# 1984



## a mere housewife (Jan 15, 2019)

I had begun this book once before, but the opening atmosphere was so bleak that I could not face the rest. I picked it up again a few days ago and read through to the end.

I have a vivid memory of pain from a few years ago. Ebola was much in the news and cases were surfacing in the US -- even from random contact at a grocery store. I woke up sweating, hardly breathing, from dreams of being kicked in the stomach. In the back of my mind was a wild anxiety that somehow I had been infected with ebola. And that anyone who helped me now might be contaminated. I managed to get to a place where I could close the door, to seal myself off and struggle alone. But at some point it ceased mattering to me that those who helped me now might be involved in my suffering. I couldn't deal with the pain. I was too weak to cry out but somehow got Ruben's attention. Gratefully it was related to my endometriosis, not an infectious disease.

The impact of my selfishness was more devastating than the experience of pain. I fully believe what Orwell says in _1984_: that the only thing that can be wished for in pain is for it to stop. That most of us can be made to do anything if we are wracked long enough with a brutal enough agony, to make it stop. We would even sacrifice our dearest loves.

This fragility of being human is profoundly symbolised by a piece of coral in the middle of a useless but beautiful weight of watery glass. The total bleakness (mentally, spiritually, atmospherically) that is produced in the opening pages lifts just enough to give us a sense of what it might be like to fully become that floating beauty -- to be individually authentic, and human. The least common experiences of contact, sympathy, communication are transfigured against utilitarian squalor, and a constant dull pain. They are luminous. They float in Orwell's masterful narrative unconstrained, unnecessary, eternal -- transparently brittle.

It seems possible, viewing that bleak world from an enclosed, watery light, to preserve the true essence of humanity against the inhuman orthodoxies of fear and pain. But when the glass weight is shattered, one realises this illusion was actually created -- or allowed to exist -- by its outside negations: the collective which oppresses the eternal and weightless by means of the material and temporal. 

So 'Truth' and 'Love' can be defined and redefined as the collective deems expedient, through fear and pain. The past is flexible because it exists in that insubstantial area which can be physically manipulated. Material records can be altered: human memory is encased in destructible atoms. Thought, which must have some form of expression, can be controlled through the annihilation of language, a process of producing dictionaries. Innocence and guilt can be determined by truncheons, steel boots, machinery. Love can be destroyed when terror becomes so palpable, and pain such a catalyzing mass, that we would substitute the loved one in our place. It is not just the present that is altered in such instants. The revelation of ourselves makes it impossible to look at each other, to want to speak to each other. The main character's last fortress, that hatred of his oppressor in which he could at least be condemned, rewritten, mechanized and annihilated with a spark of dignity, can be sold to the enemy.

Throughout, Orwell echoes the language of religious orthodoxy in the ideals of 'Big Brother' -- an echo of God's humanity. And it's clear in Orwell's other works (such as _A Clergyman's Daughter_) that he considered religion a tool in the hands of the state, one of those powers which can be used to police values and thoughts and so reduce the individual to political expediency (which is about maintaining power).

Throughout, the 'proles', the lowest class, considered too thoughtlessly close to working animals to mind-police, are the only hope. There is a powerful image of a strong working class, grandmotherly woman under a rain-cleared sky singing, forever hanging laundry. All the world over, the main character realises, under every form of oppression, the working class woman is giving birth in her strength, singing like a bird under the open sky. The germ of true humanity is carried in her womb. A humanity that has the strength, and the freedom to resist official truth and heresy, if imbued with an eternal thought.

The book left me oppressed. I went to bed hardly able to pray. When I did, I couldn't help remembering the posters of Big Brother and the love which is begotten of pain and fear. I analysed my own conversion. I analysed the suffering in my life which has produced hope.

But Orwell is wrong about something. The selfishness revealed by pain, which sears our self-consciousness, does not make it impossible to look honestly at one another. I remembered that. I remembered telling Ruben what I felt: he put his arm around me, and reassured me that it was okay. Humanity is a fragile thing. The glass can be shattered. The soul can be manipulated. But there exists confession and forgiveness: the collective is shamming a reality. Christ looked at Peter after the cock crowed, and spoke to him after the resurrection.

And this morning my reading was about about a brutal trial in Isaiah 50, and Mary's song in Luke 1. I remembered that Isaiah also had visions of hope around a poor, childbearing woman.

And I wanted to shout to Orwell -- Look! It happened! A virgin conceived and bore a son -- who gave his breakable back to the smiters and his destructible cheeks to those who plucked out the hair! Who resisted the label 'heretic', and had the strength, when terror became drops of sweat and pain and shame cut him off from God, not to substitute his loved ones in his place.

He was taking mine. -- And yours. Our humanity is so fragile, so compromised, so self-seeking, essentially guilty. To become human begins to seem possible, and then desperately unnattainable in Orwell's vision: because the soul becomes transparent in its self-sparing, other-crucifying core. Its own eternity has been sacrificed to its own fleeting hunger, agony, greed. But a virgin -- a poor, working class virgin, whose song is recorded for all time -- conceived and when the glass was shattered, truth, love, guilt and innocence, defied definition and redefinition by the collective -- and by its own fragility.

At one of the critically seditious moments in the book, the main character speaks of 'hating' goodness and virtue, and loving corruption. If these religious ideals are tools of the state, such rebellion is noble and necessary. But if they exist independently -- if the least common, luminous experience of our contact, sympathy, communication, exists in a good reality -- then no rebellion or freedom, no authenticity or eternity is possible without loving Him. 



> My back I determined to give to the floggers,
> and my cheeks to those who pluck them bare,
> not even to cover my face from any ignominy and spitting.
> The Sovereign Yahweh will help me,
> ...





> And Mary said,
> "My soul magnifies the Lord,
> And my spirit has rejoiced
> in God my Saviour.
> ...

Reactions: Like 2 | Edifying 3


----------



## TheInquirer (Jan 16, 2019)

I remember audibly saying something like "No way!" when I reached the end of that book. It is a powerful story that really makes you feel something but like you say, a message without redemption as a man is completely broken by the power of evil humanity. There is truly no hope apart from Christ and unintentionally, the book drives that message home.


----------



## a mere housewife (Jan 16, 2019)

Yes, it was a very forceful, crushing book. It helped me to see more dignity in useless things, though.

After I finished it I got a Barnabas Aid prayer booklet in the mail (they send them out with daily requests for the persecuted church: link here) and saw a request about 3 Christians who had refused to convert to Islam in a violent raid, 2 of whom were martyred. It is a horrible thing, and yet I understood in a new way that it was a triumph.

I now get to read _Grey is the Color of Hope_ by Irina Ratushinskaya, a Russian Christian poet who was held in a Soviet Camp (& she seems to have kept her radiant humanity).

Reactions: Like 1


----------



## Pergamum (Jan 16, 2019)

Orwell was a secular prophet.


----------

