1984 by George Orwell - complete text on-line

[burythehatchet]

Last night I watched the movie 1984. It was incredible. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and rent it.

(as an aside, the most haunting thing about the movie was a passage where Big Brother is giving a speech and talking about the party having resolve.

shudder

Anyway, this web-site has the entire book on line. Many of us have warned for years that we are moving steadily in the direction of a world depicted in the book. Another movie that is an incredibly realistic and funny conception of our future is the movie Brazil.

link to 1984 on line

You will be referring to it often.

[cheezus]

1. the book is SO much better than the movie

not my favorite book of all time, but probably the BEST I've ever read.

[pauliedangerously]

2. Orwell Rolls in his Grave

This is a great documantary by Robert Kane Pappas, which goes further in-depth than F911 does on media ownership/conspiracy. Buzzflash.com is the exclusive distributer of the DVD, which costs as much as two tickets to F911. Get your friends to chip in and have a party.

Highly recommended.

I read 1984 in 1982.

[TrogL]

3. So much is said in the first page

Read it - it doesn't take very long.

http://www.seekers.100megs6.com/1984-1.htm

...and the clocks were striking thirteen...

In the first sentence, Orwell is already informing us this is an unusual book (ie. speculative fiction). Britain was still firmly on the 12+12 hour clock. There was no thirteen.

It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working

The first sign of a dystopia is the infrastructure falling apart.

Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way.

I'm forty-eight and I could do seven flights of stairs two at a time. My mother is in her nineties and wouldn't find it all that bad. Why isn't his ulcer being treated? What's wrong with their nutrition.

the electric current was cut off during daylight hours...the telescreen...could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely

Note that it has its own power supply. Nothing must get in the way of propaganda.

People in "1984" are at war with the infrastructure. Nothing works (except the telescreens), the food is inedible, the liquor stinks (even though there's lots of it), the place is a mess, the kids have nothing to do but get into trouble and there's propaganda everywhere.

You know what it reminds me of?

North Tonawanda N.Y.

It's right down the road from Niagara Falls N.Y. (which isn't much better).

My parents live in St. Catherines, Ontario, which is right down the road from Niagara Falls Ontario and a quick trip over the bridge to the States. They like to go shopping in Buffalo.

Driving across that bridge into NFNY, then down the parkway past North Tonawanda is like transporting into a science fiction dystopia - smashed up streets, burned down houses, hookers on every corner, drug dealers openly plying their wares. If you've seen the footage of Flint, Michigan in F911, it looks the same. Then you drive over the bridge back to Canada and the nightmare is over.

I've had US visitors come to Canada and say "everything is so nice and clean here, it's difficult to believe - show me your slums". So we drive over to the "bad part of town" back of A.N. Meyer school or back of the Norton plant in Chippewa. They say, "no, this is your residential district - where's the slum". Response: "umm....this is it".

The United States is fast falling to the nightmare of 1984. In the book, Big Brother is a sock puppet that appears on TV, apparently controlled by the corrupt administration under him. Remind you of anyone?

[burythehatchet]

5. like I said, when big brother starts using the word RESOLVE

in talking about wars, I got chills.

[anakie]

16. and substitute al Qaida for Goldstein ..

n/t

[LTR]

4. Here's another source

To '1984' and other works:

http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/

[Skarbrowe]

6. Brazil, Brazil

Every time a terroist bombing would hit the news, I would start singing the song Brazil, Brazil from the movie...Brazil. Ya gotta see that movie. The facelifts alone are worth the price. I think I might go to Amazon.com or somewhere and see if I can order it right now.

Thanks for the reminder!

Skarbrowe

[burythehatchet]

7. Brazil is in my top 20

Robert DeNiro in his most interesting role, IMO

[Just Me]

8. Oh, thank you!!!

I've been looking for the book and haven't been able to get my hands on one (and I have been unwilling to order via the internet).

[SeveneightyWhoa]

9. Great friggin' book.

Probably my favorite, ever.

But who the heck wants to read an entire book--on a computer screen? Take it out from a library, or buy it.

[jdsmith]

14. Thomas Pynchon wrote a swell new intro for the Orwell centenniel edition

Books are neat!

[lanparty]

28. eBook ...

Reading on a PocketPC is perfect. I always carry mine with me and I always have something to do during "idle time".

I have hundreds of books with me at any given time. As well as music, games, all my contacts, maps, datebook, task lists, notepads, voice recorder, digital photo album, etc....

Once you get into reading eBooks, you really don't want to go back. You'll ALWAYS remember to brink your book with you.

[gasperc]

10. Bob Roberts is worth a re-viewing

eom

[Cleita]

11. Thanks for the post. I read it back in high school.

I also read "Brave New World" at the same time. Strangely enough at the time "Brave New World" seemed a more plausible future scenario to me than "1984". Strange that it would be "1984" that would bear the most reality to our present, which was the future back then.

[burythehatchet]

12. I wonder what it was about the late 60's that gave us such

prophetic works like 1984, and another favorite, Silent Spring.

[NecessaryOnslaught]

23. Published in 49', not late 60's n/t

[gatorboy]

13. Which 1984 did you see?

The newer John Hurt version or the Black and White one? I remember seeing both versions in high school. I wonder if it's even read in schools anymore....

[burythehatchet]

17. The newer John Hurt version

I thought he was outstanding.

[sldavis]

15. war is peace

that book gives me chills.

[Michael Costello]

30. Freedom isn't free!

Does anyone else think of 1984 when they hear someone say "Freedom isn't free?" I think they would have used "war is peace" as a slogan instead of it wasn't so 1984ish.

When I hear freedom isn't free what is brought to my mind is the leaders executed in the Chicago 8 hour day campaign, the Homestead strike, the Ludlow Massacre. Unfortunately, these freedoms are being stripped from us or already have been.

[iverglas]

18. and don't forget

Fahrenheit 9/11 451 itself. Speaking of books. ;)

Good flick, too:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000087F6L/103-5133042-2951012?v=glance

Truffaut takes Bradbury's fascinating premise and makes it his own. The futuristic society depicted in Fahrenheit 451 is a culture without books. Firemen still race around in red trucks and wear helmets, but their job is to start fires: they ferret out forbidden stashes of books, douse them with gasoline, and make public bonfires. Oskar Werner, the star of Truffaut's Jules and Jim, plays a fireman named Montag, whose exposure to David Copperfield wakens an instinct toward reading and individual thought. (That's why books are banned--they give people too many ideas.) In an intriguing casting flourish, Julie Christie plays two roles: Montag's bored, drugged-up wife and the woman who helps kindle the spark of rebellion. The great Bernard Herrmann wrote the hard-driving music; Nicolas Roeg provided the cinematography. Fahrenheit 451 received a cool critical reception and has never quite been accepted by Truffaut fans or sci-fi buffs. Its deliberately listless manner has always been a problem, although that is part of its point; the lack of reading has made people dry and empty.

(Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which books burn, of course.)

Don't be put off by Bradbury's displeasure with Michael Moore.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/21/bradbury.fahrenheit.ap/
I don't know what Bradbury was like before he got to be 84, but Orwell got a little weird in his latter years too.

http://www.deadbrain.com/entertainment/article_2004_06_24_1030.php

[Toucano]

20. "...but Orwell got a little weird in his latter years too."

I thought Orwell died two years after writing 1984?


Please elaborate on the weirdness for me. I'd love to know.

[iverglas]

21. well ...

Not an Orwell expert, but Orwell (Blair) set his face against communists and started informing on 'em ("narking", in the local idiom).

A quick search for "george orwell" communists informant, and of course the Guardian offers a ready collection of useful stuff.

Two differing views (there is a list of other articles that appear quite interesting at the bottom of the Redgrave piece, but right now, the workday before Canada Day has ended and I'm off to the store for steaks!):

http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,96572,00.html
A proponent of the "Orwell was a true socialist" position.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,6000,988582,00.html
Corin Redgrave's detailing of the black-listing of his father (Michael), one of the people who were targets of Orwell's informing.

It is also wrong to suggest that because these people suffered no repression, informing against them was more or less harmless. That is not how Orwell judged English anti-semitism, for instance: "I am not particularly impressed that it does not take violent forms." That informing should seem so harmless now, to Timothy Garton Ash, author of last week's article on Orwell's list, and others, says much about the contemporary scene and how it affects our sensibility.

It is now an imprisonable offence, under the Terrorism Act 2000, not to report on a member of any proscribed organisation. Large posters urge on us the patriotic duty to report a "benefit fraud". That was not the ethos 54 years ago. Then, as Orwell rightly said, an English person's idea of an odious person was a "nosy parker". And next to the nosy parker, he might as well have added, was the nark.

If I were to venture a tentative opinion, Orwell seems to have mistaken his own opinions about other people's intelligence and motivations for revealed truth, and perhaps to have been not quite candid with himself about his own motivations.

[Toucano]

22. Thank you!

I didn't mean to make you do so much work for me, but I really appreciate it. That wasn't covered in my miseducation! LOL!

[burythehatchet]

31. this is all news to me. Very interesting though

I suspect that 1984 takes on a whole new complexion in light if this information.

[iverglas]

32. true

(and yr welcome, dralston -- my own education is not exactly complete in this respect ;) )

I suspect that 1984 takes on a whole new complexion in light if this information.

Animal Farm, of course, the allegory for the Stalinist Soviet Union, reflects Orwell's complete break with communism -- some animals are more equal, etc.

His political politics were undoubtedly admirable; his personal politics, and his apparent blind spot/eye when it came to who was on his side and who wasn't, seem to be the problematic bit.

[Touchdown]

19. Don't rent it. I bought it for $6.00

It's part of MGM's "cinema classics" series, and it's more than a year old. Best Buy has it pretty cheap.

Hurt is haunting, and this was Burton's last film. I bought it about 3 months ago after reading the book a 2nd time in 20 years. They got it down. Much of the dialog is lifted right out of the book, and musch of the memorable scenes are straight from the book. They got his cigarette failing to hold the tobacco, O'Brien giving him directions to his place in front of a viewscreen, The paperweight falling on the floor, and the "it's so small" comment from Winston, about the object inside. Miss Exercise chiding Winston into doing toe-touches wrong, "You want a picture of the future? Imagine a boot, stamping on a human face. For-ever." O'Brien pulling a tooth out of Winston's mouth, crying because he loved Big Brother at the end, I never imagined the rat cage looking like that, but it works....I could go on. They did a fantastic job on this film.

It was filmed between February and April of 1984...the exact timeline that Orwell envisioned his story to take place.

[htuttle]

24. Look for the one with the original, non-Eurythmics soundtrack, though

The one with the whole Dominic Muldowney soundtrack. The producers substituted the Eurythmics soundtrack for the theatrical release against the wishes of the director.

Checking on it, I think the DVD release only has the Muldowney soundtrack, since the director regained some control at that point and put it back.

[burythehatchet]

26. Now there's a trivia question if I ever need one!!

I will definitely be buying the original track.

:thumbsup:

[Touchdown]

27. Not to worry. original score is in it...

Not that you'll find it very enjoyable, unless you like nationalistic love anthems. E.T. soundtrack it's not. The Eurythmics is on the opening credits, but they're noplace in the film, even the end credits.

[burythehatchet]

25. Agree 100%

Significant for me is the deep resonance with my fears about today and the future.

[fujiyama]

29. Read the book

years ago (actually borrowed it from the library)... Instantly fell in love with the book and it became my favorites and I ended up buying it. I'm glad I did, because I picked it up off my shelf recently.

I hadn't read it again until now, but I just started. I also cought the movie (Richard Burton version) and was actually impressed. I had not watched it until now, because I always felt a movie wouldn't live up to the book.

Granted, the book is still better, but the casting for Winston was amazing, just as I had imagined him.