You know, it is kind of weird, as I can recall trying to read this book during the actual year, 1984. Of course, I was 13 at the time, and the vocabulary was just too far ahead of me. As I’ve said on numerous occasions in class: “This is a hard book.”
The year I got through it was the Christmas Break of 1987. How do I know that? Because that was the year after a rather harrowing Christmas Break in Florida with my family. The following year, I swore to myself I was going to have something - anything - to do that would sort of give me something to do instead of the things that I’d rather not do. Like playing cards incessantly; or television or just laying on the couch bored out of my tree.
In that light, I fell upon my oldest brothers’ copy of 1984 in mid-December of 1987. I thought “Why not”? And so, I began reading it. I must admit, as a young person, I did not get just how messed up Smith was, as think back to a angst-ridden times they were, I just didn’t pay attention to him. I focussed my attention on the Thought Police and Big Brother.
The one question I kept asking the novel and anyone else who would talk to me about the book, as this: “Is Big Brother real?” I guess, in retrospect, I was asking the same question Smith was asking, that did Big Brother occupy a point in space just as I did?
Thinking back to that 17 year old mind, I think I thought BB existed. He was a real guy, probably corrupt to the bone and full of every kind of sin an early omniscient man might commit. Since then, I realize that would be a folly of the Thought Police to allow to happen. Perhaps, at some point there was some guy who was photographed and had video shot of himself as BB, but that person was gone. Anything else would be folly; what if BB’s hypocrisy was leaked to the general public? Too risky. Better to have a figurehead that is always young, orthodox and “perfect”.
Living in Canada at the time was fraught with perceived risks. To be frank, a fairly high percentage of young people at the time were convinced that we would see a nuclear war fought before we were thirty years old - which would have been in 2000. Nothing makes me more happy when I think back to the night that 1999 became 2000. I mean, as mentioned in class, I watched movies like The Day After and When the Wind Blows, and thought that was the future. As that New Year’s Eve wore on, I figured we were good and that I’d make it to 2000 without going through a nuclear holocaust. I figured that Ingsoc was a real possibility for the future.
In the end, though, I used 1984 in a final assessment project for English the following year. I packaged with The Chrysalids, Animal Farm and Brave New World. I still have the essay I wrote for it somewhere in “my papers” in my basement storage area. Basically, I explored the bad times of each novel. “Dystopias” became my “go to idea” while studying Literature at McMaster the year after that.
Finally, I want to end this post with this thought: after re-reading this novel for the upteenth time, I see more clearly what Orwell was thinking. My personal information is out there, just waiting for someone to try and commit fraud, perhaps. It’s also out there for the government to make sure that I have orthodox ideas. Of course, I also see media people using Facebook to illustrate “just how awful I am”, or share pictures with even more people, without my permission, really. It’s kind of scary how public private information has become.
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