Criticism of George Orwell's 1984

[LiberNovusAmericae]

I think the OP just hates the book because it mocks his version of authoritarian socialism.

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

If you make new words, you get unperson'd. Saying the regime is ungood is probably like saying Jesus is the ebodiment of sin, it won't compute.

1.Well, maybe the dissidence could just leave the country, like what all dissidence without "freedom" of speech do.If you want to be exiled, just join the army and escape into the disputed zone.

2. To say that Jesus is the embodiment of sin is offensive to many Christians, therefor it would have the same negative effects.

1. How the hell are you going to leave the country? It's a militarized totalitarian dictatorship, you really think they'll let anyone pop off to a disputed zone? Even then, a disputed zone is your only option, and those aren't real governments. Just areas that change hands from one totalitarian government to the other.
2. Exactly.

[Zurkerx]

It wasn't a bad book; it gave me some ideas for me to write.

[Communal concils]

To be Edgy, I'll say that Oceania did nothing wrong.Totally and absolutely the best Utopia. It should be rated 11/10.

[Valrifell]

The Party controls the present, which means they control the past. They've done their best to remove any frame of reference for these people, as mentioned by Xeno. The only people privy to the way things used to be would be the Outer and Inner Party, both of which are heavily monitored. The Proles are kept perpetually contented by illusions of growth and a lack of memory.

They can use their current present as an anchor, if things are truly getting better but they aren’t noticeably or meaningfully better than at the beginning of the Regime, than who are things truly getting for?

They can't remember a "before the beginning of the regime", Winson is in fact unique in this fact even if he can't make out anything helpful. That's the extent of their ability to suppress information, Oceania is literally a totalitarian state. If a prediction is wrong, they change the prediction or lie to the Proles, they have no frame of reference because the Party intentionally denies them that,

[Communal concils]

I think the OP just hates the book because it mocks his version of authoritarian socialism.

Actually, I just see it as the most stupid and childish attempt at it. Why don't you make something better for me to read. And hopefully it's not about talking animals.Anyways, I am not that "totalitarian" . Oceania contradicts with many thing I really want, like preservation of history.

[Valrifell]

I think the OP just hates the book because it mocks his version of authoritarian socialism.

Actually, I just see it as the most stupid and childish attempt at it. Why don't you make something better for me to read. And hopefully it's not about talking animals.Anyways, I am not that "totalitarian" . Oceania contradicts with many thing I really want, like preservation of history.

Orwell is a great author, you just disagree with his politics.

[Caracasus]

Not bad ideas as such, but rather sloppy execution. As previously mentioned the whole reductive languagr element makes zero sense. It also suffers from the same problem a lot of dystopian fiction suffers from; we're sold a deeply dysfunctional and crumbling society that also somehow maintains a state of the art secret police force that manages to be absolutely omnipresent and omniscient.

It doesn't really offer up anything other than 'pointless authoritarianism is bad' (Cheers Orwell, we'd never have figured out that for ourselves mate) and frankly underdeveloped character and meandering plot left me wanting Big Brother to get Winston already about halfway through the book.

Coupled with the absoute ballache that is people jumping up and down going '1984! 1984! Big Brother!' At every damn thing that could even be considered authoritarian regardless of context, I can't say I am a fan. A vastly overrated book from an author who has written much better.

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

To be Edgy, I'll say that Oceania did nothing wrong.Totally and absolutely the best Utopia. It should be rated 11/10.

Now this is the hard hitting criticism I was promised!

[Communal concils]

They can use their current present as an anchor, if things are truly getting better but they aren’t noticeably or meaningfully better than at the beginning of the Regime, than who are things truly getting for?

They can't remember a "before the beginning of the regime", Winson is in fact unique in this fact even if he can't make out anything helpful. That's the extent of their ability to suppress information, Oceania is literally a totalitarian state.

Or maybe, Winston has long term memory lost. In a more serious argument, regimes generally don't want to destroy the past. They just want to depict it as only bad. Oceania needs a myth to guide the people. All societies have a myth to their existence, and Oceania is just accelerating it's failure because it rejects the basic of a functional society.

[Valrifell]

It doesn't really offer up anything other than 'pointless authoritarianism is bad' (Cheers Orwell, we'd never have figured out that for ourselves mate) and frankly underdeveloped character and meandering plot left me wanting Big Brother to get Winston already about halfway through the book.

I will agree that the book meanders and takes its time getting anywhere. Not a fan of the first half, but after Winston does get captured we reach the highlights.

[Communal concils]

Not bad ideas as such, but rather sloppy execution. As previously mentioned the whole reductive languagr element makes zero sense. It also suffers from the same problem a lot of dystopian fiction suffers from; we're sold a deeply dysfunctional and crumbling society that also somehow maintains a state of the art secret police force that manages to be absolutely omnipresent and omniscient.

It doesn't really offer up anything other than 'pointless authoritarianism is bad' (Cheers Orwell, we'd never have figured out that for ourselves mate) and frankly underdeveloped character and meandering plot left me wanting Big Brother to get Winston already about halfway through the book.

Coupled with the absoute ballache that is people jumping up and down going '1984! 1984! Big Brother!' At every damn thing that could even be considered authoritarian regardless of context, I can't say I am a fan. A vastly overrated book from an author who has written much better.

well, that's an absolutely wonderful opinion. I'm not joking.

[Communal concils]

Actually, I just see it as the most stupid and childish attempt at it. Why don't you make something better for me to read. And hopefully it's not about talking animals.Anyways, I am not that "totalitarian" . Oceania contradicts with many thing I really want, like preservation of history.

Orwell is a great author, you just disagree with his politics.

1984's whole meaning is political. Politics is the reason why it's there. One of my criticism is mostly that he could have done it better. be more convincing, and some delicious flavor to the world. Double plus good isn't the best thing to convince people to your opinion.

[Vistulange]

Er, people do realise that the book was published when Mao hadn't declared the People's Republic of China, and Democratic Kampuchea was a thing of the relatively far future, right? Even the Soviet Union was not yet the "big bad evil empire" yet, but instead were people who had fought against the Nazi menace, back in 1948. Nazi Germany was the best and most popular totalitarian regime people knew of back then, not Stalin's Soviet Union, and even Nazi Germany's totalitarianism wasn't all that well known aside from its death camps, which were not a daily fact of an average German's life.

[Badb Catha]

The purpose of Nineteen Eighty-Four was for George Orwell, an avowed Democratic Socialist, to warn his fellow Socialists of what would happen in a Socialist State without Democracy. To this end he succeeds in painting an accurate portrayal of what the Soviet Union might have been had it only worsened after Joseph Stalin's death and had it's economy not stagnated. Unfortunately he gave into fearmongering tendencies and thus ended up portraying a less realistic depiction of the Socialist Dystopia he sought to avoid. From this we see a general lack of engagement with the reader, as well as shallow world-building, little character development, and a rather condensed world that does not seem to truly go beyond the city of London itself. It thus feels hollow, claustrophobic, and in some cases just plain silly.

One thing I will commend him on is the portrayal of the main character as a simple everyman; he is the protagonist, but he is not the hero. He saves no one, he fixes nothing. He is simply a man going about his day as usual only to be caught up in something he doesn't truly understand, to which he is outsmarted and defeated. It is quite easy to feel sorrow, pity, or hatred for certain characters in the book and I think he does an excellent job of conveying the inner humanity of their nature - even in the antagonists. For such a cold and uncaring dystopia he did an excellent job at portraying humans as just that: human.

[Valrifell]

Orwell is a great author, you just disagree with his politics.

1984's whole meaning is political. Politics is the reason why it's there. One of my criticism is mostly that he could have done it better. be more convincing, and some delicious flavor to the world. Double plus good isn't the best thing to convince people to your opinion.

The worldbuilding was secondary to the narrative and message of his story. He already derailed the pacing with three chapters on the origin of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia and I'm not quite sure what more you'd want from him.

[Zurkerx]

Actually, I just see it as the most stupid and childish attempt at it. Why don't you make something better for me to read. And hopefully it's not about talking animals.Anyways, I am not that "totalitarian" . Oceania contradicts with many thing I really want, like preservation of history.

Orwell is a great author, you just disagree with his politics.

Wasn't he a Democratic Socialist, if my memory of him recalls?

[Communal concils]

Er, people do realise that the book was published when Mao hadn't declared the People's Republic of China, and Democratic Kampuchea was a thing of the relatively far future, right? Even the Soviet Union was not yet the "big bad evil empire" yet, but instead were people who had fought against the Nazi menace, back in 1948. Nazi Germany was the best and most popular totalitarian regime people knew of back then, not Stalin's Soviet Union, and even Nazi Germany's totalitarianism wasn't all that well known aside from its death camps, which were not a daily fact of an average German's life.

I know, but I think it was best for people to compare the book's "Society" to what happened in the years after or near 1984. However for Eric's time, you are correct.

[Vistulange]

1984's whole meaning is political. Politics is the reason why it's there. One of my criticism is mostly that he could have done it better. be more convincing, and some delicious flavor to the world. Double plus good isn't the best thing to convince people to your opinion.

The worldbuilding was secondary to the narrative and message of his story. He already derailed the pacing with three chapters on the origin of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia and I'm not quite sure what more you'd want from him.

Seriously, worldbuilding was literally not the point of the book. Orwell was not trying to be a bloody Tolkien or G.R.R.M, he was basically writing a massive political essay disguised under the veneer of a fictional novel. The whole part when Winston is reading Goldstein's book obliterates the flow of the story. It's deliberately overblown and unrealistic - it's not trying to make a consistent of the world, because that's not the point.

I swear, some people in these forums would read Kafka's The Metamorphosis, object with "but people can't turn into bugs", then proceed to say that literature is just dumb.

[Communal concils]

1984's whole meaning is political. Politics is the reason why it's there. One of my criticism is mostly that he could have done it better. be more convincing, and some delicious flavor to the world. Double plus good isn't the best thing to convince people to your opinion.

The worldbuilding was secondary to the narrative and message of his story. He already derailed the pacing with three chapters on the origin of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia and I'm not quite sure what more you'd want from him.

I simply want better details on the society. Not simply that things are bad, but a greater detail to the state and it's opposition.

[Communal concils]

Orwell is a great author, you just disagree with his politics.

Wasn't he a Democratic Socialist, if my memory of him recalls?

well, I would just call him a Social Democrat.However, you are correct.

[Vistulange]

The worldbuilding was secondary to the narrative and message of his story. He already derailed the pacing with three chapters on the origin of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia and I'm not quite sure what more you'd want from him.

I simply want better details on the society. Not simply that things are bad, but a greater detail to the state and it's opposition.

You're free to want that, and there's something called fan fiction for that.

Orwell, however, was not trying to create an immersive world which you could practically play an RPG game in. He was pushing a given political agenda, a very broad one (totalitarianism is bad!) and not trying to worldbuild. That was far, far beyond the point of the book.

[Zurkerx]

Wasn't he a Democratic Socialist, if my memory of him recalls?

well, I would just call him a Social Democrat.However, you are correct.

Well, which one is it? Because Social Democrats and Democratic Socialists are different.

[Caracasus]

Not bad ideas as such, but rather sloppy execution. As previously mentioned the whole reductive languagr element makes zero sense. It also suffers from the same problem a lot of dystopian fiction suffers from; we're sold a deeply dysfunctional and crumbling society that also somehow maintains a state of the art secret police force that manages to be absolutely omnipresent and omniscient.

It doesn't really offer up anything other than 'pointless authoritarianism is bad' (Cheers Orwell, we'd never have figured out that for ourselves mate) and frankly underdeveloped character and meandering plot left me wanting Big Brother to get Winston already about halfway through the book.

Coupled with the absoute ballache that is people jumping up and down going '1984! 1984! Big Brother!' At every damn thing that could even be considered authoritarian regardless of context, I can't say I am a fan. A vastly overrated book from an author who has written much better.

well, that's an absolutely wonderful opinion. I'm not joking.

Not just my opinion to be fair. Was chatting to someone about 1984 a few days back and yeah, that was the broad consensus.

[Communal concils]

well, that's an absolutely wonderful opinion. I'm not joking.

Not just my opinion to be fair. Was chatting to someone about 1984 a few days back and yeah, that was the broad consensus.

interesting, than you for the opinion.