1984 - Interactive Reading Group - Take 1

Hey Y'all!  We are trying something new here, so let's jump in and see how this goes.

The next book on the list is 1984, which is a phenomenal book, and a book that everyone should read and most people want to read, so I am hoping to have some people play along.  I will post my regular blog about the novel when I have completed reading it this time through, but before then, I am starting this thread to let anyone who wants to to make comments about the book.

So all you have to do to play is click on the comment area below and leave a comment.  It can be anything you want: something you love about the book, a great sentence, a cool idea, a diatribe on Orwell's use of pronouns--I don't care!  If you think it and want to share it, throw it in there.  It's a reading/discussion group for anyone who wants to play.  I've made a few comments below to get thing rolling.

I myself will be absent for the next week or so (I promised the family I would read the last two books in the Hunger Games series so they can discuss it openly!), but then I will be back and in full swing.  Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.  Go get your copy of the book and dig in!

A Book More Equal than Other Books

How many overtly political novels can you think of that are embraced and praised by people of every political persuasion? Conservatives, liberals, capitalists, socialists, and even communists? George Orwell's Animal Farm is amazing because everyone loves it, and everyone loves it because it is amazing.

I can't imagine that I have anything new to say about this book or that anyone needs a review of it, so I will be brief. To me, the book is embraced by all because it breaks down so completely and so simply the means of manipulation that one group uses to control another. Before the invention of the photograph, how horses physically ran was a mystery. Their feet flew too fast to see, and it was popular to debate in the second half of the 19th century whether all four hooves of a horse were ever off the ground at the same time. It wasn't until Eadweard Muybridge took photos and put together a display that the case was settled. George Orwell does something similar with power and manipulation. And we can all appreciate the analysis and see it at work around us even today, no matter who is the force attempting to manipulate.

Squealer is the perfect media machine, creating numbers to "prove" what is not true, rewriting history freely and faulting the animals' bad memories and pernicious lies for the misunderstanding, and gleefully justifying why the ruling class needs special treatment "or else Jones will return." We see this combination of "facts," historical revision, and threats coming from all sides in order to gain our consent for a system that is not in our interest. Similarly, the animals don't have the wherewithal to argue against the lies, and even when they do, the distractions of the bleating sheep destroy that moment of potential protest. Our collective amnesia about the past is a common complaint today, and we see evidence of the "distractions" that pull our mind from the thing we should be focusing on. The right complains of the left employing these tactics, and the left complains of the right, and we all feel like the "lower animals" suffering in a system that is geared entirely against us.

Orwell, a literary hero of mine, manages to combine a direct and powerful writing style with a comprehensive political understanding and brings it all together with an unerring sense of story. At no point does his novel become a political tract. It is always a story first, and an incredible story at that. Stalin and Trotsky are just names in history books today, but Napoleon and Snowball will live forever.