Nineteen Eighty-Four: One Ought Not To Think

In the next edition of what looks to be forming a series of book reviews, this blog entry will attempt to set out some of my thoughts on Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.

Let me just start off by saying, "Damn, that's some depressing shit." I can't remember the last time I read a book that so completely and absolutely drained the life out of me emotionally. Other films or books may leave you feeling emotionally drained, but Orwell's dystopian opus leaves you feeling overwhelmed and thoroughly numb. Your mind is buzzing with a million thoughts, but you feel nothing except the dull throbbing in between your temples that is most likely the mere physical sensation of blood pulsing through your temples (as opposed to any actual emotional response). Once you finish the book, you are then forced to make sense of all those thoughts careening around your head and attribute some meaning and structure to what you have just read.

Of course with literary giants such as Orwell and books as profound as Nineteen Eighty-Four there are numerous interpretations that can be applied to the text. One of the marks of truly great literature is that it does not confine itself to one interpretation but instead serves as a stimulus for the thought of the reader. For me personally, Nineteen Eighty-Four strikes me as a tour de force of the depressing thought life of an early 20th century intellectual. Most of Orwell's recognised works deal with a topic close to his heart (socialism), and after finishing the numerous (and lengthy) passages describing the thoughts and philosophical development of the novel's protagonist, Winston Smith, it is entirely plausible to think that Orwell is writing from personal experience.

The tone and structure of the novel have all the hallmarks of a work by an intellectual; the disdain for the 'unthinking' commoners (called 'proles'), the bemusement at the fresh-faced enthusiasm for life enjoyed by non-intellectuals (represented by Julia), the inability to look at a situation in any other dimensions besides those governed by strict logic, and the correlating helplessness that one feels towards his own thoughts. Even the structure of the novel and its dialogue are rigorous in their intellectualism; a second read quickly reveals a rigid structure clearly intended to set out a logical argument just as much as it is intended to tell a story.

Without giving too much away, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a tale of one man's interaction with an ultra-totalitarian system run by the Party. And 'interaction' is the most appropriate word; to cast the novel in terms of 'struggle' or 'battle' would not be entirely accurate. While we sympathise with the main character, it is difficult to argue with the changes in thinking that he undergoes as the story progresses. The logic with which Orwell presents his arguments appears irresistable, and within the sphere of the novel one is caught up in the relentless march towards the bleak future envisioned by the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful Party. Orwell mercilessly breaks down objections and counterarguments through a skillful display of sophistry and doublespeak (one of the main themes of the novel), and by the end of the novel I felt that I too, along with Winston, had been changed by the relentless barrages of the Party's skillful brainwasher.

Yet somehow once you close the book and put it down, Nineteen Eighty-Four does not seem so terrifying. Once you set the book down on your lap and look out the window and see the sun, you get the feeling that the future is not preordained and irresistable as the Party argues (quite convincingly). The dull throbbing in between your ears subsides, and like finally making it to the surface of a body of water you feel sanity rushing back into your system like oxygen into the lungs.

Part of this sensation of relief has to do with your background knowledge of the work. You remember that Orwell was a lifetime advocate of 'democratic socialism', and that although he presents the doctrine's corruption and perversion as inevitable in the novel, he himself never gave up faith in it. You also remember that you are reading in 2008, and that you were in fact born after the year in which the novel is set (I was a 1985 baby). You take a look around and realise that you still love your family, that you are not being watched by a telescreen and that there is no insidious Ministry of Love monitoring your inmost thoughts.

You then question how this could be, given all the compelling arguments you had heard. You wonder how the world could have developed as it has, without the inevitable collapse into unremmittingly bleak totalitarianism as envisioned in the novel. At first you start to raise intellectual arguments, but you realise that the novel has already accounted for them. You even have the sneaking suspicion in the back of your mind that Nineteen Eighty-Four is indeed prophetic, and that sometime in the future the world will become just as the novel portrays it. Yet somehow, when you leave the house to meet a friend and have a drink, the thoughts and despair you felt after finishing the novel dissipate and you have a resounding conviction that the novel is just that – a work of fiction. More importantly however, that inner urge you feel pushing you towards the darkness and coercing you to surrender to the primal desire for power subsides, and you actually feel the freedom that you have to live, to love and to think.

In my opinion, that is the fatal flaw behind the arguments of the Party; they are true and can exist only in a thinking man's world. Within that world they not only have the possibility of existence, they have the certainty of existence. Yet the world that we live in is not the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four because it is not a world populated by cerebrals such as Orwell. The world also contains those for whom thought is not supreme, and who act on different motivations and methods of judgment. One might argue that Orwell's rigid logic has taken this into account, and yet his prophecy has not come to fruition – the totalitarianisms he imagined have collapsed since 1984, not progressed. And thus we arrive at the conclusion that perhaps thought is not the answer to everything, even if it can explain everything. There is a point at which rational thought itself is defeated by reality.

To those who have read the novel, the above paragraph must strike you as an astonishing example of doublethink. Yet there is a key difference; it is a type of doublethink that motivates one to move away from the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, not towards it. Thus we arrive back at the title for my review: One ought not to think. What I have personally taken away from the novel is a true understanding of the wisdom in the phrase, 'you think too much'. As much as it assails logic, life (and now George Orwell) have demonstrated to me that there is merit in that statement. There is a certain point at which thought ceases to be useful, and at that point it should be abandoned. In this information age, thought is viewed more than ever as the source of power, but as Nineteen Eighty-Four demonstrates it can also make us slaves to power. The novel seems to encourage a view that there is no way to escape the pull of logic towards a destitute future, but there is – once you stop thinking, you escape the clutches of the drive towards the 'inevitable' conclusion. Perhaps if Winston had been able to give himself a break from the thoughts which tormented him, even sporadically, he would have had the strength to continue to live with his humanity in tact.

Whether this grasping for a way out is a futile act is not only unknowable, it is a counterintuitive question. For me, what is important is what it shows to each of us individually: that we have the power to escape the descent into darkness that often results from overly-rigorous intellectualism simply by disconnecting ourselves from our thought process. It is my belief that this is what has prevented the world so far from descending into Nineteen Eighty-Four: even if those in power do not realise this fact themselves, they have others near them who for one reason or another recognise that principle and encourage the power-holders to take a break from thinking when they see that thought is becoming unprofitable. Nevertheless, I won't argue with you about my conclusion. To do so would be inconsistent with my basic premise, given that arguing would be an attempt to find an intellectually satisfying explanation for the discrepancies between the novel and reality. No, it is about these very types of topics that the saying is applicable: One ought not to think. And so to buggery with this review, I'm going to get dinner.