Now, before I dive into why I’m bowled over, I’d like to give you some background: I didn’t grow up reading “the Classics”. (This has made me an absolute heathen to my boyfriend, who is considerably English - not only linguistically, but culturally.) In my defence, I moved around a lot during my childhood and was in 6 different schools, each with its own curriculum. Plenty got lost along the way. 1984 never featured in my list of compulsory reading material.
However, recent events and the constant comparison to the 1984-world we seem to be heading towards made me curious, and so I buckled down and read it.
I have regrets.
Not really, of course, but the content has stuck with me. Haunted me. Gave me a glimpse into the very evil that runs (or at least thinks it does) the world. The evil that, in everyday life, we pretend doesn’t exist.
As a writer, I often have to tap into parts of humanity that I don’t embody in any other situation. I’ve written horribly violent scenes that left me absolutely broken and nauseous afterward. There is one part of 1984, in particular, that duplicated this sense of doom and dreariness.
Winston is being physically and mentally tormented to abandon the truth and accept the lie. He is starved and beaten, and loses weight, hair and teeth in the process. Part of the torture is having to face himself in the mirror while a vile voice, O’Brien’s voice, berates humanity. Winston watches his emaciated, beaten body and is asked to compare what he sees to the pinnacle of humanity.
Intellectually, I know that this is done for a reason: to induce cognitive dissonance that will help along Winston’s reluctant acceptance of the lie. Nothing is as effective as seeing with your own eyes what you have become; of seeing how far you’ve fallen. This technique absolutely works since, in the very next chapter, Winston is being fed regular meals and his body begins to heal. He would rather be strong and wrong than weak and right. I can’t honestly say that, as a reader, I blamed him.
What I cannot emotionally reconcile is the underlying tone of that paragraph… That, in order to be considered beautifully human, one must forgo one’s attachment to absolute truth. That those two concepts - humanity and honesty - are somehow mutually exclusive: we cannot embody both. Or, to be more correct, we are not allowed to embody both.
I’m sure there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have formally analysed the themes in 1984 in every possible way, so I don’t for one second think that my thoughts on this scene are novel or groundbreaking. But of all the atrocities written in that book, this is the one that impacted me the most. This is the one that left me wandering in a daze for days after I put it down. This is the one that haunts me.
We are seeing, more and more, that truth is being outlawed and lies are celebrated. An alarming number of people are calling for more censorship and control, casting “Freedom is slavery” in harrowing light. No wonder some are warning the rest that we’re headed for a 1984-dystopian future.
It makes me wonder if Eric Blare (George Orwell’s real name) somehow, through his experiences, got an insight into humanity that most don’t see; or if he is warning us from the past, his voice getting louder now that global events are becoming more jarring than ever.
Personally, I don’t like to think that humanity needs to be controlled. I believe we are inherently good and that we can (and have) accomplish great feats. That is perhaps the reason why 1984 left me so haunted: it speaks of potential lost, should we allow external organisations and power structures to shape our minds.