Talk:Nineteen Eighty-Four/Archive 5

message: Most of the "truth" is written by a member from the inner party, as he said himself. So, was everything he wrote that we understood of the real world a lie and know one really knows what is going on in the real world, or what brought them to such a point OR did he write the truth because it didn't matter one way or the other.
-G
It's a book. Written a LONG time ago. It's VERY inaccurate. It doesn't matter.NIN 20:26, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: =Can anything be trusted in this article?

message: The Hebrew language Wikipedia article dedicates a large section to the obviousness of the criticism of Communism in the book. It states that, in fact, the conditions in the Soviet Union in 1948 were strikingly similar to "1984" in practically all aspects, even minuscule ones. Thus "48" turns to "84", fixed-frequency "radiopoints" turn to always-on "screens", while constant history rewriting, total ideological control and betrayal of personal integrity under systemic pressure are very accurately described. When I read "1984" in the USSR (samizdat edition of mid-80s), I very much felt this book IS about the history of this country. I don't get this feeling from reading the current article, though. Maybe, like in Animal Farm, the article should state upfront and emphasize this particular aspect -- exactly because those who didn't grow up in the USSR might not be aware of what seems to be the author's intent. Guybas 07:58, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Essentialy, that is correct.•Jim62sch• 23:53, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: Anyone else thought this? Has it been commented on? - FrancisTyers 01:26, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Many times. I recently got the "centennial edition" of 1984 and that is repeatedly mentioned in the foreword. Prehaps a little too much. --Acebrock 03:57, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course he is, just as Snowball was Trotsky in Animal Farm, though there the parallel with Russia was more direct. --Saforrest 00:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

text:  <pedant alert> It is not "revealed that Goldstein is a fake". It is revealed that his book is a fake. Whether Goldstein and the Brotherhood actually exist is another matter. O'Brien refuses to answer Winston on the latter point and makes no reference to the former. Since Big Brother's non-existence is frankly admitted to Winston by O'Brien, it's (IMHO) a reasonable inference that Goldstein doesn't exist either -- but there's no evidence to clinch it. </pedant alert> Garrick92 19:13, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Goldstein as Trotsky

message: Could we switch the picture of the Novel Cover to this cover picture: http://library.umf.maine.edu/1984/ ? I think that it would look better, but I don't know how to do it. 204.49.209.120 17:55, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Naah...I'd rather stick with the first edition cover. Makes more sense - and better represents the book. There are probably a few dozen (if not hundred) different covers. -- Chris Lester talk 09:28, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Novel Cover 

message: Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon should be added the related works. Both books feature a dystopic view. There are strong parallels between the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four and the full story of Darkness at Noon. Somebody is in the prison of a totalitarian state, and his counterparts want a confession from him. Both protagonists use this reflect on the way a totalitarian regime functions. Of course, the parallels go only so far, and in Koestler's novel - as opposite to Orwell's -, the torturers do not try to deprive the main character of his (dissenting) ideas. In my youth, Darkness at Noon was actually listed as a forerunner to Nineteen Eighty-Four. A google search for both names still gives a lot of hits. -129.247.247.238 22:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good suggestion; I've added it and alphabetised the list.--James Kemp 20:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Orwell himself reviewed Darkness at Noon, and the issues discussed in the review are very much those of 1984; I think he even might have cited it as an influence elsewhere. --Saforrest 00:37, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Darkness at Noon

message: I feel that 1984 should redirect here, moving the current 1984 to 1984 (year).  There is currently a reference to this article at the top of 1984, but 95% of the readers must click on that link to go here.  I quote WP:D without a better way of putting it: Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", what article would they realistically be expecting to view as a result?  This would just be in the reader's best interests, which in my opinion are more important than Wikipedia naming standards.  Any opinions? ~ PseudoSudo 06:03, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you. The only reason I would expect 1984 to point to the year and not the book is that other years' articles fit that naming convention, and I wouldn't know that if I hadn't been around Wikipedia a while. Robin Johnson 11:42, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I think it's more important that our years be standard then a few people have to click an extra link to get to the article. For one thing, it's absurd to have to say Joe Blow died on March 26, 1983, but Jane Blow died on July 12, 1984, so we'd constantly have links to 1984 which should go to 1984 (year).--Prosfilaes 17:53, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Hbackman 00:21, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

text: This is a very good point, which I didn't think of. So I'm not for redirecting 1984 here after all. Robin Johnson 22:36, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. ~ PseudoSudo 23:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Main article at [[1984]] 

message: There seem to be a large number of wikilinks on this page which reference via a redirect straight back to this page. Should these be detected and cleaned up? ThomasWinwood 19:37, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. --Prosfilaes 19:45, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: care to give some examples? I can clean them up straight away.--Acebrock 22:15, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self-referential wikilinks? 

message: Cut from "inspiration" section:
:However, since the book was used for decades as a staple of anti-Soviet propaganda, this aspect of it was obscured from its widely-known image — though quite obvious to an intelligent reader.
:It should also be noted that Oceania’s standard practice of declaring POW's to be "war criminals" as a justification for killing them outright might be considered as Orwell's criticism of the Nuremberg Trials conducted by the victors of WWII against the losers — another aspect of this book which did not quite fit with using it as Cold War propaganda.
:Thus, it is plausible to perceive the novel as a prognostication of the British society in which Orwell grew up set in the future rather than to see it strictly as propaganda opposed against and attacking the Soviet Union. The best indication of that is the very fact that the book is still arousing considerable interest at present — whereas, had it been no more than a piece of anti-Soviet propaganda, it could have been expected to disappear and be forgotten with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990.
All of the above is one point of view. It should be sourced, rather than presented as objective analysis. Perhaps some of this was cribbed from Walter Cronkite's forward (or afterword?) to the US paperback edition. Alternatively, maybe the publisher just picked Cronkite to expound on this POV.
The other point of view, i.e., that Orwell was using 1984 (like Animal Farm to criticize the Stalinist USSR and similar totalitarian governments, is very unpopular amoung modern socialists, but it is indeed the other major POV about 1984. Both POVs should be in the article, not just one.
How about this:
*Critics disagree over what social and political elements Orwell was criticizing in 1984. Anti-Communists regard the novel as a vivid portrayal of what could happen in England or America if Communism took hold there. Socialists prefer to emphasize aspects of democratic countries which, if they worsened, would be as bad as conditions under Stalin.
Okay, maybe not quite balanced enough, but perhaps we can work on this together. Any takers?--Uncle Ed 20:55, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that there is no necessary cotradiction, and those who see one are promoting their own agenda rather than try to understand Orwell. Orwell had deep accounts to settle with both the British Empire and the Soviet Union. As a young man he went to Burma as a colonial policeman and returned as a staunch  enemy of the empire, but he remained a patriot to his last day. Some years later he went to Spain as a revolutionary fighter and returned as a staunch  enemy of the Soviets, but he remained a socialist to his last day. The most likely is that he conceived of Oceania as embodying and amplifying the worst features of both the British Empire and the Soviet Union. Adam Keller 20:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1984 and Communism

message: *"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." 
Now I know that the Wikipedian(s) who "own" our Totalitarianism article want to reduce the concept to a "typology", but it refers to fascism and Communism, political systems that seek to control "not only information but also individual thought and memory" . --Uncle Ed 20:02, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The book refers to far more than Fascism and Communism.  Unlike "Animal Farm", the meaning of which was as close to the surface as a two inch rock in an inch of water, "1984" is like the Mariana Trench. •Jim62sch• 00:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

text: BTW, "typology" is correctly used in the article -- in fact it is one of the rare true uses of NPOV in this encyclopedia. •Jim62sch• 00:11, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, but hardly any of our readers will understand the meaning of the word. It's like Newspeak to them. Better to have a section explaining why it's so important to some writers to label the term "totalitarianism" a "typology". It only confuses our readers, in the intro (which might actually be the purpose). --Uncle Ed 02:10, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's why there's a wiki-link.  •Jim62sch• 00:13, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Why Eric Blair wrote 1984

message: :It must be said however that democratic socialism back then had a different meaning (more revolutionary) than it does today. In fact, Lenin often characterised himself as being a democratic socialist. Perhaps it can be explained by the following: Democratic socialism now means socialism through (parliamentary) democracy (non-revolutionary) while back then it meant something more like socialism which is inherently democratic.
I keep hearing that Eric Blair was a "socialist" and that he never opposed Communism and that neither Animal Farm nor 1984 was meant in any way to be critical of Stalin's USSR or Totalitarianism in general. My friends keep telling me that these political novels should be taken only as extrapolating trends in the English-speaking democracies.
It strikes me that such twisting of Blair's intent smacks of the same kind of historical revionism he satirized in 1984. But let's not try to "settle" the issue. Let's try to balance the two interpretations.
Now, can somebody please dig up some material on Orwell's own comments about 1984, totalitarianism, Communism, and/or socialism? That may tell us what he "really meant to do" in more depth than the quote in the section above.
And can we get some quotes and sources for litereray criticism (or political interpretation) which do one or both of the following:
*say that 1984 was only about the West, like England, drifting away from its founding ideals of freedom of speech, etc.
*say that 1984 was also or primarily about the USSR and similar countries
I don't want to impose my own idea on this article, so please help me present both sides of this dispute. --Uncle Ed 20:23, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The book is not anti- any specific country, it is written on a far deeper level than that.  In a way, it is almost the other bookend to Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here".  Delve deeper.  •Jim62sch• 23:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The book may not be anti- any specific country, however, Orwell has clearly criticised the UK, US, and USSR in his books. But seeing it as a simple anti- book is shallow. --A Sunshade Lust 22:26, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Yep, that was my point. •Jim62sch• 23:40, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The book is a satire on totalitarianism, and draws on examples from Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and in wartime and postwar Britain. Orwell had good reason to dislike the Soviets after his experiences in Spain. It was not specifically a satire on the USSR (whilst Animal Farm certainly was)
Exile 21:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Another cut