the Treaty in his essays forBetrayal of the Left (1941). "The Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939 reversed the Soviet Union's stated foreign policy. It was too much for many of the fellow-travellers like Gollancz [Orwell's sometime publisher] who had put their faith in a strategy of construction Popular Front governments and the peace bloc between Russia, Britain and France."[41]
The description of Emmanuel Goldstein, with a "small, goatee beard," evokes the image of Leon Trotsky. The film of Goldstein during the Two Minutes Hate is described as showing him being transformed into a bleating sheep. This image was used in a propaganda film during the Kino-eye period of Soviet film, which showed Trotsky transforming into a goat.[42]Goldstein's book is similar to Trotsky's highly critical analysis of the USSR, The Revolution Betrayed, published in 1936.
The omnipresent images of Big Brother, a man described as having a moustache, bears resemblance to the cult of personality built up around Joseph Stalin.
The news in Oceania emphasised production figures, just as it did in the Soviet Union, where record-setting in factories (by "Heroes of Socialist Labor") was especially glorified. The best known of these was Alexey Stakhanov, who purportedly set a record for coal mining in 1935.
The tortures of the Ministry of Love evoke the procedures used by the NKVD in their interrogations,[43] including the use of rubber truncheons, being forbidden to put your hands in your pockets, remaining in brightly lit rooms for days, torture through the use of provoked rodents, and the victim being shown a mirror after their physical collapse.
The random bombing of Airstrip One is based on the Buzz bombs, which struck England at random in 1944–1945.
The Thought Police is based on the NKVD, which arrested people for random "anti-soviet" remarks.[44] The Thought Crime motif is drawn from Kempeitai, the Japanese wartime secret police, who arrested people for "unpatriotic" thoughts.
The confessions of the "Thought Criminals" Rutherford, Aaronson and Jones are based on the show trials of the 1930s, which included fabricated confessions by prominent Bolsheviks Nikolai Bukharin, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev to the effect that they were being paid by the Nazi government to undermine the Soviet regime under Leon Trotsky's direction.
The song "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree" ("Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you, and you sold me") was based on an old English song called "Go no more a-rushing" ("Under the spreading chestnut tree, Where I knelt upon my knee, We were as happy as could be, 'Neath the spreading chestnut tree."). The song was published as early as 1891. The song was a popular camp song in the 1920s, sung with corresponding movements (like touching your chest when you sing "chest," and touching your head when you sing "nut"). Glenn Miller recorded the song in 1939.[45]
The "Hates" (Two Minutes Hate and Hate Week) were inspired by the constant rallies sponsored by party organs throughout the Stalinist period. These were often short pep-talks given to workers before their shifts began (Two Minutes Hate), but could also last for days, as in the annual celebrations of the anniversary of the October revolution (Hate Week).
Orwell fictionalized "newspeak," "doublethink," and "Ministry of Truth" as evinced by both the Soviet press and that of Nazi Germany.[46] In particular, he adapted Soviet ideological discourse constructed to ensure that public statements could not be questioned.[47]
Nikolai Yezhov walking with Stalin in the top photo from the mid 1930s. Following his execution in 1940, Yezhov was edited out of the photo by Soviet censors.[48] Yezhov became an "unperson."
Winston Smith's job, "revising history" (and the "unperson" motif) are based on the Stalinist habit of airbrushing images of 'fallen' people from group photographs and removing references to them in books and newspapers.[49] In one well-known example, the Soviet encyclopaedia had an article about Lavrentiy Beria. When he fell in 1953, and was subsequently executed, institutes that had the encyclopaedia were sent an article about the Bering Strait, with instructions to paste it over the article about Beria.[50]
Big Brother's "Orders of the Day" were inspired by Stalin's regular wartime orders, called by the same name. A small collection of the more political of these have been published (together with his wartime speeches) in English as "On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union" By Joseph Stalin.[51][52] Like Big Brother's Orders of the day, Stalin's frequently lauded heroic individuals,[53] like Comrade Ogilvy, the fictitious hero Winston Smith invented to 'rectify' (fabricate) a Big Brother Order of the day.
The Ingsoc slogan "Our new, happy life," repeated from telescreens, evokes Stalin's 1935 statement, which became a CPSU slogan, "Life has become better, Comrades; life has become more cheerful."[44]
In 1940 Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges published Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertiuswhich described the invention by a "benevolent secret society" of a world that would seek to remake human language and reality along human-invented lines. The story concludes with an appendix describing the success of the project. Borges' story addresses similar themes of epistemology, language and history to 1984.[54]
Influences[edit]
During World War II (1939–1945) Orwell believed that British democracy as it existed before 1939 would not survive the war, the question being "Would it end via Fascist coup d'état from above or via Socialist revolution from below"?
Later he admitted that events proved him wrong: "What really matters is that I fell into the trap of assuming that 'the war and the revolution are inseparable.'"[55] Thematically Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Animal Farm (1945) share the betrayed revolution; the person's subordination to the collective; rigorously enforced class distinctions (Inner Party, Outer Party, Proles); the cult of personality; concentration camps; Thought Police; compulsory regimented daily exercise and youth leagues. Oceania resulted from the US annexation of the British Empire to counter the Asian peril to Australia and New Zealand. It is a naval power whose militarism venerates the sailors of the floating fortresses, from which battle is given to recapturing India, the "Jewel in the Crown" of the British Empire. Much of Oceanic society is based upon the USSR underJoseph Stalin—Big Brother; the televised Two Minutes Hate is ritual demonisation of the enemies of the State, especiallyEmmanuel Goldstein (viz Leon Trotsky); altered photographs and newspaper articles create unpersons deleted from the national historical record, including even founding members of the regime (Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford) in the 1960s purges (viz the Soviet Purges of the 1930s, in which leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution were similarly treated). A similar thing also happened during the French Revolution in which many of the original leaders of the Revolution were later put to death, for example Danton who was put to death by Robespierre, and then later Robespierre himself met the same fate.
In his 1946 essay "Why I Write," Orwell explains that the serious works he wrote since the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) were "written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism."[2][56] Nineteen Eighty-Four is acautionary tale about revolution betrayed by totalitarian defenders previously proposed in Homage to Catalonia (1938) andAnimal Farm (1945), while Coming Up for Air (1939) celebrates the personal and political freedoms lost in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Biographer Michael Shelden notes Orwell's Edwardian childhood at Henley-on-Thames as the golden country; being bullied at St Cyprian's School as his empathy with victims; his life in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma and the techniques of violence and censorship in the BBC as capricious authority.[57] Other influences include Darkness at Noon(1940) and The Yogi and the Commissar (1945) by Arthur Koestler; The Iron Heel (1908) by Jack London; 1920: Dips into the Near Future[58] by John A. Hobson; Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley; We (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin which he reviewed in 1946;[59] and The Managerial Revolution (1940) by James Burnham predicting perpetual war among three totalitarian superstates. Orwell told Jacintha Buddicom that he would write a novel stylistically like A Modern Utopia (1905) by H. G. Wells.[citation needed]
Extrapolating from World War II, the novel's pastiche parallels the politics and rhetoric at war's end—the changed alliances at the "Cold War's" (1945–91) beginning; the Ministry of Truth derives from the BBC's overseas service, controlled by theMinistry of Information; Room 101 derives from a conference room at BBC Broadcasting House;[60] the Senate House of the University of London, containing the Ministry of Information is the architectural inspiration for the Minitrue; the post-war decrepitude derives from the socio-political life of the UK and the USA, i.e., the impoverished Britain of 1948 losing its Empire despite newspaper-reported imperial triumph; and war ally but peace-time foe, Soviet Russia became Eurasia.
The term "English Socialism" has precedents in his wartime writings; in the essay "The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius" (1941), he said that "the war and the revolution are inseparable... the fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a textbook word into a realisable policy" – because Britain's superannuated social class system hindered the war effort and only a socialist economy would defeat Adolf Hitler. Given the middle class's grasping this, they too would abide socialist revolution and that only reactionary Britons would oppose it, thus limiting the force revolutionaries would need to take power. An English Socialism would come about which "will never lose touch with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State. It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the spoken and written word."[61]
In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, "English Socialism" — contracted to "Ingsoc" in Newspeak — is a totalitarian ideology unlike the English revolution he foresaw. Comparison of the wartime essay "The Lion and the Unicorn" with Nineteen Eighty-Four shows that he perceived a Big Brother régime as a perversion of his cherished socialist ideals and English Socialism. Thus Oceania is a corruption of the British Empire he believed would evolve "into a federation of Socialist states, like a looser and freer version of the Union of Soviet Republics."[62][verification needed]
Critical reception[edit]
When first published, Nineteen Eighty-Four was generally well received by reviewers. V. S. Pritchett, reviewing the novel for the New Statesman stated: "I do not think I have ever read a novel more frightening and depressing; and yet, such are the originality, the suspense, the speed of writing and withering indignation that it is impossible to put the book down."[63] P. H. Newby, reviewing Nineteen Eighty-Four for The Listener magazine, described it as "the most arresting political novel written by an Englishman since Rex Warner's The Aerodrome."[64] Nineteen Eighty-Four was also praised by Bertrand Russell, E. M. Forster and Harold Nicolson.[64] On the other hand, Edward Shanks, reviewing Nineteen Eighty-Four for The Sunday Times, was dismissive; Shanks claimed Nineteen Eighty-Four "breaks all records for gloomy vaticination."[64] C. S. Lewiswas also critical of the novel, claiming that the relationship of Julia and Winston, and especially the party view on sex, lacked credibility, and that the setting was "odious rather than tragic."[65]
Cultural impact[edit]
See also: Nineteen Eighty-Four in popular media
"Happy 1984" stencilgraffiti, denoting mind controlvia video games, on a standing piece of the Berlin Wall, 2005.
Wall of an industrial building in Donetsk, Ukraine
The effect of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the English language is extensive; the concepts of Big Brother,Room 101, the Thought Police, thoughtcrime,unperson, memory hole (oblivion), doublethink(simultaneously holding and believing contradictory beliefs) and Newspeak (ideological language) have become common phrases for denoting totalitarian authority. Doublespeak and groupthink are both deliberate elaborations of doublethink, while the adjective "Orwellian" denotes "characteristic and reminiscent of George Orwell's writings" especiallyNineteen Eighty-Four. The practice of ending words with "-speak" (e.g. mediaspeak) is drawn from the novel.[66] Orwell is perpetually associated with the year 1984; in July 1984an asteroid discovered by Antonín Mrkos was named after Orwell.
In 1977 the British rock band The Jam released the album This Is the Modern World, which includes the track "Standards" by Paul Weller. This track concludes with the lyrics... "...and ignorance is strength, we have god on our side, look, you know what happened to Winston."
In September 2009, the English progressive rock band Muse released The Resistance, which included songs influenced by1984.[67]
References to the themes, concepts and plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four have appeared frequently in other works, especially in popular music and video entertainment. An example is the worldwide hit reality television show Big Brother, in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras.
In November 2011, the United States government argued before the US Supreme Court that it wants to continue utilizing GPS tracking of individuals without first seeking a warrant. In response, Justice Stephen Breyer questioned what this means for a democratic society by referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four. Justice Breyer asked, "If you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States. So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like Nineteen Eighty-Four... "[68]
In 1984, the book was made into a movie which starred John Hurt as the central character of Winston Smith. In 2006, the movie version of V for Vendetta was released, which has many of the same running themes and principles as 1984 and, coincidentally, also stars John Hurt taking on the role of the leader of a totalitarian party, though the film is based on thegraphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.[69][70] An episode of Doctor Who called "The God Complex" depicts an alien ship disguised as a hotel containing Room 101-like spaces, and quotes the nursery rhyme as well.[71]
The book touches on the invasion of privacy and ubiquitous surveillance. From mid 2013 it was publicized that the NSA has been secretly monitoring and storing global internet traffic, including the bulk data collection of email and phone call data. Sales of Nineteen Eighty-Four increased by up to 7 times within the first week of the 2013 mass surveillance leaks.[72][73][74]It is also seen in the book how mass media was a catalyst for the intensification of destructive emotions and violence. Since the 20th century news and other forms of media has been publicizing violence more.[75][76] It is no coincidence that in the same year, the Almeida Theatre and Headlong staged a successful new adaptation (by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan) which twice toured the UK and played an extended run in London's West End.
Radio adaptation[edit]
Nineteen Eighty-Four was presented on Theatre Guild on the Air April 26, 1953. The adaptation starred Richard Widmark,Alan Hewitt, and Marian Seldes.[77]
1984 vs. Brave New World[edit]
In the decades since the publication of 1984, there have been numerous comparisons to the Aldous Huxley novel, Brave New World which was published 17 years earlier in 1932.[78][79][80][81] They are both predictions of societies dominated by a central government, based on extensions of the trends of their times. But the ruling class of 1984 use brutal force, torture, and mind control to keep rebellious individuals in line, while Brave New World rulers keep citizens in line through addictive drugs and pleasurable distractions.
In October 1949, after reading 1984, Huxley sent a letter to Orwell stating his belief that it would be more efficient for rulers to stay in power through the softer touch - allowing citizens to self-seek pleasure as a means of control rather than brute force, allowing for a false sense of freedom:
"Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience."[82]
Elements of both novels can be seen in modern day societies, with Huxley's vision being more dominate in the West and Orwell's vision more dominate with dictators in ex-communist countries and the theocracies and dictators of the Middle East, as pointed out in essays that compare the two novels, including Huxley's own Brave New World Revisited.[83]
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
Jump up^ Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition (1996). HarperCollins:New York. p. 734.
^ Jump up to:a b Aaronovitch, David (8 February 2013). "1984: George Orwell's road to dystopia". BBC News Magazine (United Kingdom: The BBC). Retrieved 8 February 2013.
Jump up^ The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, Columbia University Press: 1993, p. 2030.
Jump up^ "Nineteen Eighty-Four," pg 272.
^ Jump up to:a b The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Sixth Edition. University of Oxford Press: 2000. p. 726.
Jump up^ Grossman, Lev; Lacayo, Richard (6 October 2005). "ALL-TIME 100 Novels. 1984 (1949), by George Orwell". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 19 October 2012
Jump up^ "100 Best Novels". Modern Library. Retrieved 19 October 2012
Jump up^ "BBC – The Big Read". BBC. April 2003, Retrieved 19 October 2012
Jump up^ Letter to Roger Senhouse, 26 December 1948, reprinted inCollected Works:It Is What I Think, p.487
Jump up^ Bowker, Chapter 18. "thesis": pp. 368–9
Jump up^ Bowker, pp. 383, 399
Jump up^ "Charles' George Orwell Links". Netcharles.com. Retrieved 4 July 2011.
Jump up^ John Rodden. The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of "St. George" Orwell
Jump up^ CEJL, iv, no. 125.
Jump up^ Crick, Bernard. Introduction to Nineteen Eighty-Four(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)
Jump up^ Nineteen Eighty-four, ISBN 978-0-14-118776-1; p. xxvii (Penguin)
Jump up^ Marcus, Laura; Nicholls, Peter (2005). The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature. Cambridge University Press. p. 226. ISBN 0-521-82077-4. Brave New World [is] traditionally bracketed with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as a dystopia ...
Jump up^ "Freedom and Happiness" (a review of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin) by Orwell, Tribune, 4 January 1946.
Jump up^ "1984 thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?", Paul Owen, The Guardian, 8 June 2009.
Jump up^ Canadian protection covers the author's life and 50 years from the end of the calendar year of his or her death.
Jump up^ South African copyright law protects literary works for the author's life plus fifty years; see the Copyright Act, No. 98 of 1978, as amended.
Jump up^ "1984, de Orwell, 60 años después – 25.07.2009 – lanacion.com". Lanacion.com.ar. 25 July 2009. Retrieved20 June 2014.
Jump up^ Australian law stipulates life plus 70 years, since 2005. The law is not retrospective and excludes works published in the lifetime of an author who died in 1956 or earlier
Jump up^ Omani law provides for a copyright duration of 70 years after the death of the author since 2008, prior to this the copyright duration was only 50 years after the death of the author, and as the new law explicitly provides that it does not apply to works already in the public domain, this work remains in the public domain.
Jump up^ Law No. 9.610 of February 19, 1998 on Copyright and Neighboring Rights. WIPO, 2013. Retrieved 13 July 2015.
Jump up^ Hirtle, Peter B. "Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States". Retrieved 25 March 2010. As a work published between 1923 and 1963, with renewed notice and copyright, it remains protected for 95 years from its publication date
Jump up^ Part I, Ch. 1.
Jump up^ Part I, Ch. 3.
Jump up^ "striking thirteen" (1:00 pm). In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the24-hour clock is modern, the 12-hour clock is old-fashioned, Part I, Ch. 8.
^ Jump up to:a b Part II, Ch. 9
Jump up^ Reed, Kit (1985). "Barron's Booknotes-1984 by George Orwell". Barron's Educational Series. Retrieved 2 July2009.
Jump up^ Lines 29-35, page 229, Chapter X, Part II of the Penguin paperback edition of 1984: "The proles were immortal, you could not doubt it when you looked at that valiant figure in the yard. In the end their awakening would come. And until that happened, though it might be a thousand years, they would stay alive against all the odds, like birds, passing on from body to body the vitality which the Party did not share and could not kill."
Jump up^ "George Orwell: "Notes on Nationalism"". Resort.com. May 1945. Retrieved 25 March 2010.
Jump up^ Margaret Atwood: "Orwell and me". The Guardian 16 June 2003
Jump up^ Benstead, James (26 June 2005). "Hope Begins in the Dark: Re-reading Nineteen Eighty-Four".
Jump up^ Andrew Milner: Locating Science Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012, pp. 120-135.
Jump up^ Thomas Pynchon: Foreword to the Centennial Edition toNineteen eighty-four, pp. vii–xxvi. New York: Plume, 2003. In shortened form published also as The Road to 1984 inThe Guardian (Analysis)
Jump up^ Sheldon, Sidney (2006) The Other Side of Me", Grand Central Publishing, p. 213
Jump up^ Tzouliadis, Tim (2008). The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia. New York: Penguin Press. pp. 48–49. ISBN 978-1-59420-168-4.
Jump up^ Perry, Matt. Review of "Left Book Club Anthology" (review no. 261) Ed. Paul Laity. London, Gollancz, 2001, ISBN 9780575072213; Reviews In History for the Institute of Historical Review at the University of London School of Advanced Study; URL accessed 28 October 2015
Jump up^ Vertov, Dziga (1985). Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05630-5.
Jump up^ Senyonovna, Eugenia (1967). Journey into the Whirlwind. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
^ Jump up to:a b Fitzpatrick, Sheila (1999). Everyday Stalinism. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505001-0.
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Jump up^ "Newseum: The Commissar Vanishes". Retrieved 19 July2008.
Jump up^ King, David (1997). The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia. Metropolitan / Holt. ISBN 0-8050-5294-1.
Jump up^ Schacter, Daniel L.; Scarry, Elaine, eds. (2001). Memory, Brain, and Belief (Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-00719-2.
Jump up^ Stalin, Joseph (1944). On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. Moscow: Foreign Languages Press.
Jump up^ "Order of the Day, No. 130, May 1st, 1942". Retrieved14 December 2011.
Jump up^ Stalin, Joseph (1970). On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. FOREIGN LANGUAGE PRESS — PEKING.
Jump up^ "Twentieth-century Spanish American Literature to 1960".
Jump up^ "London Letter to Partisan Review, December 1944, quoted from vol. 3 of the Penguin edition of the Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters.
Jump up^ "George Orwell: Why I Write". Resort.com. Retrieved4 July 2011.
Jump up^ Shelden, Michael (1991). Orwell – The Authorized Biography. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-092161-7.; pp 430–434
Jump up^ John A. Hobson, 1920: Dips into the Near Future
paraphrasing Rayner Heppenstall, he reportedly said "that he was taking it as the model for his next novel." Bowker, p. 340.
Jump up^ "The real room 101". BBC. Archived from the originalon 5 January 2007. Retrieved 9 December 2006.
Meyers (2000), p. 214.
Jump up^ Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 2: "My Country Right or Left" (1940–43; Penguin)
Jump up^ Orwell, George (2000). Orwell, Sonia; Angus, Ian, eds.George Orwell: the Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters(1st Nonpareil ed.). Boston: Nonpareil Books. p. 91.ISBN 978-1-56792-134-2. The third was to develop apositive imperial policy, and aim at transforming the Empire into a federation of Socialist states, like a looser and freer version of the Union of Soviet Republics.
Jump up^ Irving Howe, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four : Text, Sources, Criticism. New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. ISBN 0-15-565811-5 (pp. 290–3).
^ Jump up to:a b c "First Bites: Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nigel Fountain,The Guardian, June 14, 1994.
Jump up^ Lewis, Clive Staple (1966). On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature. George Orwell. Harcourt. p. 101.
Jump up^ Keyes, Ralph (2009). I Love It When You Talk Retro. St Martins. p. 222.
Jump up^ "Muse Discuss The Resistance, Their 'Very Personal' New Album". MTV. Retrieved 19 October 2012
Jump up^ "Justice Breyer warns of Orwellian government". The Hill. 8 November 2011. Retrieved 9 November 2011.
Jump up^ "Resistance and Power". Stanford University. 2 November 2007. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
Jump up^ Adams, A. A. (1 September 2006). "From 1984 to V for Vendetta via Minority Report" (PDF). University of Edinburgh School of Law. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
Jump up^ Mulkern, Patrick (18 September 2011). "Doctor Who: The God Complex". Radio Times. Retrieved 20 May 2012.
Jump up^ '1984' sales skyrocket in wake of US spy scandal, AFP,11 June 2013. Retrieved 30 June 2013.
Jump up^ Sales of Orwell's '1984' Increase as Details of NSA Scandal Emerge, ABC News, 11 June 2013. Retrieved 30 June 2013.
Jump up^ George Orwell's '1984' Book Sales Skyrocket In Wake Of NSA Surveillance Scandal, Huffington Post, 11 June 2013. Retrieved 30 June 2013.
Jump up^ Savage, Robert (1989). The Orwell Moment. London: University Arkansas Press.
Jump up^ Gleason,"On nineteen Eighty Four"
Jump up^ "Those Were the Days". Nostalgia Digest 41 (2): 32–41. Spring 2015.
Jump up^ Letter from Aldous Huxley to George Orwell, Retrieved 6 December 2015.
Further reading[edit]
Aubrey, Crispin; Chilton, Paul, eds. (1983). Nineteen Eighty-four in 1984: Autonomy, Control, and Communication (Repr. ed.). London: Comedia Pub. Group. ISBN 0-906890-42-X.
Bowker, Gordon (2003). Inside George Orwell: A Biography. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-23841-X.
Hillegas, Mark R. (1967). The Future As Nightmare: H.G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-0676-X
Howe, Irving, ed. (1983). 1984 Revisited: Totalitarianism in Our Century. New York: Harper Row. ISBN 0-06-080660-5.
Meyers, Jeffery. Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation. W.W.Norton. 2000. ISBN 0-393-32263-7
Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. A novel. London: Secker & Warburg.
Orwell, George (1984). Davison, Peter, ed. Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Facsimile Manuscript. London, United Kingdom: Secker and Warburg. ISBN 0-436-35022-X.
Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. A novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.
Orwell, George (1977). 1984. Erich Fromm (Foreword) (reissue ed.). Signet Classics. ISBN 0-451-52493-4.
Orwell, George (2003). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Thomas Pynchon (Foreword); Erich Fromm (Afterword). Plume. ISBN 0-452-28423-6.
Afterword by Erich Fromm (1961)., pp. 324–337.
Orwell's text has a "Selected Bibliography," pp. 338–9; the foreword and the afterword each contain further references.
The Plume edition is an authorised reprint of a hardcover edition published by Harcourt, Inc.
The Plume edition is also published in a Signet edition. The copyright page says this, but the Signet ed. does not have the Pynchon forward.
Copyright is explicitly extended to digital and any other means.
Orwell, George. 1984 (Vietnamese edition), translation by Đặng Phương-Nghi, French preface by Bertrand Latour ISBN 0-9774224-5-3.
Shelden, Michael (1991). Orwell: The Authorised Biography. London: Heinemann. ISBN 0-434-69517-3.
Smith, David; Mosher, Michael (1984). Orwell for Beginners (1st ed.). [London], Eng.: Writers and Readers Pub. Cooperative. ISBN 0-86316-066-2.
Steinhoff, William R. (1975). George Orwell and the Origins of 1984. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-87400-4.
Tuccille, Jerome (1975). Who's afraid of 1984? The case for optimism in looking ahead to the 1980s. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House Publishers. ISBN 0-87000-308-9.
West, W. J. (1992). The Larger Evils – Nineteen Eighty-Four: the Truth Behind the Satire. Edinburgh: Canongate Press. ISBN 0-86241-382-6.
External links[edit]
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Nineteen Eighty-Four title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
1953 Theatre Guild on the Air radio adaptation at Internet Archive
Electronic editions
George Orwell – Complete works, Biography, Quotes, Essays (missing chapter 10 of part 2)
George Orwell – Eric Arthur Blair (English)
Charles' George Orwell Links – Biographies, Essays, Novels, Reviews, Images (with publication data)
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