Thirty-One Years Later

It's 2015, so I think it's safe to say that 1984 has come and gone. George Orwell's prediction of where our world would be in that year did not come true. At least not in the details. But as I read 1984 for the first time as an adult, I saw in a new way how things have not only progressed in the direction he feared they would, but maybe have always been that way. Perhaps we will never be fully submerged in the world created by "the Party," but I still recognized our society and our human nature in many of the things Orwell describes. I just have some brief thoughts.

If you've not read the book, well, shame on you, but here's a brief synopsis: Winston Smith is a dutiful British government employee in 1984. England is part of a larger political territory known as Oceania, and it as always at war with or allied with the other two countries in existence, Eurasia and Eastasia. Winston has his suspicions about whether the things the Party tells its citizens are true. He meets a woman named Julia who shares these suspicions. They begin a relationship but it doesn't last long before someone they trust betrays them. The last few chapters consist of the Party's consequences for Winston's "thoughtcrime."

I read this in high school, but of course now I have a different perspective on things. It's clear to me now that while the Party may represent totalitarianism in some form, or oppressive social norms, or what have you, ultimately it represents that which is not God. Winston doesn't believe in God, and spirituality is rarely mentioned in the book. But then a Party member says something like, "There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, the except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, literature, or science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed." And all I see in that is the absence of God. Why do we have laughter, art, beauty? They don't serve a function. They were created by a God who simply loves things that bring him and his people joy. Any world without them is godless, whether or not God is ever mentioned.

The quote that probably resonated with me the most came early in the book, when Winston is thinking about the subpar life that everyone around him submits to. He thinks, "Was it not a sign that this was not the natural order of things, if one's heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one's socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?" To which I say, YES. We all have that ancestral memory, and it's the eternity that God has set in our hearts. All that our imaginations could ever conceive will be true, if only because a creator could not have given us the ability to dream them up if he himself had not already.

There is a lot more in this book than just the absence of God and what his lack reveals about our need and our nature. But this is the lens through which I was reading this time, so these are the thoughts I have.