Imagine imprinted forcibly in
your head a list of do’s and don’ts. And you can’t deviate and act otherwise because
there’s patrolling happening. Even though the keeping a watch on is external,
it feels like someone sitting in your head with a whip. You falter to comply
and your back is torn open by the crack of the whip. Not just your actions, but
your expressions and more importantly your thoughts are under surveillance.
Your lips are pulled back a little longer than needed for a smile and instantly
appears a rip on your skin – two banks created along a divide where droplets of
blood appear like perspiration. You look tired when you’re not expected to or
allowed to and immediately you’re jolted by a blow on your head; your
countenance lacks the amount of hatred expected of it and right away you are
taken to task. Follow sheep follow. Follow! Or suffer!
This is probably the
scariest book I have ever read. George Orwell’s conceptualization of a place
ruled by an oligarchy and headed by a person revered as Big Brother, where war
means peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength depicts the
unconquerable and incredible extent to which the human mind lusts for power – a
power with an unfathomable distaste for thought. Thought, cognition, logic,
emotion – basic elements that make humans human is not curtailed but
annihilated; the slavery that is desired is more mental than physical, the
latter being more easily achieved.
This book reminded me of a
movie (though nothing of the plot is similar, but the suppression and
oppression is) I had seen a long time ago, called ‘Hostel’ where a particular
affluent group bids and pays huge amounts to an organization that captures
random tourists in order for the group to enjoy inflicting pain in unimaginable
torturous ways on them and see, experience and be amused by their suffering. It
had seemed horrendous to me then until I read this book; at least in the movie,
the captives were finally killed.
On further thought, why is
1984 so appalling, why was I so scared and shocked reading it? I just had to
open my eyes and look around. It is still 1984 and it is yet the very Orwell’s
world we are living in, in bits we understand and in bits we don’t, in what we
are given to know and mostly from being kept in the dark. Isn’t war a means of
feigning peace for most world leaders even today, a necessity to justify their
presence, their power more than anything else, a necessity to keep the masses
always wanting so they can’t rise beyond their basic needs and never rise to
question the situations inflicted on them. Make the arrangement for the next
meal more urgent and necessary than the missile strikes that can take away
them, their limbs, their family; show them you are the saviours, the guardians.
If I don’t have my loaf of
bread or a handful of rice, if I don’t have enough water to drink, I won’t
think of and ask intelligent questions; I’ll not have thoughts beyond those.
I’ll listen to you then; I’ll steal and kill if that is what you want me to do
for that loaf of bread. I’ll sell myself for a cigarette. How can two and two
not be five when you tell me so? I believe it; I believe you, I have told
myself to because dying is not easy and living is even harder; not complying
with you will take away the little I have, it won’t grant me death but an
unendurable pain you’ll enjoy inflicting. Two and two ARE FIVE.
The rulers in Orwell’s story
have departments called the thoughtpolice, who ensure that people don’t think
beyond what has been regulated for them; they are constantly on the watch; they
don’t just peep but also live in people’s houses as tele-screens; they watch
their emotions, their words, their actions; they are there on the streets, they
are there everywhere. You are never left to be alone. They have employed
children to keep an eye on their parents, neighbours and society if it can be called
that. The children are the most diligent soldiers; they see a purpose, they
feel important, valued; their brains have been cleansed of innocence and fed hatred.
How easy it is to manipulate the little malleable minds and as I look around, I
see hatred being planted in these minds in the name of god and religion,
boundaries and cultures. I can never forget the most horrific scene I have ever
witnessed; it scared me to death – it was a documentary I think that I had been
watching on television. Around 20 five-six year olds sitting around a table,
all dressed in white (will stop with the description here), a book in front of
each, they chanting aloud in unison, as if in a trance, nodding wildly as if
possessed. It was not god but a devil I saw in each of them; devils being
brought to life to be nurtured.
Orwell’s world also has
institutions called the Ministry of Truth and the Ministry of Love. All in the
present that Big Brother and his associates think wrong is erased from the
present and past; the past is constantly altered. For example, let’s say the
Taj Mahal isn’t felt necessary by the government and so it destroys it, and
then the Ministry of Truth says it never existed; it erases its presence from
all past books and references. A few years later, one would naturally believe
it never existed because they don’t find it mentioned anywhere. What is red
today might be needed to be called blue if the Ministry of Truth said so and it
will always have been blue. A systematic erasing of history is carried out
according to convenience – non-followers are quietly obliterated not just
physically but from everything that they were associated with; after a point
no-one would know they ever existed. History is altered and created afresh
every day. Wonderful, isn’t it! More fabulous is the Ministry of Love. Gentleness
oozing from its name, only if it were veritably so. But it isn’t. Its love lies
in torturing the non-believers, the ones who have had the audacity to think,
the ones to not comply – even if the non-compliance is only in their minds. It
propagates hate and loves to do so.
Orwell’s country is
incessantly at war – a necessity of the government. Whether it really is at war
or not, we know not and the citizens never will, but they believe they are. And
to wipe out an opposition – not the external one but if one does appear
internally, within the government or the country, the level of conspiracy
extends to creating their own make-belief opposition. The citizens are trained
and expected to do both – rejoice in the formidability and justness of the institution
in power and at the same time hurl insults and debase the opposition by terming
them as traitors. Heads I win, tails I win. And you only win if you lose to me.
I wonder if oppressors in
power in the past and present have picked up their thoughts and ideas of
tyranny from this book. Even more dangerous I found was Orwell showing us how
language and words can curtail thoughts. We’ve come a long way in terms of
language and have created words to express every single thing, emotion –
concrete and abstract and continue to do so, but imagine if these words were
suddenly taken away from you. You want to express hunger but don’t have words,
you feel delight but can’t express it as don’t have the words or can’t use
them. Gradually, the emotions will be lost on you and you’ll ignore them to the
point that you are convinced they never existed. Orwell’s rulers have reduced
the words that can be used to a bare minimum, so expression becomes devoid of
much emotion and thought is curtailed. You are free only as a slave.
To have thought of such an
evil world in such detail and with such clarity, one can only do if some sadism
exists in them and it is no surprise then that George Orwell’s wife in a biography
describes her husband as a sadistic, homophobic and cruel person. It is also
claimed that she had written parts of 1984 much earlier but was never given
credit for it by Orwell. Anyway, I loved the book for how cleverly it was thought
and written. Simply amazing! I think it’s a must read for everyone who thinks
even remotely that governments manipulate citizens and their country; it will
open your eyes to the extent to which governments go and can go; to the extent
evil can exist in the hearts and minds of people. I think books like ‘1984’, ‘The
stranger’ by Albert Camus and ‘Cats in the cradle’ by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. ought
to be part of youngsters’ syllabus to help them be aware and think clearly and
pragmatically when thrown in contrivances, and more importantly to form their
own thoughts and not rely on borrowed ones in times of both war and peace.
Beware! Big Brother is
watching.
My rating – 5/5
Picture credits
Cover page - http://friendslibrary.in/books/detailedinfo/910/1984
George Orwell - https://study.com/academy/lesson/george-orwell-biography-books-facts.html
I usually don’t read books
of this kind; don’t remember the last time I read one like this. However, it is an ideal pick when you’re travelling, a light book to read - no thinking, no analyzing, no
analogies, no allegories, just a following of one thing leading to another and
yet I don’t regret having spent time reading this adventure filled story. Quite
nicely arranged; no wonder, the plot was grabbed for a movie. 
