1984 – George Orwell
It’s a significant work, for sure. I just don’t think it needed to be as long as it was.
1984 was written in 1949. I read it shortly after getting through Orwell’s other popular novella Animal Farm, as well as Fahrenheit 451 and The Giver. All of these works tackle the dangers of government that has a bit too much control, but I feel like 1984 is the one that usually sits at the top of that heap in terms of popularity. The whole “Big Brother is watching” thing is a phrase that’s still commonplace seventy years later. Heck, we’ve got a massively popular TV show named after this very premise. Orwell made it big, and his novel definitely foreshadowed the future we’re currently inhabiting in some interesting ways. For one thing, the super-saturation of media and the feeling that everything we do is being monitored have certainly come to fruition. Fahrenheit 451 was similar in this respect. Both works show us technology in the home that doesn’t ever really turn off. There’s one thing that neither author anticipated though – and that’s how willingly and easily we accept this barrage of media. We carry the universe around in our pockets, and let it buzz us whenever it thinks something interesting is going on. We are not only a constant audience to media, but we’re now also a part of it with the explosion of social networking apps like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and others. I imagine seeing stuff like that might horrify Orwell if he were around today.
1984 follows a character who’s beginning to question the totalitarian society he finds himself in – again feeling very similar to Jonas, Montag, or even Emmet from The Lego Movie. Granted, 1984 predates all of the others, so maybe this is the original. In any case, it follows a relatively predictable path right up until the end. Our hero is a part of the machine until a pretty girl distracts him. They fall in love – sort of – and decide that they’re gonna help take down this oppressive regime. Things obviously get complicated and the bad guys wise up to them. I’d seen that before. What I hadn’t seen was the finale. Spoilers ahead, just a heads up.
By the time the book ends, our hero has been tortured to shreds, mentally and physically. His spirit is broken and he finds himself coming to a place where he actually loves the society he’s in even though it hasn’t changed. It’s a very dark third act, and one that I hadn’t anticipated. I mean, yeah, Animal Farm had a similarly bleak ending, but I guess the fact that all the characters were animals took the edge off. Here, it was like staring at a burning orphanage. It was just plain depressing.
I can’t say I blame the author for taking this route. He was living in a time of such political turmoil that a future like this seemed all too plausible. Soviet Russia was at the top of their game, and the horrors of the Holocaust would’ve been fresh in everyone’s minds. There was incredible evil in the world, and it was front-and-center. Even so, there’s a hopelessness in this story that I have a hard time relating with. I readily admit that Orwell and I come from two drastically different time periods. I haven’t lived through two World Wars. I haven’t personally witnessed – or even heard much about – the atrocities of modern totalitarian governments. It’s not fair for me to say Orwell’s taking it a bit far. And to his credit, I do believe that the human spirit can be broken. People can become twisted, and governments can squash hope. But the idea that a world could exist built on such obvious fallacies and mistruths was really difficult for me to swallow. Maybe I need to read up on my history, but to me a society where old news is edited and re-edited before being scrapped entirely – with the knowing consent of the populace – seemed a bit of a stretch. Then again, knowing the time period Orwell was writing in makes this a lot more reasonable. Many Germans had no idea just how far Hitler had taken the persecution of the Jews. Russia was another story entirely. Things were really bad over there.
There was a big chunk in the middle of the book that read more like a political essay than an actual narrative, and I have to admit that after twenty pages or so I skipped ahead until the plot kicked back in. I also didn’t have any fun reading about a kinda-gross middle-aged man getting it on with a much younger, prettier girl. That said, this was a very interesting read. I get why it’s still relevant today, and think it deserves to still be talked about. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a shorter read, try Fahrenheit 451 or Animal Farm. Same basic message – much fewer pages.
The Giver – Lois Lowry
While I certainly enjoyed the ride, I’m not sure that this is a book that needs to be read by all middle school students anymore.
I can’t remember how old I was when I first read The Giver, but I know that it was a book we had to read in elementary school. I remember doing some sort of project on it where I actually drew a picture of a guy poking a needle in a baby’s head, as per the narrative. I’m all for tackling big ideas and for giving kids the chance to deal with heavy issues, but some of the images in this book made me wary of reading this to someone under 13.
That’s not to say that I wouldn’t recommend this book. I think the concepts behind the story are very cool – particularly the character’s gradual ability to see in colour. Having that revealed slowly was really cool for me as kid, and it’s something that’s kind of impossible to replicate in a movie because the very nature of watching the story would give it away. The idea of having one person holding on to all memories of the past was also very cool, although I admit I have many questions after closing the book. I understand that all memories of the distant past – of the world before ‘Sameness’ was a thing – are carried by the ‘Receiver’, who holds on to them in order to help make tough decisions and also to keep the memories from scaring the citizens. And I get that you can transfer memories to special people, which is how you move from one Receiver to the next. But are these actual memories of actual people, or are these amalgamations of many memories? Because there are times in the book where Jonas seems to be able to exert a limited sense of control over the memories he experiences. They’re almost more like dreams than other people’s memories. There’s one memory where he watches an elephant get killed by poachers, and then watches other elephants come and mourn. This memory clearly can’t come from the poachers, who have already left the scene. Is he viewing from the eyes of a hidden photographer or journalist? Or is this an omnipresent force from which he’s getting this information?
Stories don’t have to answer all the questions they raise. But this book also ended a bit too ambiguously for me. We don’t know where Jonas ended up. We don’t know what happened to The Giver or the town. Specifically, we know nothing about Jonas’ family or friends. What happened to Fiona? Or Asher? Or Jonas’ sister or his parents? These are characters we’ve become invested in, but we don’t get any real conclusion to their stories. Jonas and Gabriel seem to have a happy ending (although even that is a guess), but the fate of literally every other character is up in the air. Are we supposed to be okay with that as readers?
Jonas is the only one who grows as a character. Maybe you can throw the Giver in there too, but I found it frustrating to not get to see the moment the community got their memories back. I want to know what happened to them! And I guess I’m just a bit frustrated that we didn’t get that.
This is an interesting book, but I wouldn’t call it a must-read.
The Great Divorce – C. S. Lewis
This was an interesting read that kind of felt like a cross between “The Screwtape Letters” and “A Christmas Carol”. Fans of “The Last Battle” will find this intriguing, as it unpacks more of the ideas Lewis hinted at in his final Narnian novel. Here, Lewis gives us a dreamlike vision of the afterlife that’s surprisingly unconventional. First, heaven and hell are literally just a bus ride away from each other. The general perception of these two locations is that they’re very very far apart – although I’ve always pictured a trap door at the pearly gates that leads straight down when people are checking in. Secondly, hell seems surprisingly tolerable. Sure, it’s always raining, and everything looks kind of bleak, but it also seems like people are in little more than a mildly frustrated or apathetic state. There’s no weeping, wailing, or gnashing of teeth – just grumbling and griping and gossiping strangers. But the most interesting difference is that the inhabitants of heaven and hell essentially get together for tea every now and then.
In Lewis’ afterlife, the eternal infernals come to a sort of middle ground or “Pre-Paradise” every now and then on a sort of tour. It’s a green, hard-as-diamonds garden where the divinely departed drop in to try to convince the tourists to stick around. But inevitably, the fallen don’t want to have any part of heaven. It’s an interesting idea to picture the citizens of the Great Below as eternally unrepentant – almost as interesting as the idea that their heavenly hosts would take an interest in their affairs. Each chapter gives a peek into some of these conversations between the divine and the damned, and the discussions are definitely intriguing. They highlight the ugliness within each of us – and Lewis goes further than many people would by finding sin in even the ‘holiest’ of characters. In that sense, this book reads very much like “The Screwtape Letters” in the sense that it’s kind of a reverse sermon; we see people we’re meant not to imitate instead of the other way around.
My problem with this book has nothing to do with the ideas within it or the narrative style. I was entertained throughout, and was continually provoked to think spiritually about my own actions. The problem is that I can’t think of any biblical basis for Lewis to back up some of his ideas. Sure, this is fiction, but Lewis is certainly trying to convey a Universalist message. This isn’t the first time in literature that Lewis has suggested there’s hope for people who don’t accept Christ in life. As I mentioned earlier, “The Last Battle” features a character who worshipped the wrong deity but still made it into heaven. Aslan’s explanation was that even though the character was serving a false god, the good things he did were still done to the glory of Aslan. It’s a nice idea – just not one that is backed by Scripture as best as I can understand. “No one comes to the Father except through me” seems pretty straightforward. Similarly, the idea that there’s still a chance for redemption even after death is a wonderful idea but it’s not one that I can provide much support for. I want to believe that in the end, God saves us all. But from what I can see, God must be just as much as He is loving. If God is just, there’s gotta be punishment. And from what Jesus has told us about hell, that punishment is much more severe than what Lewis describes.
I would love to believe in Lewis’ vision for a few reasons. Hell seems a lot more tolerable, which is good news for fallen souls. There’s also a chance to get out of there, which gives all of us here on Earth hope for those who have gone before us. It’s also a nice thought in theory to think that one day, we will all be with God. All of us that have ever existed will be made whole and reunified with the One who created us. That’s a beautiful idea. But another issue with this train of thought is the ramifications that that belief can have. I mean, if everyone is gonna end up in heaven sooner or later, what need is there for me to tell others about Jesus? Where’s the urgency in fulfilling The Great Commission? Yes, obviously we’re supposed to do it because we love others and because we love God. But if hell is eternal, then there’s a very real significance to us going out and spreading the Good News.
To be clear, Lewis doesn’t state here that everyone in hell makes it to heaven eventually. Some chapters end with characters who seem doomed to hell forever. But the idea that some could come back certainly raises the possibility that all could come back. And I don’t buy it. Even so, this was a very interesting read.
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
I read this for the first time in 2021 immediately after re-reading The Giver, and I gotta say that the two books are incredibly similar. In both, we have a dystopian future society where one guy suddenly wakes up thanks to something from the past forbidden to most. The guy tries waking up others without much success, and in turn is forced to leave the society he once loved in favour of true enlightenment. The difference is that I think Fahrenheit 451 did this much better. Where The Giver left us with an ambiguous ending and lots of unanswered questions, Bradbury’s novel spells out what it was that led mankind to this bizarre future and leaves us with a definitive understanding of where the characters are headed by the end. I liked the different ways that social outcasts rebelled against the ban on books, and the protagonist Montag’s transformation into a fighter for freedom is heartbreakingly believable. There were pages of this in particular that felt so relevant in today’s world. This book was written in 1953 – and Ray Bradbury’s nightmarish future was one where people couldn’t escape the onslaught of bright, loud, and omnipresent media even in their own home. It pervaded every aspect of their being. For him, one wall in your house was a giant screen. Bradbury was surprisingly close – media follows us everywhere we go, but it’s not on the wall. It’s in our pockets, and we freely drink from it every time there’s a lull in conversation.
I thought it was interesting how Bradbury frequently wrote Montag in such a way that it made it seem like Montag wasn’t in control of his own actions. Were I writing a paper, I’d delve more deeply into that, but there were numerous examples throughout the story where Montag’s feet moved before he ordered them to, or where his hands grasped something he hadn’t thought of grasping. There’s something to that – I just don’t know what it is.
If you liked The Giver, this is better. But if you liked this, The Giver will be disappointing.
Next – Michael Crichton
I don’t remember much about this book, but I remember that the premise was really intriguing. This guy’s blood has something in it that pertains to a cure for something or other. And because a company did some work on his blood or something like that, they argue that they legally own his blood. So he goes into all the nuances of genetic engineering and the legal ramifications of all that stuff. If this sounds boring to you, then skip this book for sure. There’s also a sex scene in here that I’m not too crazy about. Other than that, I thought this was a well-written and really interesting idea. At the end of the book, Crichton even makes a personal appeal to the reader to talk about the regulation of genetic modification.
Comments