ReachExtra
As a 14-year-old in the summer of 1973 I binge read all the science fiction that I could lay my hands on from the Mackintosh Hall library in Gibraltar; Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein… George Orwell.
George Orwell? Well in 1973 to a young teenager his book “1984” seemed like an amusing work of science fiction.
I read it again in 1999 and was disconcerted to find that this tale of a dystopia no longer seemed farfetched, and now in 2021 it reads like an accurate prophecy of our reality.
So, I have read much of Orwell’s work; his letters from 1911 to 1950, his “Coming up for Air” about the loss of youth in a changing world, an essay about an execution in Burma which he witnessed as a young Imperial policeman.
His treatise on the serfdom of the Northern English working class: “The Road to Wigan Pier” which he wrote whilst home from fighting with the International Brigades in 1937 in Barcelona (where there is a Plaça de George Orwell off las Ramblas which I have often visited).
Orwell authored the renowned “Homage to Catalonia” about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War.
The sub-title to his monogram “Why I write” (1946) is “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.
I also used to think that was amusing but to my more experienced mind there is a baleful sense of reality.
I do not think that Orwell (that was his penname, his real name was Eric Arthur Blair) was joking! I consider him to be a secular prophet, and am looking for a poster of him to hang up with the icons of my religious devotion.
I suggest that in 2021 we are living in the middle of the dystopia which Orwell wrote about and therefore recommend to all the readers of ReachExtra that they catch up on this literary phenomenon. We have been destined to live in the Orwellian Age; poor us!
The author published “1984” in 1949, two years before his premature death of tuberculosis at the age of 47.
I often fantasize as to how different our Western civilization would be if he had lived into the 1960s or even 1970s; for surely, he would have continued to warn us of the very dangerous path that we had taken.
Anyway, the narrative of the novel is set in an imaginary future where perpetual war is the norm (shades of President Eisenhower’s farewell address warning in 1961 about the power of the military industrial complex).
In 1984 (written 60 years before the technological revolution), there is a screen in every room which monitors everything that citizens do (ring any bells?).
In addition to this omnipresent surveillance, history is invented and re-invented to suit the government’s aims and blanket propaganda conditions everyone in what to think.
No doubt many reading these words will reply with a cheery LOL or even a laughing emoji… of course, we are not the poor fools who are being controlled; we know the truth, we read it on Facebook… (LOL?).
In 1984 you will also learn about “thought crime” and the “thought police….” and children accusing their parents of not holding accepted beliefs and shouting down people who think and neighbours snitching on each other…
The last film adaptation of “1984” was in the year 1984 (starring John Hurt and Richard Burton).
Is it not curious that neither Hollywood not Netflix have ventured into a remake? Or maybe it is not at all curious….
Charles A Gomez is a Gibraltarian lawyer and political commentator
