11th of 2022, was the much talked about 1984 by Eric Arthur Blair, known by his pen name, George Orewell. Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903 in Motihari, Bengal Presidency, British India. His mother took him to UK for his schooling, he could not get scholorship for his college, as he was not brilliant academically, and so he joined, the family decided that Blair should join the Imperial Police, the precursor of the Indian Police Service. Blair's maternal grandmother lived at Moulmein, so he chose a posting in Burma, then still a province of British India. Working as an imperial police officer gave him considerable responsibility while most of his contemporaries were still at university in England. When ill and on holiday in London, he resigned from the Indian Imperial Police to become a writer, with effect from 12 March 1928 after five-and-a-half years of service. In early 1935 Blair met his future wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy, when his landlady, Rosalind Obermeyer, who was studying for a master's degree in psychology at University College London, invited some of her fellow students to a party. Orwell's health continued to decline after the diagnosis of tuberculosis in December 1947. In mid-1949, he courted Sonia Brownell, and they announced their engagement in September, shortly before he was removed to University College Hospital in London. Sonia took charge of Orwell's affairs and attended him diligently in the hospital. On the morning of 21 January, an artery burst in Orwell's lungs, killing him at age 46.Orwell's adopted son, Richard Horatio Blair, was brought up by Orwell's sister Avril. He is patron of The Orwell Society.
Read the kindle book, had paperback, saw the movie, and listened to the audio book as well.
'1984' George Orwell Audiobook (Full version) - Bing video
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” This by itself kept me hooked.
This is the story of the immediate future. - Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia, the powerful countries controlling or wanting to control others. The war is not fought in Oceanian, Eurasian or Eastasian territory but in the Arctic wastes and a disputed zone comprising the sea and land from Tangiers (Northern Africa) to Darwin (Australia). At the start, Oceania and Eastasia are allies fighting Eurasia in northern Africa and the Malabar Coast. In Nineteen Eighty-Four a war is raging on the "Malabar front" in "South India", but India does not figure at all.
We are introduced to terms like "doublethink", "Thought Police", "thoughtcrime", "Newspeak", and "2 + 2 = 5" and in 1948 the year he wrote the book, he envisioned the world in 1984 modelled after Stallins Russia and Nazi Germany. The three slogan of the Party is 'War is Peace', 'Freedom is slavery', 'Ignorance is Strength'. With the ministries, deliberately named after the opposite (doublethink) of their true functions: "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation." The book is a warning against totalitarianism. There is hate that is spread around. The celebrate hate week, and ask people to hate everyone who hate the party. It was always at night - the arrest invariably happened. There was no place where there was no darkness. They were afraid of love, they were afraid of loosing control. Even in sleep Big Brother was watching all. Thoughtcrime, did not entail death, it was death.
The hero, Winston Smith, lives in Oceania, one of the three super states, the capital of which is London, and which is ruled by English socialism, an Orwellian substitute for Stalinist communism. The language of Oceania is Newspeak. It has been devised to meet the requirements of "Engsoc" or "English Socialism". Newspeak consists either of newly coined words or words stripped of their old meaning. Newspeak generates and thrives on thought-cum-language mechanisms called Doublethink and Doublespeak. Doublethink means thinking simultaneously on contradictory tracks. Doublespeak allows you to make your words mean what you want them to mean and not what they actually mean.
This is the story of Winston and Julia's , Winston started being scared of Julia, hating Big Brother, but gradually they fall in love and dream of a free life. Winston had written that there is hope and it lies in the proles. Though Julia advise other wise, Winston, took faith in O'Brian but was tortured, who wants Winston to believe 2+2 is 5. Winston was scared and could not stand rats, he was put in a room with rats in room 101. Acts by the Ministry of Love, who do not believe in killing the people, but changing the hearts of people, by their will, by making their existing mind hollow and fill it with their love. There were three stages in reintegration, that of learning, understanding and acceptance. It ends by Winston loving Big Brother, both feeling having betrayed to each other, departing, saying we must meet again.
1984 George Orwell Full Movie ORIGINAL and Best version - Bing video
By 2050 - earlier, probably - all real knowledge of oldspeak will have disappeared. There is often mention of south Indian Malabar war. There has been a lot of '1984' in the western countries, and some in India by 1984. 80 per cent of Orwell's predictions about a frightening, centralised all-seeing bureaucracy has already come to exist in America by 1984. The Indian bureaucracy is indeed a leviathan. But in character and attire, in outlook and behaviour, it is more Kafkaesque than Orwellian. However, many Indians feel that there is a Big Brother watching them all the time, looking down on them as they go about their daily chores. There is in India, as in all other countries, a Ministry of Truth doling out huge helpings daily of the truth as seen by the establishment, authorised, sanitised versions of events and non-events. People with a sense of humour, a somewhat scarce commodity in a nation of 700 million, call it the Ministry of Ifs and Buts (I&B). Ifs and Buts are also built into the style of Indian thinking. Social media is a cage full of starved rats and all of us have our heads stuck in there now, like it or not. The Machine has reduced man both in size and spirit. But recently we can see this being implemented in India as well. At times we are left to wonder, if the present government is taking it's lessons from this book.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
In India 1984 is much more around 2020, Big Brother is watching us, Child Spy is everywhere, Thought Police, Ministry of hate/love, double thinking, and by controlling men's mind, its possible to dehumanise people and life can go on. So many people keep changing ideologies and parties on a daily basis.
If we fail to preserve the heritage of the freedom, this would be the story of the future.
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