Nineteen Eighty-Four

Well, finally finished Nineteen Eighty-Four. Actually it didn't take long once I got into it - it just took a while to get into it. The first half took me about a week, the second half about four or five days then I whizzed through the last part in a couple of days.

So the story is set in a future dystopia. The world is divided into three super powers fighting with each other - Oceana, Eurasia, and Eastasia. It is written from the pespective of Winston, living in London, which is part of Oceana. Oceana is under the control of a totalitarian political party, i.e., nearly all public and private behaviour is regulated. In fact the party controls society to such a degree that they monitor citizens' thoughts, watch them 24/7 via telescreens - monitors installed everywhere out of which the party broadcast various things. Big Brother is head of the party, whether he is a real person or just a representation of the party is not clear. His image appears on posters showing his watchful eyes everywhere informing people that they are under his constant gaze - 'Big Brother is watching you.'

The book begins by introducing us to Winston's oppressive world. He is a party member, a member of the outer party, and he works in the truth department, whose job it is to rewrite history. The party is organised into inner party, which forms the core, the outer party, whose members perform smaller jobs, and then there are the proles, the proletariat, the great unwashed, workers and so on who live in relative squallor.

Winston feels alone in his world, he questions the party, but dares not voice his dissent because to question the party, even in thought - Thoughtcrime - means death. Even such things as a flicker of the eyes can be picked up by the party. However, for his sanity, he keeps a diary of his thoughts, this provides us with insights into his thinking.

He falls in love with a young lady he suspected of being a member of the Thought Police. She followed him around and appears by all externals to be ultra loyal to the party. He believes she is onto him and contemplates killing her. However, it turns out this exterior is cunning cover for her dissidence. They begin an affair meeting in out of town places away from the cameras and hidden microphones. Or so they think. This goes on for some time until they discover an old room rented out above an old antique shop in the prole's part of town - a squalid area not subject to the same scrutiny as Party-members' accommodation.

They keep the affair up for a while, they talk of finding the Brotherhood, a supposed secret alliance set against Big Brother. Winston works with a member of the inner party, O'Brien, whom he suspects is a member of this brotherhood. They meet one day in a corridor at work and O'Brien gives him a signal to come to his apartment for "work" - a most unusual offer. Winston takes this to be O'Brien's way of reaching out to him as a member of the Brotherhood. He heads over to his place and reveals all. O'Brien informs him that he is indeed a member of the brotherhood and gets him to pledge to being a member - this pledge includes lots of strange things like throwing sulphoric acid in a child's face if the brotherhood command it. He agrees without reluctance such is his hatred for the Party.

The affair continues and Winston is slipped a copy of the Brotherhood's handbook exposing the party. At their rented room in the city Winston reads from the book and finds all that it contains concurring with everything that he has thought about the party until this time. Suddenly the windows smash, big brother's voice emerges from behind the wall, and the Thought Police enter the room. It turns out he has been under surveillance all this time and O'Brien as well as the shop owner, are members of the Thought Police. They have been watching his every move for the past year and his every move in the secret room through the wall.

The third part of the book begins. Here Winston is subjected to torture or the worst kind for weeks and months on end. In fact he is not even sure for how long as he is in such a state. Slowly he is purged of his rational suspicions about the party. 2+2 no longer equals four, but can equal 5 if the party says it does. There is no objective history, only a history created by the party. The party is the only thing that speaks the truth, and he must submit. There is no objective reality. Eventually he does submit. But he still retains one shred of humanity - his love for her. This proves to be his final purging. He is taken to room 101, a room in which one's worst nightmare is realised. Here he is threatened with having his face torn to pieces by the overgrown rats of prole town. He snaps under the pressure and bleats out the one thing that will save him - give the torture to her, his girlfriend, let the rats tear her apart – and he means every word of it.

The book draws to a close. Winston is released a changed man. He awaits his death which may come at any moment - always a bullet in the back of the head. He meets with her in a park, they no longer feel the same. Evidently she was also tortured and cracked under pressure in room 101. Their hearts grown cold now. As he sits sipping gin in a bar, his new hobby, the telescreen announces Big brother's success over Eurasia in a battle, and it is at this moment his conversion is complete – his heart wells with love for big brother. His will has been bent. The book ends.

To Kill a Mocking Bird

Year: 1960
Author: Harper Lee

This book restored faith in my ability to read. So many times over the last few years I've picked up books from the Western canon in an attempt to improve my puny mind only to fall asleep after a chapter or so. Not with this book, I couldn't put it down. Perhaps the mistake I was making was in attempting to start at the beginning of the canon - I tried to read the Odyssey, the Iliad, the Old Testament. What I should have done is begun with more recent books, built up my "reading muscles" with things I could relate to better, and then worked backwards. Come to think of it, maybe I should just read things which actually interest me.

To summarize, the story is set in a small town in the American deep south in the 1930s. It concerns the lives of two young siblings, Jem, a boy of about 12 I think, and Scout, a young girl of about 8. It is written from the perspective of Scout from some future vantage point looking back at two or three years surrounding this period in her life. Apparently it is loosely based on real events from Harper Lee's own childhood.

The first part of the book revolves around the escapades of the children, there comings and goings at school, friendships, their relationship to their father, and their fascination with their reclusive neighbour, Boo. Their mother has died and their father, Atticus, a highly intelligent and respectable gentleman and local attorney, is raising them on his own with the assistance of their housekeeper. The reclusive family neighbours are apparently some kind of strict Baptists - 'footwasher' if memory serves. These people keep themselves to themselves and believe all enjoyment is a sin or something. Their adult son, Boo, never leaves the home.

The children are fascinated by Boo and get up to all sorts of mischief trying to get a look at this mysterious figure. He becomes the object of their fascination every summer when their friend, Dill, comes to stay in town. All sorts of fantastic stories revolve around him. Apparently he comes out only at night and hauntingly paces nearby streets and yards.

The story builds to a climax around the case of a young black gentleman who is accused of raping a white girl. Atticus is called in to defend the young man and as a result the family are subjected to abuse and threats and the children come to learn all about the pain and unfairness of deep racial prejudices saturating the deep south at that time.

The young man is innocent but, despite and airtight defence from Atticus, is found guilty by the jury of locals. His accusers are a trashy father and daughter who live over at the nearby dump. Apparently the girl had a crush on the boy and forced herself on him in their home. Her abusive father, disgusted at seeing this take place, beat his daughter and forced her to testify against the man.

At this point I felt the book fizzled out a bit. It built up to this point so spectacularly that what followed felt a bit limp by comparison. Nevertheless I read on and the story does pick up once again.

Following the trial the father threatens to get even with Atticus for implicating the father and daughter so devastatingly in the court. Eventually the father catches up with the two children as they depart from a school pageant one dark evening. He attempts to kill them, a struggle takes place and a mysterious rescuer comes to their aid. The father ends up dead, pierced by his own knife, and the children make it home, Jem with a broken arm, and Scout with little more than a few bruises thanks to her chicken-wire pageant costume.

The book ends beautifully with Scout's realisation that the rescuer turns out to be Boo from next door. Questions circle Atticus's mind as to what happened - should his son stand trial? Atticus believes he should but the local sheriff, sympathetic with the death of the young black man, will have nothing of it. It is never revealed what exactly happened in the struggle as it is written from the perspective of Scout whose sight is obscured by her costume at the time. She walks Boo back home hand in hand and the book draws to a beautiful close leaving the reader wanting more.