To reflect on and discuss Orwell’s 1984 is to do more than pay homage to a literary masterpiece. It is to reconsider and question ourselves, our society, our world; our past, our present and—above all—our future. For, whatever the date, 1984 will always remain as a menacing possibility, being not so much a year as a state of mind, a nightmare which we dread because we know it to be essentially true; because something in us responds ineluctably to Orwell’s warning cry. It is surely because Orwell has captured our own latent fears that this book, which has sold nearly 12,000,000 copies and has been translated into some 62 languages since it was first published in 1949, has exerted such an influence on the thought and language of our time. Orwell is no longer just an English writer; he has become a figure of global stature, whose two main works, 1984 and Animal Farm, have made themselves familiar to millions. Thomas Mann once observed that “in our times the conscience of mankind expressed itself in political terms,” a remark that can be applied directly to Orwell’s writing. For Orwell’s greatness lies in his moral stature, while his peculiar contribution to modern literature lies in his application of morality, of the dictates of unsilenced conscience, to the politics of our bloody and murderous era.
. . .For Orwell, Nature was essentially good and technology essentially evil. Technology in 1984 is used to enslave men, not liberate them. The telescreen, the speakwrite, the helicopter, the versificators that compose the songs sung by the proles, the book-writing machine on which Julia labors, and all the rest of the technological paraphernalia of the novel exist only to aggrandize the power of the state and violate human nature. . .Orwell’s vision of the future would have been even grimmer had he been aware of the development of the computer, silicon chip technology, mind-altering drugs, and modern weaponry. As it is, the picture he paints of a society in which everyone is under surveillance for 24 hours a day is now not only possible but highly feasible.
I remarked earlier that 1984 had not been well received by our intelligentsia, who have, for the most part, either undervalued or systematically denigrated this work. . .Full Text (PDF)The_New_Barbarians-edited.pdf