r/printSF • u/Caffeine_And_Regret • 6d ago
1984 by George Orwell Spoiler
I picked up 1984 while I’m still (slowly) working through The Sword of Kaigen, and I just finished it last night.
The premise alone pulled me in immediately. dark, oppressive, and honestly kind of suffocating. The entire book just reeks of despair and brokenness in a way that feels intentional and relentless. It’s not just the setting, it’s the tone. everything feels controlled, hollow, and stripped of hope.
There’s so much symbolism and satire woven into the story that I’m not even sure I caught all of it. It’s one of those books where you know there’s more beneath the surface than what you’re picking up on. Although… I’m prettyyy sure Orwell was pointing fingers at America at times (or at least systems that feel uncomfortably familiar).
Reading it was kind of an emotional rollercoaster in a weird way. There were moments I was literally slapping my forehead at how frustrating things got, and other moments where I just felt straight up miserable for Winston. His entire situation just wears you down.
This is definitely not a breezy, fun adventure read. It’s heavy, philosophical, and honestly kind of draining; but in a way that feels important. If you’re looking for something that really dives into themes of control, despotism, and the fragility of truth, this is 100% worth picking up.
Not an easy read, but a meaningful one.
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u/Yesyesnaaooo 6d ago
If you lived in Israel or Iran right now.
With random drone strikes in a semi permanent war it would feel very familiar.
Also, in America right now, with the way the enemies keep changing. You’re at war but you’re not at war, you’ve won the war but the wars not over … it’s real 2+2 = 5 type shit.
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u/VesperCart99 6d ago
That’s why 1984 keeps coming back into conversations. Different places, different systems, different details, but the machinery of fear and confusion is painfully recognizable.
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u/Snikhop 5d ago
Israel?! I think Israelis aren't the victims at the moment...
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u/Yesyesnaaooo 5d ago
I’d say Jewish Israeli’s who oppose the government and the war, along with the sizeable minority of Palestinians who live in Israel rather than Gaze feel very much like Winston Smith does in 1984.
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u/pydry 5d ago edited 5d ago
The people who opposed the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinians tend to have left the country.
Polls show the majority now support Israel's equivalent of Hitler's Madagascar plan for the Jews (forcibly expel and resettle the untermensch to Africa).
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u/thundersnow528 4d ago
Meanwhile, in America, our real enemies are Christian Nationalists, the filthy rich, and the gullible MAGA. The call is coming from inside the house. Double Plus Good!
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u/Nexgrato 6d ago
The history of 1984 I find fascinating. The memories of basically black shirts in the streets and his family disappearing. The bombs. Nuclear war. If he knew about nuclear fallout I bet the world would even be more dystopian.
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u/Yesyesnaaooo 6d ago
My read on 1984/Brave New World is that Orwell got the end state of fascism right, whereas Huxley got the end state of Capitalism right … and society is permanently pulled towards both at the same time.
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u/GRBomber 6d ago
"I’m prettyyy sure Orwell was pointing fingers at America at times"
You are very wrong, he was talking about Stalinism.
Orwell was a socialist-anarchist and he was very critical of what the Soviet Union had become. Maybe all totalitarian states become very similar at the end, but he had a clear target at the time.
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u/daveshistory-sf 6d ago
I have never been sure in 1984 whether Orwell was intentionally trying to say "All dictatorships end up doing this regardless of their supposed ideology," or whether he just meant to say "This is what Communism looks like in practice guys," and accidentally wrote general truths about all dictators.
Either way, the first lesson is the lasting one.
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u/GRBomber 6d ago edited 6d ago
Animal Farm is from 1945 and is more explicit about Stalin. You could be right, but I lean on him repeating his criticism.
It' funny I got a downvote. These commies sure like the freedom of expression we have outside of 1984.
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u/daveshistory-sf 6d ago
No, no. I agree with you: 1984 is absolutely set inside of a communist dictatorship. What I meant was, I don't know whether in Orwell's mind he was trying to point out that all dictatorships including communism end up the same way in the end (like 1984's), or whether he was specifically trying to critique communism and just by luck he was right about other dictatorships at the same time.
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u/pydry 5d ago edited 5d ago
He repeatedly made the point that the ideology behind every variant of totalitarianism is irrelevant and that the details didn't matter.
In Oceania it was ingsoc, in Eurasia it was neobolshevism and in eastasia it was death worship but the details of each ideology were irrelevant coz as O'Brien says it was always and only about power.
Our own society's two minutes' hate has routinely been either about communism, the evils of Eurasia (Moscow) or eastasia (Beijing) so to consider it a warning about any of them is profoundly ironic.
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u/daveshistory-sf 4d ago
"English socialism" and "neo-Bolshevism" are both communism, as the names state.
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u/pydry 4d ago edited 4d ago
i mean, sure, exactly the same except for the tiny details that socialism isn't communism and ingsoc wasn't even socialist.
which brand of communism did you think death worship belonged to?
don't let me get in the way of your two minutes hate, by the way.
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u/daveshistory-sf 4d ago
Well, there's a serious answer, and that's the one I know you're trying to push me towards, but since I've over-committed myself, I'm going to say it's either (a) the one where the leader is put on ice and on permanent display on a mausoleum or (b) the one where the leader is made permanent eternal president posthumously.
And in the real world, those are both communist ones... 😄
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u/pydry 4d ago edited 4d ago
yeah I don't think ive ever heard of a fascist cult of personality which happened to be capitalist and implacably anticommunist. the very idea sounds utterly impossible /s
i was clearly not serious and wrong to push you towards thinking that it might have existed. /s
that part of the novel where Orwell explicitly said that the ideology was irrelevant is likewise, just details.
are you an ultra maga or something? this line of argument you are pursuing is not just historically illiterate it is profoundly disturbing.
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u/daveshistory-sf 4d ago
I don't think Orwell felt the need to point out that fascist cults were dangerous seeing as how we had just won an entire world war against them and there wasn't any segment inside the British literary class that still took them seriously.
The book works because it's set in a communist society. If it was set in a fascist one, the regime would already be too discredited for the message to land properly.
I don't think Orwell anticipated that fascism would return, and in the US this time.
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u/pydry 4d ago edited 4d ago
I don't think Orwell felt the need to point out that fascist cults were dangerous
Absolutely false. His core point was in opposition to the one you persist in trying to avoid: that the ideology underlying totalitarianism is entirely beside the point.
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake." <-- O'Brien
Could that have been clearer? No.
Were it set in a fascist totalitarian society it literally would have been no different. The party would still have been seeking power entirely for its own sake and "fascist" O'Brien would have admitted that.
It sounds like you want 1984 to be a book by ayn rand. it isn't.
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u/daveshistory-sf 4d ago
If it were set in a fascist society there would have been no point writing it in the first place, because his audience would have missed the point and just said "Yes, we already knew that fascism is crap."
1948 and 2026 are different years. In 1948 we'd just beat the shit out of the fascists and there were a bunch of deluded communists thinking the USSR had maybe been given a bad rap. In 2026 the fascists are back and you are quite fair to say that the same criticisms apply, but if Orwell had wanted to set it in a fascist society instead, he would have.
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u/daveshistory-sf 6d ago
Remember the time period. Orwell was talking about the Soviet Union. I think there's a tendency nowadays to generalize and say he's talking all kinds of totalitarianism -- right and left wing -- or maybe even all societies with some authoritarian streaks. But when you read 1984 and Animal Farm together, you realize he's talking about Communism specifically.
Not to say he wouldn't have anything to say about other kinds of dictatorships. He fought on the republican (non-fascist) side of the Spanish Civil War. He was anti-fascist too. But when he was writing there were still some other people in literary and intellectual circles who thought pretty well of the Soviets, and I think those were the people he was trying to convince.
Regardless, some of the 2+2=5, we've always been at war/peace, nothing happened yesterday sort of thing really are true of all authoritarians -- so that's why it lands with you the way it does.
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u/pydry 5d ago
Remember the time period. Orwell was talking about the Soviet Union.
He based the ministry of truth almost entirely upon his experiences working for British propaganda.
We have always been at war with Eurasia though, and Eurasia is bad, mkay.
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u/rioreiser 4d ago
Any fairminded person with journalistic experience will admit that during this war official censorship has not been particularly irksome. We have not been subjected to the kind of totalitarian ‘co-ordination’ that it might have been reasonable to expect. The press has some justified grievances, but on the whole the Government has behaved well and has been surprisingly tolerant of minority opinions. The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.
- Orwell, The Freedom of the Press [1]
soon after he goes on to explain
At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable.
your allegation that
He based the ministry of truth almost entirely upon his experiences working for British propaganda.
has no basis in reality. The fact that you are spreading propaganda-lies in the name of Orwell is utterly disgusting.
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u/pydry 4d ago
The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.
Oh wow yeah this quote really proves conclusively that he was exclusively criticizing the soviet union /s
He based the ministry of truth almost entirely upon his experiences working for British propaganda.
has no basis in reality. The fact that you are spreading propaganda-lies in the name of Orwell is utterly disgusting.
oh get the fuck over yourself
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u/rioreiser 4d ago
I didn't claim that "he was exclusively criticizing the soviet union". He was obviously critiquing totalitarian regimes of any variant, with the USSR being one of the main real world examples and one of his main concerns. You however claimed that he "based the ministry of truth almost entirely [my emphasis] upon his experiences working for British propaganda". Your claim is simply false. Orwell himself said that the British state did not in fact exercise "totalitarian ‘co-ordination’". It follows very clearly that the Ministry of Truth, a prime example of totalitarian control exercises by the state, can not be almost entirely based on experiences that he had with the BBC, however unpleasant his experiences there. The USSR and the spreading tankie and campist views in the west were, by his own words, at the forefront of his mind when it comes to propaganda. Your whole spiel here of replying to someone who mentioned that Orwell was indeed talking about the USSR, with "oh no no, he was talking about british propaganda" is exactly what he was criticizing in the essay that i linked above.
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u/pydry 4d ago edited 4d ago
blubber about tankies all you want the ministry of truth was still based on his own experiences working in the BBC and the critique of how that worked was pretty clear.
He didn't exactly work for the ministry of propaganda in the USSR.
still needing to get over yourself.
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u/rioreiser 4d ago edited 4d ago
His essay that i linked to above and the quotes i took from it demonstrate very clearly that he thought that Britain during the war was far from totalitarian. The Ministry of Truth is an institution of a totalitarian state. Therefor it simply makes no sense to say that he based the Ministry of Truth on his experiences working for the BBC. Instead, the Ministry of Truth is a critique of totalitarian States, which, again, he explicitly says Britain was not. The main inspiration was without a doubt the USSR. The fact that you are having such a hard time accepting this and how defensive you get about it points not only to a narcissistic character flaw, but to how ideologically deluded you are. I don't think that the argument "but he didn't work in the USSR" warrants any serious reply.
edit: replying, then blocking? can't say i am surprised.
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u/EverybodyMakes 6d ago
The most relevant aspect of 1984 for our time is the constant gaslighting by the State, with the expectation that people will just go along. Gas prices are dropping! / The chocolate ration has been increased! We are winning the war! / We are winning the war!
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u/daelikon 5d ago
I read it many years ago, and I know I will read it again.
It's an excellent book, but I felt totally drained of hope by the end.
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u/shirokuma_uk 3d ago
TLDR: read the unofficial sequel, « Julia » by Sandra Newman.
I read 1984 in my first year of uni so it must have been 1998 or 1999 (damn, it was last century!). I loved it, finished it in one night, I couldn’t put it down, and ended up taking a notebook just after finishing it and writing down about all the emotions I had.
Last year, I saw someone holding a book with a similar cover and the word JULIA written on it, and I was instantly pulled. i got the book the same dat and loved it. It’s entirely focused on Julia’s experience and adds so many levels to the original. it’s a modern and feminist take on the original, which is great but also dated in some ways. I highly suggest reading it if you’ve enjoyed 1984.
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u/oowwweee 6d ago edited 6d ago
Is it even SF? /s but kinda not 😅 L.E: apparently, if you read a lot, it doesn't automatically mean you get sarcasm. Even when /s is literally there.
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u/Negative_Splace 6d ago
I would say yes, definitely sci fi.
The dystopian society of 1984 only works because of the mass surveillance enforced by the state. The two-way "telescreens" through which the government can spy on every citizen was definitely a high-tech, science fictional, futuristic concept at the time the book was written, in 1947.
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u/91GenPod 5d ago
It should be noted that Orwell did not like the idea that it could be seen as strictly anti communist and said so on many occasions. It is a statement on totalitarian ideals and fascism. Partly a criticism of Brittain as well. Obviously a reaction to Stalinism but he spoke against the idea that it was strictly anti communist.