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Nineteen Eighty-Four at 70
Some of Orwell's valuable lessons have never been learned.
by JOHN RODDEN AND JOHN ROSSI

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even decades ago on June 8, George Orwell’s and vision. Like Shakespeare’s poetry (“All the world’s
Nineteen Eighty-Four exploded on the cultural a stage,” “To be or not to be,” “This above all: to thine
front—fittingly enough, just two months be- own self be true”), so deeply have some of Orwell’s
fore the Soviet Union’s first successful atomic locutions become lodged in the cultural lexicon and
test that August, which broke America’s nuclear mo- political imagination that most people no longer rec-
nopoly. Orwell’s warning was urgent—and timely. ognize their author, let alone the source.
Almost overnight, in the wake of the surrender of Today, as in the case of Shakespeare, hundreds of
Germany and Japan that ended World War II in 1945, millions of people mouth Orwell’s coinages and catch-
a new war—the so-called Cold War—had emerged. phrases, such as “Big Brother” and “doublethink”—
(Orwell is often credited with coining the term.) including his name as proper adjective, “Orwellian” (i.e.,
The Cold War pitted the capitalist West against the nightmarish, oppressive). And that’s just in English. Tens
communist East, above all the United States against of millions more recognize and repeat them in foreign
the USSR (and soon China). Just three weeks before translations, as I [Rodden] discovered in our travels
the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Soviet and teaching in the communist East Germany as well
Union lifted the Berlin Blockade, thereby avoiding as in Asia. Rudimentary acquaintance with such locu-
a potentially deadly showdown with the West that tions is regarded as a sine qua non of cultural literacy in
might have triggered World War III. Two weeks later, English—even today, when prolefeed (mindless chatter)
on May 23, the Federal Republic of Germany (West floods the print columns and dominates the airwaves.
Germany) was officially established, effectively end-
ing prospects in the near future of German reunifica- Conception and Composition
tion. On the very day of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s pub-
lication, June 8, fears swept through liberal America Nineteen Eighty-Four represents Orwell’s Or-
of a growing Red Scare when a leaked document wellian vision—in the form of a fictional anti-utopia
named numerous celebrities as Communist Party (or “dystopia”)—of what a nightmarish, oppres-
members (e.g., Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Fred- sive future might hold. It projects a world 35 years
ric March, Danny Kaye, Edward G. Robinson). That away—half the biblical lifespan of three score and
same month, the communist armies of Mao Zedong
captured Shanghai, and less than six months later on John Rodden has written several books devoted to the life and
October 1, declared victory in the civil war against legacy of George Orwell, including The Politics of Literary
the American-backed Nationalists and the founding Reputation, Scenes from an Afterlife, Every Intellectual’s big
of the People’s Republic of China. brother, and The Unexamined Orwell. His forthcoming book
What educated person is not at least vaguely famil- from Princeton University Press is Becoming George Orwell:
iar with the language and vision of Orwell’s novel— Life and Letters, Legend and Legacy. John Rossi is professor
even if he or she does not recognize the source? In- emeritus of history at La Salle University in Philadelphia. His
deed the very ignorance of the source represents an latest essay on Orwell, “The Catholic Who Knew Orwell,” ap-
inadvertent tribute to the power of Orwell’s language peared in the Spring 2019 issue of Modern Age.

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Michael Hogue
ten. Having completed his novel by the end of 1948, now known as Airstrip One (sections of which were
Orwell flipped the last two digits to underscore his still in rubble after Hitler’s bombing campaigns).
anti-utopian theme of a world turned upside down Airstrip One is an outpost of the empire of Ocea-
and inside out. Or so many scholars have reasonably nia (a.k.a. America—or perhaps “Amerika,” as anti-
claimed. The date resultant from the flipped digits American critics of the 1950s began to write). War
also gave the novel its immediacy. Previous anti- has raged between Oceania and its rivals, namely
utopias, such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World Eurasia (the USSR and its satellites) and Eastasia
(1932), had cast their ominous scenarios far into the (China), continuously throughout the four decades
future, which lessened their dramatic impact and since the close of World War II.

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tended to render them entertaining thought experi-
ments. (Huxley’s action is set in the 26th century.) he plot is straightforward. Winston Smith is
By contrast, Orwell’s dire future is too close for the hero—or antihero. (The name both evokes
comfort—and depicts the planet in the immediate Britain’s much-admired wartime leader, the
aftermath of a global nuclear war that has nearly an- former prime minister Winston Churchill, and uni-
nihilated the human species. His vision thus projects versalizes the protagonist as an Everyman. The nov-
a world in which middle-aged readers in 1949 might el’s original title, The Last Man in Europe, also sought
find themselves in old age—and certainly their chil- to wed the individual and the universal.)
dren and grandchildren were likely to witness it. (If Winston Smith is a small fry. He is not so menial
he had lived, Orwell himself would have still been as the mindless peasant-like serfs of the regime, the
just 80 years old on April 4, 1984, when the story “proles” (or proletarians). Rather, he is an Outer Par-
opens.) ty member of the tyrannical ruling party. Secretly,
This horrific near-future is controlled by three ri- however, Winston is a dissident, hoping to serve the
val totalitarian regimes (headquartered in America, seditious Brotherhood, an underground rebel group
Russia, and China) that crush all vestiges of freedom resolved to overthrow Oceania’s absolute ruler, Big
and liberty, wage perpetual warfare against one an- Brother, and his governing henchmen, the Inner
other, reduce their societies to primitive levels of Party elite. (Orwell leaves it ambiguous as to whether
existence, and propagandize the populace into zom- the never-glimpsed Big Brother really exists—or is
bies. The physical setting is the ravaged Great Britain, just the regime’s public face.)

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 Smith’s rebellion takes the form of keeping a pri- Artistry and Impact
vate journal of his true opinions (including entries
such as “Down with Big Brother!”) and carrying on When Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four in
an extramarital sexual relationship with another June 1949, he was already a very sick man. His life-
Outer Party member, Julia. Any conduct of a pri- long struggle with pulmonary tuberculosis had been
vate life is illegal in Oceania. So too is non-marital aggravated by the strain of revising his masterwork
sex, indeed even sex within marriage that is not for and typing it himself. He had been in and out of san-
procreation. (Sex is referred to as “our duty to the atoria in Scotland and England during the previous
Party.”) two years, and his weak lungs had collapsed not long
Winston and Julia do not have, or seek, a Shake- after completing it. Lying in a London hospital ward,
spearean “marriage of true minds.” Their affair, he was a man on his deathbed. Despite the exciting
at least in the beginning, is not a love story at all. literary projects that his ever-sharp mind was bus-
Sheer lust—born of the animalistic urge to cop- ily devising (and his marriage in October 1949 to a
ulate and a visceral satisfaction in defying the lovely 31-year-old Sonia Brownell), neither his liter-
Party’s edicts—drives them. As their relationship ary aspirations nor his marital dreams of happiness
unfolds, it becomes more tender and multifaceted. would save him. By January 1950, just seven months
(A few scholars have suggested that the juvenile after his book’s appearance, Orwell died at the age
“sedition” by Winston and Julia in the form of of 46.
sexual rebellion—which essentially amounts to The proximity of his last work’s publication to Or-
making out in a park and spending the night in a well’s death date—and its contributing role in wors-
rundown hotel room— represents a projection of ening his health resulting from the stress and strain
Orwell’s own immature, adolescent sexual fanta- of finishing it—have induced some readers to charge
sies and frustrations.) that it was the dark, vengeful parting testament of a
Winston is an intellectual of sorts, though his bitter, dying man. They read the book not as a cri-
day job confines him to work as a propagandist tique of the post-World War II realities prevailing in
hack at the Ministry of Truth. He is mesmerized by the outer world, but rather of the psychological reali-
anything that recalls the “old world,” the long-ago, ties governing Orwell’s inner world. The “nightmare”
near-forgotten days before Oceania, the era of the was within, not without; the horror was Orwell’s
ancien regime, signified by such useless objects as own physical suffering and psychological condition.
an old-fashioned notebook with rich, creamy paper Following this line of thinking, a few critics—
or a coral glass paperweight. Born before the age of particularly Stalinist and leftist intellectuals who
perpetual war, he has vague memories of yesteryear, opposed Orwell’s ingenious satire of state socialism
a time before the triumph of the Party. (remember the name of the Party is Ingsoc = English
Eventually he and Julia are captured by Big Socialism)—have in effect conducted psychological
Brother’s secret police—known as the Thought autopsies of Orwell (based on interpretations of let-
Police—a far more menacing version of Hitler’s ters, journalism, and fiction). So armed, they have
Gestapo and the USSR’s NKVD (the Stalinist pre- proceeded to dismiss Nineteen Eighty-Four as a de-
decessor to the better-known KGB). Thanks to a spairing self-portrait, a vision of Orwell’s desperate,
clever game of entrapment, the Thought Police “anti-utopian” inner life. Illness engulfed him. Death
have been apprised of the couple’s treason from was in the air.
the beginning—and they simply waited until their Conclusion? The book depicted his future, not
preferred moment to pounce. Winston is tortured ours.
in Room 101 by the diabolical O’Brien, an Inner Did Orwell’s anti-utopia merely express the fe-
Party bigwig whom Winston has naively trusted as vered imagination of a dying man? We know that
a Brotherhood dissident. “Do it to Julia!” Winston Orwell certainly did not behave as someone in de-
cries out, an act of betrayal symbolizing his de- spair during or after he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four.
humanization. (Julia has already voiced the same All signs were that he passionately wanted to live.
sentiments, having capitulated apparently without His list of literary projects, his marriage, his ongoing
extensive torture.) As the story closes, the brain- engagement with current events during what turned
washed Winston awaits execution, little more than out to be his last months, reflect that hope. His chatty
a vegetable. The book’s final sentence—“He loved letters, humorous conversations, and ever-sharp pen
Big Brother”—captures in four words his condi- represent further evidence. He told one friend, half-
tion: unconditional surrender. seriously, that he could not die because he had more

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books to write; that is, he believed that, so long as he substructure; the superstructure of character and
had work of significant value still left to contribute to plot are determined by and beholden to it, utterly
humankind, he would recover sufficiently to putter secondary and “super-fluous” by comparison.
along in a semi-invalid state, at least capable of liv- Orwell created an unforgettable, terrifying
ing a physically undemanding life for several more character—Oceania—and showed its “development”
years. Nor are his decisions to marry and his insis- (in the spheres of technology, language, warfare,
tence on keeping and raising his five-year-old son (a geopolitics, state torture, social relations, and family
boy whom he had adopted a few years earlier) the and sexuality) with astonishing inventive prowess.
acts of a man soured on life, curdled by hopelessness, That development is manifested above all in Ocea-
a misanthrope expecting to die. nia’s range of technological gadgets, Newspeak ne-

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ologisms, and Party slogans and catchwords.
ontentions about Orwell’s illness and the And that is why Nineteen Eighty-Four is a gripping
“pathological” subtext of Nineteen Eighty- “novel.” That is, moreover, why it not only became
Four are also often adduced by literary critics a runaway bestseller in the early Cold War era, but
to buttress their characteristic claims about its pur- also why it has exerted a cultural impact greater than
ported artistic flaws, such as wooden characters, pe- any work of fiction in the 20th century.
destrian plotting, and poorly conceived and executed Unlike the literary scholars of later decades, the
themes (e.g., sex as rebellion). Yet these indictments newspaper and magazine reviewers of 1949-50—
fail to grasp the genre in which Orwell—following who were addressing the general public—lauded the
great writers ranging from Plato to Thomas More book almost without exception. The-Book-of-the-
to H.G. Wells and Aldous Huxley—is writing: the Month Club adopted it as their main choice for June;
satirical utopia. Philosophers refer to this sort of er- Reader’s Digest abridged it. Those two events guaran-
ror as a “category mistake.” The category of Nineteen teed that the book would reach millions of readers.
Eighty-Four is not the realistic or experimental novel, Equally valuable boosts appeared in the review pages
but rather the utopia. of Life and Time, which at mid-century stood at the
Like virtually all utopian or anti-utopian satires, peaks of their influence. Now too the leading left-
Nineteen Eighty-Four presents drab, flat characters wing weeklies of the time, which had supported Sta-
living in a grim world. Their journeys are predictable lin and the USSR throughout the 1930s and World
because their freedoms are narrow, often nonexistent War II—such as The Nation and The New Republic,
and merely imagined. You cannot judge this book by both of which had denounced Orwell’s Animal Farm
the conventional criteria signaling a “good” novel. (1945) for political reasons—joined the bandwagon.
Even the main characters are not three-dimensional Nor were the leading literati hesitant with their ku-
figures. dos. For example, the editors of the premier intel-
That is how it should be. What would you expect? lectual journal in America at mid-century, Partisan
In a world like this, it would be inconsistent, if not Review, honored Orwell with the first Partisan Re-
contradictory, to portray human beings who are not view Award in 1949.
stunted and who live exciting lives with unexpected
plot twists and turns. Contemporary Reception and Relevance
Yet there is a hero in this anti-utopia, and Or-
well’s magnificent portrait exemplifies its consum- Nineteen Eighty-Four remains widely read today—
mate artistry. The multidimensional, richly drawn and ubiquitously quoted and cited. In fact, during
“hero” is none other than the setting—that is, the the spring of 2017, in the wake of the inauguration of
empire of Oceania itself. Its history, its corrupt and President Donald Trump—and controversies about
tyrannical ruling Party, its oppressive and terrifying the “alternative facts” that his aides marshaled as evi-
technology, its ingenious propagandistic language dence of record attendance figures at the event—the
(“Newspeak”), its hatred of the body and sexuality book achieved the remarkable, unprecedented feat
(Julia belongs to—and pretends to support—the Ju- of skyrocketing to number one on fiction bestseller
nior Anti-Sex League): all this makes it a rounded, lists. This occurred an astonishing 67 years after its
fascinating, creatively elaborated “character.” And original date of release. Nothing of this kind had
there is no room for any other. Because Oceania is ever happened to another book in publishing his-
omnipotent and omniscient, it determines that its tory. And, in the case of Nineteen Eighty-Four, it was
citizenry—whether prole or Party leader—is a ci- the fourth time that it had topped the bestseller lists:
pher. The setting is, as it were, the (pseudo-Marxist) first in 1954, in the U.K., after a BBC-TV adaptation

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 sent sales soaring; second, throughout the English- Brothers” that have succeeded Hitler and Stalin on
speaking world during the so-called countdown to the world stage.
1984 between October 1983 and April 1984; and Rather than promulgate ideological doctrines
third, in 2003, as the centennial commemorations of and dogmas, the Party of Oceania exalts power, pro-
Orwell’s birth dominated the headlines and airwaves motes leader worship, and builds cults of personal-
on both sides of the Atlantic. ity. In Room 101, O’Brien douses Winston’s vestigial
In fact, it is fair to say that Nineteen Eighty-Four hope to resist the brainwashing or at least to leave
has never not been a bestseller and a publishing phe- some scrap of a legacy that might give other rebels
nomenon. According to the website Ranker.com, the hope. “Imagine,” declares O’Brien, “a boot stamp-
work has sold more than 25 million copies since 1949. ing on a human face—forever.” That is the future,
More than a half century later, Manchester Guardian he says, and nothing else. Hatred in Oceania is fo-
readers voted Nineteen Eighty-Four the most influen- mented by periodic “Hate Week” rallies where the
tial book of the 20th century. Waterstone’s, a British Outer Party members bleat “Two Minutes Hate”
bookstore chain, has ranked Orwell’s dystopia as the chants, threatening death to the ever-changing en-
second most popular book of the 20th century (be- emy. (Critics of the Trump rallies during and since
hind J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings). That is an the presidential campaign compare the chants of his
amazing feat in its own right, given that most people supporters—such as “Lock Her Up” about “Crooked
understandably do not particularly enjoy reading Hillary” Clinton and her alleged crimes—to the Hate
(let alone rereading) nightmarish stories of torture, Week rallies in Nineteen Eighty-Four.)

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betrayal, and brainwashing. The book’s ascent to the
top of fiction bestseller lists in 2016 and 2017, along et all of these complaints about the purported
with the ceaseless invocation of Orwell’s catchwords shortcomings of Nineteen Eighty-Four miss
to characterize the Trump administration, induced the central point. If Orwell “erred” in his
Signet, Orwell’s American publisher, to rush out a predictions about the future, that was predictable—
new print run of 500,000 copies. Expectations are because he wasn’t aiming to “predict” or “forecast”
that total sales will pass 30 million by the time of the the future. His book was not a prophecy; it was—and
2020 election in the United States. remains—a warning. Furthermore, the warning ex-
pressed by Orwell was so potent that this work of fic-
Between Prophecy and Warning tion helped prevent such a dire future from being re-
alized. So effective were the sirens of the sentinel that
Some critics do not fault the book on artistic the predictions of the “prophet” never were fulfilled.
grounds, but rather judge its vision of the future as Nineteen Eighty-Four voices Orwell’s still-relevant
wildly off-base. For them, Orwell is a naïve prophet. warning of what might have happened if certain
Treating Orwell as a failed forecaster of futuristic global trends of the early postwar era had continued.
trends, some professional “futurologists” have cata- And these trends—privacy invasion, corruption of
logued no fewer than 160 “predictions” that they language, cultural drivel and mental debris (prole-
claim are identifiable in Orwell’s allegedly poorly feed), bowdlerization (or “rectification”) of history,
imagined novel, pertaining to the technical gadgetry, vanquishing of objective truth—persist in our own
the geopolitical alignments, and the historical time- time. Orwell was right to warn his readers in the im-
table. mediate aftermath of the defeat of Hitler and the still
Admittedly, if Orwell was aiming to prophesy, he regnant Stalin in 1949. And his alarms still resound
misfired. Oceania is a world in which the ruling elite in the 21st century. Setting aside arguments about
espouses no ideology except the brutal insistence forecasting, it is indisputable that surveillance in
that “might makes right.” Tyrannical regimes today certain locales, including in the “free” world of the
still promote ideological orthodoxy—and punish West, resembles Big Brother’s “telescreens” every-
public protest, organized dissidence, and conspicu- where in Oceania, which undermine all possibility
ous deviation. (Just ask broad swaths of the citizenry of personal privacy. For instance, in 2013, it was es-
in places such as North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and timated that England had 5.9 million CCTV cam-
mainland China.) Moreover, the Party in Oceania eras in operation. The case is comparable in many
mostly ignores “the proles.” Barely able to subsist, European and American places, especially in urban
they are regarded by the regime as harmless. The centers. (Ironically, it was revealed not long ago that
Party does not bother to monitor or indoctrinate the George Orwell Square in downtown Barcelona—
them, which is not at all the case with the “Little christened to honor him for his fighting against the

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fascists in the Spanish Civil War—boasts several hid- That is the equation—a perfect example of “double-
den security cameras.) think”—which O’Brien indoctrinates Winston to
Cameras are just one, almost old-fashioned tech- accept in Room 101 and which marks the final step
nology that violates our privacy, and our freedoms of the latter’s brainwashing. As the Party defines it,
of speech and association. The power of Amazon, “doublethink” consists in holding “two contradic-
Google, Facebook, and other web systems to track tory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and ac-
our everyday activities is far beyond anything that cepting both of them.” In 2018, Trump’s lead lawyer,
Orwell imagined. What would he think of present- former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, declared in
day mobile phones? a TV interview: “Truth isn’t truth.” A few months
On the other hand, the basic ideas of “alternative later, a talking head defended a critical news report
facts” and “fake news”—our updated, revved-up on the grounds that, just because it is “not accurate
forms of disinformation—were not foreign to Or- doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
well. Working at the BBC as a news producer—a It testifies both to the brilliance of Orwell’s vision
fancy term for war propagandist—he heard some and to the bane of our times that Nineteen Eighty-
of the Axis powers’ propaganda as well as that of Four retains so much relevance.
his own side (even if he kept his own hands fairly
clean). He justifiably feared that the very concept of Lessons—and Unlessons
objective truth was fading from the modern world.
Winston Smith’s job at the Ministry of Truth is to The ultimate lesson—or perhaps “unlesson”—of
rewrite or “rectify” history, so that it follows the Nineteen Eighty-Four is that, yes indeed, for terror
current party line, whatever it may be at that mo- and tyranny to prevail, passive assent to injustice
ment. is all that is necessary. Ignorance Is Strength! And
Orwell himself saw all this happen when he read vigilance, therefore, is requisite.
Catalan newspapers as well as British ones during We citizens of anno 2019 are faced hourly with
the Spanish Civil War, several years before joining frightening reminders that Orwell’s warnings are
the BBC. Condemning press distortions, above all evergreen—or rather, ravenblack. The cautionary
how several English newspapers reported the war, warnings are simple yet not easy. Let us consider a
he wrote: “I saw great battles where there had been pair of them.
no fighting and complete silence where hundreds Be very careful of the power of government, es-
of men had been killed…. I saw, in fact, history be- pecially as it spreads its tentacles into your private
ing written not in terms of what happened but what life—for example, as has happened with the snoop-
ought to have happened according to various ‘party ing of the National Security Agency, which makes
lines.’” Given the gridlock in American politics, and Winston’s terror about the Thought Police all too
the never-ending verbal warfare between news out- real, given their technical wizardry at penetrating
lets on the Right such as Fox News and on the Left into our daily habits and quotidian transactions.
such as MSNBC, Orwell appears all too accurate in Ditto with the power of those inadequately regu-
his “predictions.” lated or supervised corporate entities such as Face-
One of the features of the world of Oceania re- book: that is, watch over your liberty and your right
flecting Orwell’s prescience is its official language, to dissent from social norms, above all the over-
Newspeak, an argot resembling a kind of Morse whelmingly powerful conformist pressures legislat-
code that satirizes advertising norms, political jar- ed by the forces of mass culture controlling our lives.
gon, and government bureaucratese. The purpose Whether he dons his official robes of Big Gov-
of Newspeak is to limit thought, on the view that ernment authority or his commercial cloak of
“you can’t think what you lack the words for.” Ul- Consumer Service, the spectral figure known as
timately, this impoverished language seeks to nar- Big Brother hasn’t disappeared. Instead he has
row and control human thought. (Does Twitter morphed and mutated into ever more insidious, of-
represent a step in that direction?) Purged of all ten digital, forms and formats. Given those realities
nuance and subtlety, denuded of variety, and re- in our outer world, unless and until the conditions
duced to a few hundred simple words, Newspeak of the modern and postmodern world that have
ultimately promises to render all independent formed present-day humanity fundamentally alter,
thought (or “thoughtcrime”) impossible. If it can- the warnings of Nineteen Eighty-Four will surely re-
not be expressed in language, it cannot be thought. main ever-ebony—just as they have proven to be
And anything can fill the vacuum, such as 2 + 2 = 5. throughout the past seven decades.

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