"Cliff Notes - 1984" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)
At the time, he believed Britain could do this while staying out of the impending clash with Hitler. During this period in the late 1930s, Hitler prepared to make war, while in Russia, Stalin got rid of his enemies through a series of political purges. Hitler and Stalin were allied. Orwell finished his book about the Spanish experience, and called it Homage to Catalonia. Ill again, he went with Eileen to Morocco to recuperate.
Meanwhile, Hitler marched on Poland, on Holland, on Belgium, on France. Britain's entry into World War II in 1940 was inevitable and marked the end of Orwell's brief period as a pacifist. He enlisted in the Home Guard because his health prevented his joining the armed forces.
Later Orwell wrote propaganda for the BBC, an education in how to know one thing yet say another for the good of the people. As you'll see, this training foreshadowed Winston's job in the Ministry of Truth. England was under attack by air, and buzz bombs, Nazi V-2 rockets, exploded on London almost daily until the war ended. Every day people lived with death and danger and shortages of food and clothing. Russia, which had begun the war as Germany's ally, took up arms against Hitler, grappling with the Nazis at Stalingrad. History, then, laid the groundwork for 1984, in which major powers are always at war but the enemy keeps changing.
By 1944 Orwell was finishing Animal Farm, a parable about Stalinism. Because the Soviet Union was now a British ally, he had a hard time getting it published. Besides that, he was ill again. Eileen needed surgery but they put it off because of expense. In the final days of the war he went to Paris and Germany as a war correspondent. He was hospitalized again. While he was in Germany Eileen died in surgery, leaving him with an infant son they had adopted. Grieving and ill, he came home to begin another novel. This would be his last.
Publication of Animal Farm brought Orwell recognition and freedom from financial pressure. An enemy of totalitarianism, he saw what he thought were totalitarian tendencies in the British government. He took a country house on a remote island where he lived off and on while writing this final work, originally titled "The Last Man in Europe." Sick as he was, he put off going to the hospital until he had a first draft finished. His doctor said, "If he ceases to try to get well and settles down to write another book he is almost certain to relapse quickly."
But Orwell had a mission. He wanted 1984 to be "a showup of the perversions to which a centralized society is liable, and which have already been realized in Communism and Fascism." He feared for Britain. Struggling against enormous physical odds (as Winston struggles under torture), he went home to finish a second draft. "The striking thing," he said of his increasing weakness, "is the contrast between the apparent normality of the mind and its helplessness when you attempt to get anything on paper."
Once more he put off treatment in order to make a final typescript. He had broken his health but he had finished the novel that would outlive him by generations. Hospitalized, Orwell saw the novel published in 1949. It was widely praised in a postwar world that had awakened to the realities of the Cold War in which there are no friends, only friendly enemies. It was taken as a chilling warning by readers who lived with the daily possibility of absolute nuclear destruction, a possibility which had been raised by the explosion of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in the last days of World War II.
Unlike his hero, Winston Smith, who was defeated by the society and by his own weakness, George Orwell ended his life with a triumph.
It is useful to remember that every writer uses real life for material, but only the best writers learn how to transform it into living fiction. With intelligence and skill, they take what they know to create what they don't know, making something so real that it is truer than real life. In 1984, George Orwell has done this brilliantly. Because he was a wonderful novelist before he became a political reformer, he had the skill to make his message known all over the world.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, say the posters in Orwell's novel. His warning has passed into the language.
^^^^^^^^^^1984: THE PLOT
Every Party member knows the worst crime of all is Thoughtcrime: having evil thoughts against the Party or Big Brother. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, warn the posters.
As Winston's story opens he's committing a crime in spite of Big Brother. Troubled by dreams and memories of better times, inspired by secret glances from O'Brien, a member of the powerful Inner Party, Winston is starting a diary. Practically the first thing he writes is a major offense: DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER.
At work in the Ministry of Truth, Winston alters books and periodicals to keep up with the changing Party history. Oceania is allied with Eastasia in war against Eurasia--but were they always? Rebel leader Emmanuel Goldstein is the public enemy in the daily Two Minutes of Hate--but was he always? Three enemies of the Party confessed and repented their Thoughtcrimes--did they really? Troubled by questions and memory flashes, Winston retreats to the "down and out" or prole (short for proletarian) neighborhoods, where the lower classes breed and squabble without Party interference. He spends happy hours in the second-hand store where he bought the diary.
Meanwhile Winston is afraid the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department where he works is going to turn him in for Thoughtcrime. He's certain O'Brien is a secret enemy of the Party. To his astonishment, the dark-haired girl slips him a note: I LOVE YOU. Julia wants to meet. They go to the prole sector to begin an affair, another crime against the state. Winston is seduced not only by Julia but by the idea of rebellion. He and Julia continue their affair in a private room above the second-hand store. He thinks it's love like theirs that will eventually destroy the Party.
What Winston most hopes for happens. He gets a message from O'Brien. At night he and Julia go to O'Brien's lavish home and swear they'll do anything they can to help O'Brien's secret group, The Brotherhood, to overthrow the Party.
Winston's determination is strengthened by a sudden political change: Oceania is no longer at war with Eurasia, now Eurasia is at war with Eastasia. Eurasia is the ally. According to Big Brother it has always been this way, so Winston has to change all the records to make this true.
In the midst of his despair and confusion, he has one thing to cling to. O'Brien has given him a forbidden book by Goldstein, the enemy of the Party. Winston takes the book to his secret room and begins to read the extensive writing on Party philosophy. When Julia comes, he reads it aloud to her. By the time he's finished, she's asleep. After dozing, Winston goes to the window to watch a huge prole mother singing as she hangs out the wash for her enormous family. He is thinking that the proles are the hope of the future when suddenly his world collapses.
Within seconds the Thought Police crash in. Winston's nice landlord is not what he seems. Neither is O'Brien. Winston is held prisoner and tortured in the Ministry of Love, where O'Brien spends months trying to brainwash him. The final step comes when O'Brien takes Winston to Room 101, where that which he most fears is waiting. As a cage of rats closes over his face, he forgets everything, even his love for Julia. His spirit is broken. As the novel ends, Winston is back at work, his affair ended and his diary destroyed, along with his memories and the last fragments of his personality.
The State has triumphed. Winston has learned to love Big Brother.
Not all the characters in 1984 are rounded individuals like Winston, Julia, and O'Brien. Many have parts like bit players in a stage play, carrying signboards that signal the author's intentions. If you look at them one by one, you'll be able to write about the difference between characters as people and characters as symbols, or emblems.
^^^^^^^^^^1984: BIG BROTHER
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