Reading the book (at or around the same age as Frances) probably had the effect on me of further darkening my already somewhat bleak view of the world. I mean, I also read Crime and Punishment around that age...lol
The latter I sought out. 1984 was thrust in my face (possibly assigned reading, I can't recall), along with the supremely retarded The Catcher in the Rye.
But now I'm realizing how 1984 (the book) damaged my view of sexuality at that young, impressionable age. No doubt part of the purpose. It depicted stolen moments of quasi-freedom and intimacy in the scene in the grove, with whatsherface, but still under the threat of an oppressive, "all-seeing" surveillance system. Reading that scene, more than any of the others in the book, at that age left an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach.
That feeling is something I can still call up, today--on the 120th anniversary of the book. How creepy. It surely doesn't originate with me, nor does it represent my actual hopes for humanity.
Re Catcher in the Rye. I'm interested that your reaction to it was 'retarded', when you you were forced to read it.
Of course one never knows what one's reaction would have been to a book you read on your own initiative if you had been forced, and vice-versa.
I picked up a copy left around in a classroom because another class were reading it. I'm bemused by reaction in 3 ways.
When I first read it, aged c. 14, I think it was my first exposure to such vivid first person stream of consciousness; with that plus the foreignness and novelty of the the American argot (I'm English) - I found it (or first few pages) hilarious.
The second time I read it, in middle age, I was puzzled as to why I had found it funny.
My third exposure was an essay pointing out how obvious it is - and yet so completely overlooked - that it is about a sexually abused child. So I looked at it again, and was again puzzled as to how I had missed all the obvious implications.
I was lucky enough to come across To Kill a Mockingbird in the same way, rather than have to study it. I couldn't put it down. It should be required reading for admittance to the Human Race! ;-)
I enjoyed that diversion. And it is helpful to hear about your range of reactions over various life stages.
I can't be bothered to revisit the book. It felt like programming when I was a kid. I didn't find it funny, then (hence my disparaging assessment of the book). The insights offered by the essay to which you refer intrigue me, now, but not enough to revisit the book. I might read the essay.
Do you have a reference for it?
(I didn't really have a problem with To Kill a Mockingbird as a kid. I found it somewhat puzzling because of the fetishizing of that grey, old house. The seeds were planted for me to detest fiction eventually because of how an author's inner vision of a peculiar relationship to the world is given free rein. I now do not trust other people's inner vision, for the most part.)
P.S. I love how y'all Brits use the plural so logically ("another class were reading it"). I mean this sincerely. I can't do that here in the US because folks here will become confused. But the plural for groupings makes perfect sense to me.
I must've been a tough cookie when I was young! When I read about Winston's crushed secretive sexuality in that scene, I merely recognised how that pressure was already applied to us in the 1960s. I became determined to claim my right to sexual intercourse as soon as was feasible. When I told my mum about my intentions she went a whiter shade of pale. Her generation had been so sexually repressed that babies outside of wedlock was considered terribly shameful. My mother did not come from a religious family - the shame was fed by fear because many girls were sent into asylums for licentiousness.
Many of my generation discarded the taboos for a decade (70s) until the nasty chemists caused AIDS and revived the big fear. All part of their depopulation agenda, I suppose.
I don't know what satanic means. I have no belief in such things. The main thing I remember about that scene was that they smoked a cigarette which was also forbidden. That control has been almost achieved now by false science claiming that smoking causes cancer. If that were true we ought to see a reduction in cancer.... but we don't. It continues to rise at an increased pace.
It occurs to me that tobacco has protected us from many respiratory diseases in the past. Maybe giving up smoking, under government coercion, was part of the weakening process that has left us more vulnerable to pathogens.
"Two plus two equals five" is a mathematically incorrect phrase used in the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. It appears as a possible statement of Ingsoc philosophy, like the dogma "War is Peace", which the Party expects the citizens of Oceania to believe is true. In writing his secret diary in the year 1984, the protagonist Winston Smith ponders if the Inner Party might declare that "two plus two equals five" is a fact. Smith further ponders whether or not belief in such a consensus reality makes the lie true.
Crikey! The CIA must have been quick off the mark - they were only formed in 1947 and Orwell’s book, 1984, was published in 1948. Did they write it for him like they do for articles published in the MSM nowadays?
The promotion of the book into schools, colleges and libraries, even into films may well have been orchestrated by alphabetti agencies but that does not suggest that the man who wrote 1984 was any kind of CIA operative.
I would be very surprised if anyone is going to take one Substack writer’s word for it based on a couple of obscure and contended books.
I am trying to limit the amount of time I spend online, in general. The surveillance aspect of it is putting me off posting. I do pop in to read notes and some posts. Sometimes I think of something to say. I'm also a bit fed up of stating the obvious over and over.
I was tearful when the horse was offed in Animal Farm!
Thanks Frances. Great post.
Indeed!
The world today being like 1984/Brave New World/The Matrix/They Live, etc.
DOUBLE PLUS UNGOOD!
Great article
Reading the book (at or around the same age as Frances) probably had the effect on me of further darkening my already somewhat bleak view of the world. I mean, I also read Crime and Punishment around that age...lol
The latter I sought out. 1984 was thrust in my face (possibly assigned reading, I can't recall), along with the supremely retarded The Catcher in the Rye.
But now I'm realizing how 1984 (the book) damaged my view of sexuality at that young, impressionable age. No doubt part of the purpose. It depicted stolen moments of quasi-freedom and intimacy in the scene in the grove, with whatsherface, but still under the threat of an oppressive, "all-seeing" surveillance system. Reading that scene, more than any of the others in the book, at that age left an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach.
That feeling is something I can still call up, today--on the 120th anniversary of the book. How creepy. It surely doesn't originate with me, nor does it represent my actual hopes for humanity.
But, really...
Ick.
Veering slightly off-topic perhaps ...
Re Catcher in the Rye. I'm interested that your reaction to it was 'retarded', when you you were forced to read it.
Of course one never knows what one's reaction would have been to a book you read on your own initiative if you had been forced, and vice-versa.
I picked up a copy left around in a classroom because another class were reading it. I'm bemused by reaction in 3 ways.
When I first read it, aged c. 14, I think it was my first exposure to such vivid first person stream of consciousness; with that plus the foreignness and novelty of the the American argot (I'm English) - I found it (or first few pages) hilarious.
The second time I read it, in middle age, I was puzzled as to why I had found it funny.
My third exposure was an essay pointing out how obvious it is - and yet so completely overlooked - that it is about a sexually abused child. So I looked at it again, and was again puzzled as to how I had missed all the obvious implications.
I was lucky enough to come across To Kill a Mockingbird in the same way, rather than have to study it. I couldn't put it down. It should be required reading for admittance to the Human Race! ;-)
Thank you.
I enjoyed that diversion. And it is helpful to hear about your range of reactions over various life stages.
I can't be bothered to revisit the book. It felt like programming when I was a kid. I didn't find it funny, then (hence my disparaging assessment of the book). The insights offered by the essay to which you refer intrigue me, now, but not enough to revisit the book. I might read the essay.
Do you have a reference for it?
(I didn't really have a problem with To Kill a Mockingbird as a kid. I found it somewhat puzzling because of the fetishizing of that grey, old house. The seeds were planted for me to detest fiction eventually because of how an author's inner vision of a peculiar relationship to the world is given free rein. I now do not trust other people's inner vision, for the most part.)
P.S. I love how y'all Brits use the plural so logically ("another class were reading it"). I mean this sincerely. I can't do that here in the US because folks here will become confused. But the plural for groupings makes perfect sense to me.
I must've been a tough cookie when I was young! When I read about Winston's crushed secretive sexuality in that scene, I merely recognised how that pressure was already applied to us in the 1960s. I became determined to claim my right to sexual intercourse as soon as was feasible. When I told my mum about my intentions she went a whiter shade of pale. Her generation had been so sexually repressed that babies outside of wedlock was considered terribly shameful. My mother did not come from a religious family - the shame was fed by fear because many girls were sent into asylums for licentiousness.
Many of my generation discarded the taboos for a decade (70s) until the nasty chemists caused AIDS and revived the big fear. All part of their depopulation agenda, I suppose.
There was something satanic about that grove. It was more than I could grasp at that age, but I definitely picked up on it.
I don't know what satanic means. I have no belief in such things. The main thing I remember about that scene was that they smoked a cigarette which was also forbidden. That control has been almost achieved now by false science claiming that smoking causes cancer. If that were true we ought to see a reduction in cancer.... but we don't. It continues to rise at an increased pace.
It occurs to me that tobacco has protected us from many respiratory diseases in the past. Maybe giving up smoking, under government coercion, was part of the weakening process that has left us more vulnerable to pathogens.
Nothing would surprise me now.
You don't have to believe in Satan to believe in Satanists! ;-)
I suspect that genuine tobacco is less harmful in moderation than the additives they put in it.
it was quietly mentioned during covid shenanigans that smokers got less symptoms
Yep. Didn't they recommend nicotine patches at one point? So bloody transparently revealing how wrong they were about tobacco.
I remember reading “Crime and Punishment” YEARS ago. It left me with a feeling I will never forget. Great book!
Good point, was Orwell warning or priming.
As the prescient Hollywood movies do.
2 + 2 = 5
"Two plus two equals five" is a mathematically incorrect phrase used in the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. It appears as a possible statement of Ingsoc philosophy, like the dogma "War is Peace", which the Party expects the citizens of Oceania to believe is true. In writing his secret diary in the year 1984, the protagonist Winston Smith ponders if the Inner Party might declare that "two plus two equals five" is a fact. Smith further ponders whether or not belief in such a consensus reality makes the lie true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_%2B_2_%3D_5
___________________
image link
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/USyT6NTlM0c/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEcCOgCEMoBSFXyq4qpAw4IARUAAIhCGAFwAcABBg==&rs=AOn4CLAs6y3coLjNuRR0g5c33jQrlknQRQ
This reminds me of a sermon.
2+2=5, by Most Rev. Donald J. Sanborn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USyT6NTlM0c
Orwell (Eric Blair) was indeed a CIA operative:
https://brigittebouzonnie.substack.com/p/orwell-agent-de-la-cia?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=372862&post_id=130488894&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
Crikey! The CIA must have been quick off the mark - they were only formed in 1947 and Orwell’s book, 1984, was published in 1948. Did they write it for him like they do for articles published in the MSM nowadays?
The promotion of the book into schools, colleges and libraries, even into films may well have been orchestrated by alphabetti agencies but that does not suggest that the man who wrote 1984 was any kind of CIA operative.
I would be very surprised if anyone is going to take one Substack writer’s word for it based on a couple of obscure and contended books.
And yet humans can be so beautiful. But maybe we missed the boat.
Interesting. English links?
I don't know of any. However, you can easily translate Brigitte Bouzonnie's article in Edge or with Google's Translate.
- Luc
I will surely be using some of these on my Substack. Thanks
'The woman without her own comment box'
_________________________
"1984 was supposed to be a warning not an instruction manual"
I thought that was my line!!!
Anytime anyone says something was a prophecy this is all I think.
What is the "last Hour"?
Oh yeah? According to whom?
it's almost as if he was in the fabian society too, or was likewise a lower-level "freemason" like the rest of them
I am trying to limit the amount of time I spend online, in general. The surveillance aspect of it is putting me off posting. I do pop in to read notes and some posts. Sometimes I think of something to say. I'm also a bit fed up of stating the obvious over and over.
Neither has he, but he tells a good tale!