Nineteen Eighty-Four book discussion *SPOILERS!*

Planet-man

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Carried over from the current Dreamcasting thread....

I've added a description of my invisioned opening sequence that I came up with back when I read the book 2 years ago. Check it out.

What I like about the ending and more importantly, the Room 101 revelation, is that it's completely necessary in terms of the book being used as a know-thy-enemy/know what's at stake eye-opener, because it's exactly how a system like that would try to work. I've come to terms with the ending by deciding that even though Winston was changed, even though there was the "real" betrayal after all, and the affair and rebelion will be forgotten and erased, whatever the Inner's say.... the fact that they happened in the first place is still something, and all those moments still exist somewhere, with the past.
And there are all the people in the equatorial regions. They may live lives embroiled in war, poverty and death, but they still have the opportunity to live and die free.
Planet-man said:
I also like to imagine the Earth was later invaded by aliens and the resulting chaos destroyed the system. And don't even get me started about my partially storyboarded, eventually to be animated alternate ending...
TwilightEL said:
I was reading the Black Dossier, and they talk about
O'Brien being the "leader" of the party and how Ingsoc fell. "Leader"? The party has no leader. Did the writer even read the book?

But then I realized... if that happened, it would be beautiful. Because O'Brien knew that having a leader, a real flesh-and-blood leader would destroy the party. He knew it. So if he actually became leader? And everyone on his level or higher allowed him to do it? It would mean that under the layers of brainwashing, doublethink and self-censoring, they knowingly allowed the party to crumble and decay from within. That would be amazing.
You're challenging Alan Moore?
Moore must be familiar with 1984, having written parts of it himself.

No offence guys but shouldn't this thread stay about the dreamcasting not the book? If you want to continue talking about the book why not make a thread on the book.

Part of me wonders whether or not O'Brien actually still is a faithful member of The Brotherhood. Maybe Goldstien really wrote the book, maybe O'Brien and co. did. Let's say it's the latter. What better way to make sure it's never eradicated than to write and use it as a supposed tool of the Thought Police? What better way to disguise all true allegiance to The Brotherhood than to record your actions and expose them yourself as tactical treachery if your pupils are caught(which they were, but by Charrington, not O'Brien)?

Hell, maybe the entire system was FOUNDED on Inner Party members secretly running and believing in the Brotherhood because of Doublethink, and the government needing an even closer enemy. The possibilities are so mind-boggling and endless, just more proof this is one of the greatest books ever written and far better than that Nobel-Prize winning Lord of the Flies trash.

What do you think?
 
Exactly what I thought when I read it. O'Brien may just be a double-double agent. Doublethink kind of makes anything possible. But I'd never even considered that the entire Inner Party could be founded on The Brotherhood.

I'm not sure if I agree with your notion that an alien invasion would be the thing that would bring down Oceania. I think it would be more likely just entropy and Inner Party bickering. (As the Black Dossier suggests.) And I do think that Oceania would fall. The appendix on newspeak was written in the past tense, describing Oceania as a nation that once existed. Of course that's just an appendix, but there's nothing harmful about hopeless, desperate fantasies.

Twilight's comment about the people in the equatorial regions: I thought the same thing, but remember, it's implied that those people are kept as slaves and forced to work in mines and whatnot.
 
Exactly what I thought when I read it. O'Brien may just be a double-double agent. Doublethink kind of makes anything possible.

Indeed. The more I think about it the more I think that Orwell probably intended that to be the case, because really, that kind of Brotherhood operation is the only one that would really make sense in the overall situation.

But I'd never even considered that the entire Inner Party could be founded on The Brotherhood.

Didn't even occur to me until part way through the writing of that post. I think it's a bit too much, honestly, but certainly worth thinking about.

I'm not sure if I agree with your notion that an alien invasion would be the thing that would bring down Oceania.

No, it's just a backup plan. A ****ING BADASS one.

I think it would be more likely just entropy and Inner Party bickering. (As the Black Dossier suggests.) And I do think that Oceania would fall.

Likely. Either that or some sort of especially ingenious and ambitious prole(and there's always at least one, in any group or society, no matter the circumstance) triggers an eventual uprising.

The appendix on newspeak was written in the past tense, describing Oceania as a nation that once existed. Of course that's just an appendix, but there's nothing harmful about hopeless, desperate fantasies.

Exactly what I thought/hoped while reading that part.

I take Winston's speech about how no matter what, they'll fail, something will rise up and stop them, because love and goodness just... is... more powerful than hate, and the spirit of man and all that, as Orwell's way of conveying that all that actually does happen, the only way he could tell us without comprimising the effectiveness of the novel.

Moore wrote part of 1984? was he even alive when it was written?

Oh yeah, like I told Langsta...

Oh yeah, the whole Oligarchical Collectivism thing was his idea, which he subconsciously suggested to Orwell when passing through him as elementary particles in the air during his time as a non-corporeal entity, just before the book was published in 1948. He then spent the next few years interacting with nature and finally being absorbed into some soil out of which grew a stalk of corn, which was later eaten by a Northhampton brewery worker named Ernest Moore, who turned part of it into biological fluids which he used to impregnate his wife, who gave birth to the human form of Alan Moore in 1953.

 
There's one part of the book that I think is both optimistic and horrifying. The rhyme about the bells and the line "Meet me in the place where there is no darkness"... they both imply that the Thought Police have been using the telescreen and other Party members to lay the groundwork for the brainwashing, possibly for years. On one hand, the idea of them carefully manipulating his mind... it's horrible. On the other hand, that means that you can't just grab some random person off the streets and get them to betray everyone they've ever loved to the point where if they live a hundred years, they will never, ever be able to get better.
 
I have to reread this book, but it is my all time favorite book ever!

I wrote a paper on the metaphoric usage of animals and sex that got me my only English A in high school. I got only one more English A, but that was in freshman college English (a smashing story i might share someday)
 
I read it a while ago and enjoyed it. It wasn't as good as I thought it would be (Planet-man hyped it up A LOT) but I'm glad I read it.

I prefer Animal Farm though.
 
I read it a while ago and enjoyed it. It wasn't as good as I thought it would be (Planet-man hyped it up A LOT) but I'm glad I read it.

I prefer Animal Farm though.

It was kinda the opposite for me, but it's more of the fact that I hate talking animals. Even Lassie is a bit of a stretch for me.
 
I hadn't heard anybody else talk about this before, nor can any find any talk of it on with Google, but I was thinking about the lyrics over the past week or so and Tears For Fears' "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" seems like it almost has to be about Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Listen to the lyrics(while ignoring the video, probably): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOA4ixV-3jU
 

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