1984 by George Orwell

“But how can you write about books on the blog? The blog is meant explicitly for movies and movies only.”
“Because I firmly believe that movies and books are intricately inter-related to such an extent that both of the arts are utterly inextricable.”
“Well, you may continue. Nobody reads your articles anyway. See, you never get any comments. It always shows ‘0 comments’. ”
“Thanks for your honest opinion.”
“Then let me be honest completely. You know, your style of writing depicts that you don’t care for the readers. Your elements of humour are always bland and mundane. You never beautify your article with attractive images. And your conscious attempt, to deliberately use the toughest words of the dictionary in order to make your article look impressive, insulates the article from majority of the readers. I think if you abandon your frivolous attitude and try to write in a serious style then we can talk.”
“All right. I’ll try to write in a serious style today.”
“Go on. I am watching.”

The ‘serious’ article starts:

1984 by George Orwell

Genre: Fiction (But nothing like the moronic recent fictions)

Pages: 326 (Very much finisheable)

Surfing through the Internet, I came across the legal Oxford-definition of the word ‘literate’. It went on as follows:
literate (adj.): a person who is able to read, who is able to write, who is sensible, who is educated and who is knowledgeable.
I think Oxford people won’t object if I add another ‘who’ from my side:
literate (adj.): a person who is able to read, who is able to write, who is sensible, who is educated, who is knowledgeable and most importantly who has read 1984”

If you read any newspaper carefully, I assure you that you will find terms such as ‘Big Brother’, ‘Doublespeak’, ‘Room No.101’, ’Vaporised’, ‘Orwellian society’, ‘dystopia’, etc recurring at least once a week. These were coined by George Orwell in his magnum opus 1984. Very few fictions have changed the way of thinking of people and 1984 has radically overhauled the outlook of society since its publication.

Written in 1949, Orwell delineates an image of a futuristic world in the year 1984. He imagines that in future there will be only three countries in the world, each one of them being a totalitarian State. The State will have such a tremendous authority over the individuals that even if you dared to think anything which was ostensibly against the State, you would be immediately confiscated by the ‘thought-police’, you would be charged under ‘thought-crime’ and then you would be vaporized! Orwell inarguably alludes to the Soviet Union and entire communism in general since the Cold War was at its peak when he wrote it. My favorite part of the book is when the protagonist reads ‘the book’ and comes to know how the State justifies its ubiquitous motto: “WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”.

Written in a lucid style, 1984 is a satire in its most extreme form. There will be many occasions in the book when you will want to stop at a line and take a moment to exclaim, “Wow!” Open any list of top 100 books of all time and you will find 1984 sitting right there. (Well, that is not my reason for eulogizing it! Of course not!) I can continue to elaborate various aspects of the book interminably but I’ll have to restrain myself over here. (Read the other details on Wikipedia.)

“1984 is one of my all-time favorite books.” – Steven Spielberg

I think I don’t need to praise it any further. To put in Newspeak parlance, “1984 is ‘doubleplusgood’!”

The ‘serious’ article ends here

“You just cannot write an article. Your serious style sucks!”
“Okay…. That was brutally honest.”
“You should quit writing. You… you are an ass-hole!”
“Well, I was not aware that we were allowed to use such vulgar expletives on this blog… Anyways, I’ll have to check it out.”
“Was that a pun?”

Paritosh Bhole
FORESHADOW PICTURES
paritoshbhole@yahoo.co.in