by Peter Huber
and enormous faces on posters: Coming Up for Air, p. 176.
telling you what to think: Coming Up for Air, p. 186.
unbreakable system of tabus : 1984, p. 70.
denouncing you to the secret police: Homage to Catalonia, p. 147.
who disgusted him horribly: Cf. “Inside the Whale” (1940), Essays, I, p. 210; “The Art of Donald McGill” (1941), Essays, I, p. 115 (in a totalitarian society art must therefore concentrate “on the un-heroic in one form or another”).
mutability of the past: 1984, pp. 27, 157, 214.
and became truth: 1984, p. 35.
well then, it never happened: “Looking Back on the Spanish War” (1943), Essays, I, p. 199 (in the original, “the Leader, or some ruling clique” or “the Leader” instead of “Big Brother”).
in 1984 is doublethink: 1984, p. 36.
and accepting both of them: 1984, pp. 215-216.
the reality which one denies: 1984, pp. 215-216.
above a junk shop: At another point, Winston and Julia meet in the belfry of a mined church. 1984, pp. 129, 131. The church is borrowed from Homage to Catalonia, p. 213.
overthrow the Party: Resistance is necessary, O’Brien says, though hopeless. 1984, p. 177. Or, as Orwell has already put in Wigan Pier, p. 158: “[E]very revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret conviction that nothing can be changed.”
the arch-traitor Kenneth Blythe: It’s Emmanuel Goldstein in the original 1984, of course. The Blythe, like the Orwell, is a river in England.
the middle of 1984: The Book-of-the-Month Club wanted to cut them when it released 1984 in the United States. Orwell refused, risking the loss of 40 pounds sterling; as Orwell’s authorized biographer reports, “the integrity of the book meant more to him than even this enormous sum.” Shelden, p. 430.
egalitarian, classless society : With allowances for the fact that everything is being overstated, “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism” clearly sets out Orwell’s own political views. He repeats all its essential parts in many other essays, including several published at the same time as he was writing 1984. See, e.g., “Toward European Unity” (1947), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 370.
shared all around: See Wigan Pier, p. 171; “Looking Back on the Spanish War,” p. 203; “As I Please” (1946), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 249 (“there is, or could be, plenty of everything for everybody . . . wealth might be so generally diffused that no government need fear serious opposition”). Cf. 1984, p. 171.
By 1948, however, just as he was finishing 1984, Orwell was beginning to rethink this notion. In one essay he criticizes Oscar Wilde for making “two common but unjustified assumptions.” The first is that “the world is immensely rich and is suffering chiefly from maldistribution.” In fact, Orwell now declares, the problem “is not how to distribute such wealth as exists but how to increase production without which economic equality merely means common misery.” Wilde’s second error, Orwell states, is to overestimate the potential of machines. There is in fact (says Orwell now) “a vast range of jobs—roughly speaking, any job needing great flexibility—that no machine is able to do.” “The Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde” (1948), CEJL, Vol. 4, pp. 426-428.
military strength decayed: “Fascism is now an international movement,” groping “towards a world-system” simultaneously in both communist and capitalist societies. Wigan Pier, p. 215. Coming Up for Air, p. 205, makes the same point more colorfully; that book places “all the soul-savers and Nosey Parkers, the people whom you’ve never seen but who rule your destiny all the same, the Home Secretary, Scotland Yard, the Temperance League, the Bank of England, Lord Beaverbrook, Hitler and Stalin on a tandem bicycle.”
Orwell’s earlier political essays: “Second Thoughts on James Bum-ham” (1946), Essays, II, p. 335. The essay was originally printed in Polemic under the title “Second Thoughts on James Burnham,” and later reprinted as a pamphlet, James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution. See CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 160.
the world is headed, and why: Cf. Wigan Pier, p. 231: “Fascism is coming [to England]; probably a slimy Anglicised form of Fascism, with cultured policemen instead of Nazi gorillas and the lion and the unicorn instead of the swastika.” See also “Not Counting Niggers” (1939), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 398: with “prolonged war-preparation” England “may sink almost unresisting into some local variant of austro-Fascism. And perhaps a year or two later, in reaction against this, there will appear something we have never had in England yet—a real Fascist movement.” Similarly, in Coming Up for Air, p. 176, Orwell writes: “It’s all going to happen—the hate-world, slogan-world . . . the processions and the posters with enormous faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering for the Leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him, and all the time, underneath, they hate him so that they want to puke.”
make that unthinkable: By 1984 there has already been one more big war and at least one atom bomb dropped on England. The 1984 atom bomb had fallen on Colchester. 1984, p. 33.
the educated, restless middle class: In Wigan Pier, p. 226, Orwell has already explained how these types will be handled. “It is quite easy to imagine a middle class crushed down to the worst depths of poverty and still remaining bitterly anti-working class in sentiment; this being, of course, a ready-made Fascist Party.” Both Julia and Winston have streaks of this themselves: they are middle-class snobs. Winston despises the smell of Parsons’ working-class sweat. And Julia sleeps with everybody—but “always with Party members” (not proles) and never with “those swine” from the Inner Party. 1984, p. 126. As Orwell notes elsewhere, “One thing that often gives the clue to a novelist’s real feelings on the class question is the attitude he takes up when class collides with sex. . . . [I]t is one of the points at which the ‘I’m-not-a-snob pose tends to break down.” “Charles Dickens,” p. 76.
molding the consciousness: 1984, p. 209.
two gin-scented tears: 1984, p. 300.
He loves Big Brother: 1984, p. 300. In 1940, six years before he began 1984, Orwell had already persuaded himself that that was how things were bound to end. “[W]e are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships—an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction. The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence.” “Inside the Whale,” p. 249.
I want to write, he continues: “Why I Write” (1946), Essays, I, p. 316.
his brain is not involved: “Politics and the English Language” (1946), Essays, I, p. 166.
it was his larynx: 1984, p. 55.
reliance on scissors and paste: Compare “London Letter to Partisan Review” (1946), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 189: “Scissors-and-paste anthologies and miscellanies continue to appear in great numbers.”
in much the same way: 1984, p. 11. See also “Review, A Coat of Many Colours: Occasional Essays, by Herbert Read” (1945), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 50: “It is just thinkable that books may some day be written by machinery, and it is quite easy to imagine poems being produced partly by fortuitous means—by some device similar to the kaleidoscope, for instance.”
swapped around by machine: 1984, p. 107. Orwell himself had six novels to his name: A Clergyman’s Daughter, Burmese Days, Aspidistra, Coming Up for Air, Animal Farm, and 1984. (Down and Out in Paris and London is more diary than novel.)
without any human intervention whatever: 1984, p. 139.
a child’s Meccano set: “The Prevention of Literature” (1946), Essays, III, p. 341. For other references to art by machine see “As I Please” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 274; “As I Please” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, pp. 229-230 (the BBC and the film companies “manage to rob literary creation of its individual character and turn it into a sort of conveyor-belt process”).
the end of the assembly line: “The Prevention of Literature,” p. 344. Anything so produced will of course “be rubbish,” Orwell adds (p. 345).
at least elaborately rewritten: “T
he Prevention of Literature,” p. 345.
Michael Shelden, Orwell: The Authorized Biography: (1991) (1,165,724 bytes).
like a sucked orange: “Letter to A. S. F. Gow” (1946), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 146.
using my brain or muscles: Wigan Pier, p. 206. Flory, the sensitive, artistic, semiautobiographical hero of Burmese Days, is nonetheless “a fool about machinery” and quite willing to “struggle with the bowels of the engine until he [is] black with grease” (p. 200).
tenure at the BBC: As W J. West discusses in his introduction to the compilation of Orwell’s wartime broadcasts, the British Ministry of Information oversaw the BBC. Its telegraphic address was MINIFORM. It was the highest building in London during the war and “towered above surrounding London in a way which we today, surrounded by skyscrapers, can hardly imagine.” Broadcast, pp. 64-65. Orwell could see the building from the block of flats where he lived. The rhythmic chanting of “B.B.” in 1984, see p. 117, is an insider’s joke about Bracken.
the Ministry of Information: See Broadcast, p. 20.
Capitalism, Fascism and Socialism: See Broadcast, p. 28. Bernal dropped out at the last moment, possibly at the secret behest of Guy Burgess, a colleague of Orwell’s at the BBC. Bernal was an ardent Marxist, Burgess was a Soviet spy, and Orwell despised Russian communism (p. 30).
a Soviet spy: As West points out: “If [Orwell] had wanted a person to act as a model for O’Brien in Nineteen Eighty-Four, a man who would betray him and anyone else for the Party, what better choice could he have made than his fellow-Etonian and fellow-veteran of Osterley Park, his former colleague and friend at the BBC, Guy Burgess.” Broadcast, p. 67.
Ironically, another Burgess—Anthony—published his own alternative to 1984 in 1978. A. Burgess, 1985, was published by Little, Brown, which happens to be the publisher of my legal treatise, Federal Telecommunications Law (coauthored with M. Kellogg and J. Thome, 1992, Supp. 1993).
Chapter 1
dismembered by the wind: 1984, p. 293.
gray walls of the buildings: Orwell loathes posters. Gordon Corn-stock, hero of Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), “had his private reasons for hating them.” Aspidistra, p. 6. In fact, “[h]e really hated them” (p. 14). The Aspidistra posters are “monstrous”; they are “plastered” all over London; one in particular is “torn at the edge; a ribbon of paper fluttered fitfully like a tiny pennant” (pp. 6, 230). In 1984, Big Brother’s “monstrous” posters are “plastered” everywhere, and one in particular, “torn at one comer, flapped fitfully in the wind.” 1984, pp. 4, 150.
Victory Mansions: While working at the BBC during the war, Orwell lived in a room at Portland Place. See Broadcast, p. 65. In 1984, these have become the “Victory Mansions.”
production of pig iron: 1984, p. 4.
no way of shutting it off completely: 1984, p. 3.
watched at any given moment: 1984, p. 4.
whenever they wanted to: 1984, p. 4.
third most populous province of Oceania: 1984, p. 5.
the three slogans of the Party: 1984, p. 5.
turned from the window: 1984, p. 6.
gulped it down: 1984, p. 6.
line of sight: 1984, p. 7.
trading was officially forbidden: 1984, pp. 7-8.
the compendium of all heresies: 1984, p. 15.
had passed through many hands: 1984, p. 184.
Blair’s bowels: 1984, p. 8.
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER: 1984, p. 19.
greetings: 1984, p. 29. One could organize a complete analysis, appreciation, and criticism of 1984 around this single, magnificent passage. Of almost biblical depth, it appears a few pages into Smith’s diary, and it encapsulates the whole political point of the novel in two sentences. Men should not live alone, but they should not live uniformly like ants either. They should have privacy but not solitude; they should be different but not isolated; they should communicate but not live under the unblinking gaze of Big Brother. Truth must exist. The past must be immutable. The future must not be.
gazing stupidly at the page: 1984, p. 9.
seconds were ticking by: 1984, p. 9.
razor blades: 1984, pp. 4, 8, 49, 61, 93, 176, 232, 234, 235, 241 (razor blades and more razor blades).
could be said to happen: 1984, p. 11.
four-mile radius of the inner city: “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad” (1946), Essays, III, p. 367.
’as ’er for a tanner: “Hop-Picking” (1931), CEJL, Vol. 1, pp. 53-54. p. 19 like the smoke of a rubbish fire: 1984, p. 123.
’Ullo, mate: Broadcast, p. 99.
the significant thing had happened: 1984, p. 18.
message had passed: 1984, p. 18.
gin in his mouth: 1984, p. 6.
contained all others in itself: 1984, p. 20.
gangs of armed men: Homage to Catalonia, pp. 147, 200.
seemed to grow cold: Here’s a little illustration of how an author’s style can be dissected (unfairly perhaps) on a computer. From Burmese Days (pp. 152, 210, 237) come these sentences: “A chilly, desolate feeling had taken possession of his entrails”; “A pang like a blade of ice had gone through his entrails”; “Something happened in everybody’s entrails.” These are the counterparts in 1984 (pp. 18, 116, 222, 235): “Winston’s entrails seemed to grow Cold” “For a moment it felt as though his entrails were being ground to pulp”; “Winston’s entrails seemed to have turned into ice”; “Winston’s entrails contracted”; “There was another spasm in his entrails.”
heavily toward the door: 1984, p. 21.
The Machine
sort of Chinese rice-spirit: 1984, p. 6.
mouthful you drink: 1984, pp. 291, 296.
in place of tears: 1984, p. 296.
your bed overnight: 1984, p. 296.
existed for the first time: 1984, pp. 206-207.
ears with Party propaganda: 1984, p. 74.
as if by accident: 1984, p. 39. There are, by contrast, eighteen references to the dial on the pain machine O’Brien uses in Part III of 1984.
explain how the gadget works: Cf. “Charles Dickens” (1939), Essays, I, p. 85 (Orwell complains that one of Dickens’s books involves the wonderful invention of a genial engineer but that Dickens never even tells us what that invention is).
Chapter 2
stupid thing to have done: 1984, p. 21.
was standing outside: A Clergyman s Daughter, p. 58.
It’s got blocked up: 1984, p. 21.
a foul drain-pipe: Wigan Pier, p. 18. Orwell’s original notes on this scene appear in “The Road to Wigan Pier Diary” (1936), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 177.
seldom taken off: Wigan Pier, p. 7; cf. 1984, p. 22.
a window pane for two years: 1984, p. 22.
Vaunnie is: 1984, pp. 22-23.
the stability of the Party depended: 1984, p. 23.
blocked up the pipe: 1984, p. 23.
devices as intricate as these: 1984, p. 189.
prison or the scaffold: I am quoting from A. Koestler, Darkness at Noon (New York: Bantam, 1989), p. 129: “Our engineers work with the constant knowledge that an error in calculation may take them to prison or the scaffold.”
snooping into people’s windows: 1984, p. 4.
simple job on a printer: 1984, p. 11.
through the body of a bird: 1984, p. 157.
the Faroe Islands: 1984, p. 25.
dark shirt and tie: Shelden, p. 417.
to bust something open: Broadcast, p. 99.
pale-blue, humorous eyes: Shelden, p. 204.
the place where there is no darkness: 1984, p. 26.
made much impression on him: 1984, p. 26.
newsflash has this moment arrived: 1984, pp. 26-27.
the continuity was not broken: 1984, p. 28.
Brain in a Bottle
a brain in a bottle: Wigan Pier, p. 201.
machinery-progress of the 1930s: Wigan Pier, p. 208.
become a religion: Wigan Pier, p. 189.
glutinously uplifting: Wi
gan Pier, p. 193.
is that the machine itself may be the enemy: Wigan Pier, p. 203.
The machine itself may he the enemy: See also Wigan Pier, p. 191 (“The machine is the enemy of life”).
clothes, hooks, and amusements: Wigan Pier, p. 204.
the paradise of little fat men: Wigan Pier, p. 193.
like Salvador Dali: “Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali” (1944), Essays, IY p. 20.
destroying the family: “Review: The Reilly Plan, by Lawrence Wolfe” (1946), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 91.
spiritual emptiness: “Review, Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, by T. S. Eliot” (1942), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 239.
the demise of farming: “On a Ruined Farm Near the His Master’s Voice Gramophone Factory” (1934), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 134.
Lower Binfield: Bowling sets out to rediscover his childhood home and to return to the gloriously untouched fishing pond that he cherished as a boy. When he finally gets there, the pool has been utterly mined. By gramophones. “As I got nearer the river I came into the sound—yes, plonk-tiddle-tiddle-plonk!—yes, the sound of gramophones.” Coming Up for Air, p. 238. The pond is now “full of young fools with next to nothing on, all of them screaming and shouting and most of them with a gramophone aboard as well” (p. 239). Bowling departs in disgust: “Couldn’t stick the noise of the gramophones any longer” (p. 239).
the gangster gramophone: See Coming Up for Air, p. 171 (“You know the line of talk. These chaps can chum it out by the hour. Just like a gramophone. Turn the handle, press the button and it starts. Democracy, Fascism, Democracy”); Wigan Pier, p. 216 [“ ‘Socialism’ calls up . . . a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone)”]; Homage to Catalonia, p. 198 (“the ‘good party man,’ the gangster gramophone of continental Politics”); “Prophecies of Fascism” (1940), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 30 (“the hero is the kind of human gramophone who is now disappearing even from Socialist tracts”); “Literature and the Left” (1943), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 294 (“Numbers of them joined the Communist Party. . . . [W]hen it was found that they would not or could not turn themselves into gramophone records, they were thrown out on their ears”); “A New Year Message” (Tribune, 1945), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 313 (“We hold that the most perverse human being is more interesting than the most orthodox gramophone record”).