1984 sucks!
Well, ok it doesn’t completely suck…
BUT
It does have some big issues that I want to rant about because I was forced to read this gosh darn book!
Ok, in all seriousness, 1984, a book by George Orwell written in 1948, is a pretty decent piece of literature. It sets up the dystopian genre in a pretty major way and certainly got to my core during the third act (I barely slept after finishing it). The message about the dangers of totalitarianism and mass surveillance is an important one especially in today's political climate.
Of course, because this is an old book written by a bad guy (sorry George it’s true, you sucked) it doesn’t do a great job conveying that message as well as it did when the average reader sucked a lot more than they might today. What do I mean by that? I mean this: the book is problematic and we need a new version that does it better.
Spoilers ahead! And #Trigger Warning
What's wrong with it?
There is so much potential inside this story that it makes me angry how squandered it is by the topical references, sexism, and racism. I love the world the story creates but there are a couple changes that need to happen for this book to become a GOOD book.
Step One: Julia’s character
Julia is the main counterpart to Winston in 1984. However, she is a pretty shallow character whose only reason to rebel against the system is for personal sexual gratification. This is a contrast Winston himself makes in the story between their motives; his ideological, hers based on gratification. She sleeps with a 60 year old man when she is 16! She laughs when winston said he wanted to rape and kill her! She is disinterested in books and anything intellectual despite being quite good at deceiving people and working within the system to get what she wants.
In a new version of this story, Julia should not be a passive hater of the Party (the oppressive people in charge), but take an active role like Winston does and even work harder than he does to fight for freedom with her savvy skills at navigating the complex bureaucracy. It would be so cool for this mysterious party member who Winston initially hates a lot (Don’t worry i'm getting to that) for following the rules to be a secret freedom fighter in a perfect disguise. Julia has a lot of potential and by making her a real character instead of an object for Winston to use for his own purposes, this story could be so much better! You could still discuss her sexuality and history of abuse because realistically (despite Orwell's intentions) what happened when she was 16 probably wasn’t her doing. That could be another entire facet of the story and if handled well could add a lot to the emotional impact of the story.
George Orwell depicts every woman in 1984 (there aren’t that many) as either stupid or motivated by sexual impulses. Even Julia herself denounces women as stupid and Winston describes them as particularly susceptible to propaganda. Orwell’s sexism is deeply rooted in every character of this novel. Ugghhh I hate him so much
Step Two: Winston sucks guys…
I’ve seen a lot of discourse over whether Winston is supposed to be a good character and George was just that evil or if he was supposed to be a bad person but have a good perspective. I think this is stupid because making your main character in an allegorical novel (a piece of literature where you want to reader to connect with the main character) have thoughts of raping and killing Julia within the firest 20 pages of the book is not a good way to do storytelling. At best, at best it muddies the waters of your allegory by making the level headed character unlikable. Later, he considers murdering her again, killing his wife (who is gone), and also describes everyone as rat-like and sad (despite being like that himself to an extent), and is focused on sex way too much for a revolutionary (he should be overthrowing stuff).
Removing the sexual element of their relationship entirely would fix a lot of the problems relating to Winston and Julia, but Winston needs to be more likable for later events to have MAXIMUM EMOTIONAL IMPACT (like his lobotomy). So he needs to stop objectifying women and his flaw can be his overconfidence and self righteousness, he doesn’t have to be perfect but he shouldn’t be a womanizer (because that sucks).
Winston should be a character that the reader can identify with at least a little bit, this is essential to delivering the message of the story (totalitarianism = bad) to the reader most effectively. The level head of the story should not be an unforgivable mess of a man (I’m surprised Winston doesn’t hate himself considering how much he hates rats).
Step Three: The Proles are people!!
In this story the party swears that the proletariat are not people, they are animals. And they are evil so it's ok for them to think that because they are wrong, but when Winston meets them, they aren’t depicted as being very smart. In a revision, I think they should meet some Proles who are considering revolution or at least are sharp individuals (just because you are poor and don’t go to school doesn’t make you stupid). This would also make the sad ending worse, Winston and Julia were so close to revolution but it won’t happen, they couldn’t fully convince the Proles they met to actually take large action. Including even just a bit more of life for Proles in the story I think would flush out the world more and give a better explanation as to why they aren’t rebelling despite being in the majority of the population. I don’t have a fully formed idea for this section but something of this sort would be good for the story.
Step Four: Racism is also here
So George is sexist, just a bad guy all around, and classist, great… But he is also racist. I have a revised version of 1984 (the version I read and the only one I know) but I believe the only changes were a few racist words. Those obviously should be changed in a remade version of the story because slurs are bad. Another example comes to mind when Winston and Julia meet O’Brien’s servant Martin. The way Winston describes him is pretty racist and that's in my revised edition (I fear what the original said). We can tell a story about a dystopian society without being racist.
Just because a book is old doesn’t mean we can excuse the really bad decisions made by bad authors with bad opinions. I think this story has a lot of interesting characters and elements to offer, but it also has a lot of problems too. Of course, we need to acknowledge that these are intrinsic parts of the text that George Orwell included to complete his sick and twisted artistic vision. But the story can be told without them to improve the impact of the story and make the characters more interesting and likable. This along with some updating to make it all more time relevant, and I think there is still a great story to be told within the world of 1984.
(Honestly, a version of the story with a revised and more realistic Julia from perspective would be really cool, Winston doesn’t matter that much tbh)
Conclusion!!
So yeah, overall this book does suck a lot in spots (a lot of spots) but still has a lot of cool elements as well. I know there is something really good hiding in the world and somebody should make it real. I am too busy and don’t have enough experience or enough motivation to do it.
This is a pretty big first actual blog post, usually I won’t be this heavy with stuff (my friend's blog prompted me to rant about this myself). I will definitely talk about music stuff in the future and some of my favorite songs.
Thanks for reading !