Reading 1984
Tomorrow is the first day of August and the start of the first Civil Discourse book club read, George Orwell’s 1984. If you missed the original post, read about it here.
If you’ve started reading—I wasn’t able to wait and listened to the first chapter while walking on the beach this week—I’d love to know what you’re thinking. I had to stop and listen to this line a second time: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
Winston Smith’s world is not right. And it’s not just the macro-political picture. It’s the little things, like the impossible time the clock is striking. You have a sense early on that he lives in a distorted reality. I’m struck again by the ability of fiction to drive home political themes in subtle but effective ways, by how much better we can understand the peril of our own time through this lens.
The book resonates heavily with me in this moment, and I’m sure it will with all of you, too. As you begin reading, we can start chatting about it here.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
Let's make 1984 fiction again!
I'm about three chapters in. Some people's job is to literally re-write historical events to change the outcome so that Big Brother and the predictions that were made are always right or to eliminate the event altogether. Scary. Trump and his minions are trying to re-write history to pretend that slavery was a good thing - among other things. Scary.