Utopias and Dystopias 2021 - Keshav Gandhi

There are a lot of things preventing 1984 from becoming a reality. Quite notably, the premise of oligarchical collectivism’s success is constant war. With ever-increasing advances in technology, our “wars” are probably conducted remotely through drones, cyberattacks, and whatever else you can conjure up. In this manner, the public might not even know about what’s going on for the most part, much less be driven to complacency.  If we were living in a dystopian world, realistically, the “dystopian” aspect would revolve around living in a surveillance state. One telescreen, ha. My house alone has more than a dozen devices that could easily be used to spy on me (phones, laptops, TVs, smart clocks, and the list goes on). “Ideally,” he dystopian group in power would be able to track everyone’s behaviors, run them through sophisticated artificial intelligences, and be able to predict everyone’s next moves, or even their thoughts. However, I don’t think our thoughts would be suppressed,...

Given that this whole section of the book was all about torture and O’Brien trying to change Winston’s thoughts, I wasn’t particularly surprised by the ending. Although it was expected, I just wanted to finish reading once and for all so that there wouldn’t be any more surprises.  But going off of my last two blog posts, I was honestly left wondering how O’Brien had enough time to pay all that attention to Winston. There are probably hundreds of people who go to the Ministry of Love each day.  Does the fact that Winston was desperate for O’Brien to be a like-minded dissident of the Party interest him? Maybe O’Brien, who we know is particularly sadistic, took pleasure in torturing Winston. Maybe he saw how Winston’s conflicted relationship with him developed over time, and true to the principles of doublethink, he both loves Winston and is repulsed by him.  I’m not sure how the imagery of Big Brother ties into all this, but I kind of imagined O’Brien serving the role as a ...

In Brave New World , John and Mond’s encounter serves as an ideological battle between two opposing forces. In 1984 , the chapters we just read feel the most analogous to this (both protagonists being captured by one of the leaders of the authoritarian state), except they’re dark and twisted in a way that would only be found in 1984 .  O’Brien seems to know whatever Winston is thinking. It’s kind of a cliché, to be honest. Nonetheless, I would argue that the extreme restriction on thought—more so than in Brave New World —limits the scope that Winston is able to express himself. The ideological “battle” isn’t really a fair one if Winston hasn’t been exposed to the word “solipsism,” for example.  There’s also the element of torture and psychological abuse that is much more present in 1984 than in Brave New World . It makes Winston vs. O’Brien feel very one-sided and almost superficial.  What do you think? As a spectator, would it be more interesting to watch a debate betwe...