Classics: Why 1984 Counts

1984 was written way back in 1949, By a man called George Orwell. It’s written 25 years in the future, and depicts a bleak prediction of the future. This society is controlled by “The Party.” The party isn’t very well described in the first part of the novel, but we’re told they have three slogans: “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” and “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” These seem conflicted, right? Well, It’s called “doublethink” in this novel, the idea that you can believe two opposite things at the same time. As you can imagine, this can be quite confusing. Winston is our main character, and he likes to write in a journal, which is a crime. Early on in the novel, he identifies himself as a “thought criminal,” someone who betrays The Party in their thoughts, failing to bow to doublespeak and other various party rules. He tells us: “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.”

So we’ve got a heck of a dystopia on our hands, but WHY is it a classic; what makes a story a classic? Sustainability. Readers like to relate ourselves to the main character, we like to put ourselves in Winston’s shoes and relate his troubles to our lives. This means it’s important for a “classic” to be sustainable in thought, relatable to a reader throughout a long period of time. A dystopian future where thought is monitored and history is manipulated, is something we hear about every day. When Deborah has to wear a mask to Giant Eagle, she claims her freedom of speech is suppressed. We often hear the phrase “This is America, I can say what I want!” and while this is true, we have to remember the purpose of this right. Freedom of speech protects you from the government, not from other citizens, so just because you can’t be arrested for your hate speech, doesn’t mean you’re not going to lose a couple teeth from a concerned Samaritan.

This novel is incredibly relevant to today, and it’s dystopia seems more in reach than ever. We see this particularly in politics, with the pandemic, for example. While Dr. Fauci, and other WHO and CDC sources warned of it’s infectivity, the President and his team maintained that it would “Just go away.” When numbers started jumping into the hundreds, the virus was a hoax, and was just a flu. Now, when numbers are in the hundreds of thousands, we still have no federal plan to solve it, but it’s still “Under control.” This is reminiscent of doublethink, no?

I’m not a big classic reader, but, I’d recommend reading this novel based on what I’ve read so far. It presents a bleak picture that is so well written you feel the dread of thoughtcrime in your chest, feel like big brother is watching, and it’s easy to relate to these trying political times. I think it’s a classic for a reason, and though I have a bias against classics, I’m glad this book was assigned because it forced me to get out of my comfort zone.