Casually Completing Classics:1984 Part 6 (TWO)

 Oh boy, it's one of those books that's divided into parts and the chapter numbers reset. Couldn't at least do 2.1? 2.I? B1?

Winston sees the girl at work. She hurt her arm on a "kaleidoscope" that they use to make/transport their trashy prole novels. I looked it up, and kaleidoscope does not mean something else in British. Earlier in the book:

 Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime, and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section—Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak—engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at.

It's like a robot Madlibs? Mechanical LLM. Mechanical LLM would sell as a short story idea. 

She slips him a folded up paper. He hides in the bathroom until he calms down (without reading it) then goes back to his desk, mixes it in with the other papers, and works for a while.

Eventually he unfolds it. It says "I love you" because of course it does. This woman he's met like 3 times and just incel glared at is in love with him, because reasons.

He thinks about her naked, with less murder this time (but still some murder). He's convinced it's not a trap, at least. 

We learn that no one sends letters anymore. They use preprinted post cards, kinda like the ones you use for correspondence chess.

Thanks, Wikipedia.

She disappears for a while and he's worried about her, but she comes back. They manage to meet at lunch and plan to go to the Victory Square, where they briefly hold hands and see some prisoners.

This whole scene brings the logistics of actual dating/fucking to mind. We know that you're not supposed to love your spouse or enjoy sex, but how do they keep population numbers in the party from collapsing? Do they promote proles? Are there enough people surreptitiously, awkwardly fucking to keep the numbers up? 80 years after the novel was written, with much of the developed world struggling with demographic issues, this part seems less predictive/likely than the rest.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 5 (Chapter 8)

 This is a long, kind of weird, chapter.

Winston goes to the prole part of town, where he asks an old man at a pub about the before times. He doesn't do a great job of asking questions, and the old man does a worse job of answering. He gets upset, leaves, and goes to the antique store he got the diary in. The guy there is happy to tell him about the before times, but Winston seems less excited then you'd expect. He's interested, to be sure, but he just freaked out on someone for not doing the same thing this guy is doing and he's not that into it.

Blah blah women hating.

He sees the "young and lusty" woman and fantasizes about killing her again (no rape this time).

WIP, FIS, IIS count: 3

I feel like you could cut most of the old man (and a good chunk of the antique shop) and this chapter would work just as well.

A Varicose Ulcer

 

Gross

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 4 (Chapter 7)

 This chapter starts off with a pseudo-epigraph from Winston's journal, "If there is hope [wrote Winston] it lies in the proles."

And then it's mostly him saying they just need to RISE UP. The party doesn't even bother trying to indoctrinate them, or even surveil them fully. (This is a different from the modern age, where the lower class is the easiest to surveil, since they're attached to smart phones 24/7.)

I like that jus primae noctis has become a right of the capitalists in the urban legends of the oppressive future. 

It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the party was trying to achieve.

People talk about how prescient 1984 is, but I don't see this quote passed around a lot, and I think it's relevant. How many people today feel like nothing even matters? How much of the stuff people do obsess over obviously doesn't? He then goes on to describe how they're in a boring dystopia.

It's "the lonely hour fifteen". I'm starting to wonder if they're just in 24 hour time.

It's starting to sound like Oceania is just "The West". They talk about working with New York and Canada.

This is also the, "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." chapter.

I think people think too much about the thought police parts of 1984 and not enough about the denying reality parts.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 3 (Chapter 6)

 It's a sex chapter!

I will definitely be making fun of Wilson's attitude towards women and sex when I teach this book. He's got a incel-vice going on, and he seems like the kind of guy who says, "these females" or something. He definitely mad that the woman he paid to fuck is "post wall" as they say. And, of course, his ex-wife is the dumbest person he's ever met.

Villifying sex seems to be something that authoritarians across the political spectrum can agree on. Can't have sexy music, eh Tipper? 

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 2 (Chapter 5)

 Winston goes to lunch. He hates everyone in the canteen. Production is up (even though it was down yesterday, doublethink)! The girl he wanted to rape/murder yesterday sits behind him and looks at him.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 1 (Ch1-4)

 The first thing that jumps out about me in 1984 is how disillusioned Winston already is with the Party, and how much he understands the system.

I feel like most dystopian stuff you read, the main character is initially mostly unaware. But Winston already has his rebel notebook, has long thoughts about how the Party's manipulation works, fakes being a good cog, etc.

I would like to know why the UK is in Oceania. I looked it up, the term had been in use for Australia since the 1800s. Maybe it'll make sense later.

I'm keeping a count for every time there's a:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

So far, 3 (pgs 4, 16, 26 in my Signet Classics 75th anniversary edition).

Liquor is often described as oily. I feel like that's a kind of stock description of cheap liquor. I've had some cheap liquor in my life, and I don't remember it ever being oily. I was going to say I don't really know how alcohol could be oily (doesn't it cut grease in real life?) but apparently (for gin) it could be caused by improperly mixing the botanicals. Which would make sense for the shitty propaganda gin he's drinking.

A huge part of 1984 deals with how uncertain Winston is about the past. He's not even really sure what year it is. Most written records have been destroyed, and the ones that haven't have been censored and altered so many times. I wonder how the people who rewrite classic books (I feel like Roald Dahl's are the ones I've heard about most recently) to censor them would feel about those scenes, and if they realize they're doing the same.

Winston really hates women:

He disliked nearly all women and especially the young and pretty ones who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party the swallowers of slogans the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.

On the one hand, I will be making fun of him for being an incel for the rest of the book. On the other hand,  this is definitely a type of woman that very much exists in real life. Fortunately not the majority of women. (Also, not usually the young and pretty ones.) 

The Big Brother chant at the end of the Hate is written the opposite of how it's apparently pronounced:

"B-B!... B-B!... B-B!" over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first "B" and the second

That'd be a closely connected 1, 2 and then a long gap between 2 and 3. 

Continuing with the above, "Winston is an incel" he also hates any physical activity. He's definitely a cliche basement loser. He dreams about his mom, because of course he does.

Something I thought about during the exercise scene is Winston's concerns that he's being watched via the telescreen. While the telescreen can monitor him, I wonder if they actually have the resources to monitor all of them all the time. Later, he mentions that probably no one knows how many boots are being made when he's making up fake numbers, and I suspect this applies to a lot of things within the Party.

Enjoying it so far, more (probably) tomorrow.