Classics Considered

Nineteen Eight-Four marks the third famous classic to disappoint me in recent years.  Along with The Odyssey and The Divine Comedy , it would have been left unfinished early on, except for its mammoth legacy and the feeling that I ought to read it.  It's possible I lack the maturity or life experience to appreciate these books - I leave that open as an explanation.  But for the time being, I'll express my unpopular opinion, which isn't without basis.  (For my personal dystopian literature criteria, see part 1 .) England, Except Not England Winston Smith, our very Britishly named protagonist, resides in England of the 1980s.  Now called "Airstrip One," England is a mere drop in the empire that is Oceania, and its once-vivid culture has likewise been largely eaten up by the propaganda of the ruling one-party state.  All citizens are expected to revere Big Brother, the vague yet menacing figurehead of the Party, and in so doing are closely monitored ...

There was no intention on my part to read two dystopian novels at the same time.  I was already in motion to read 1984 - an embarrassingly long-overdue attempt - when I heard a novelization of Pan's Labyrinth was to be released in July.  I got in the library line quickly (these things go like hot cakes), and soon, with del Toro/Funke's fantasy horror in one hand and Orwell's bleak dystopia in the other, made the abrupt leap from "light summer fluff" to "not-sure-if-I'll-sleep-tonight bedtime stories." So... What Were You Thinking!? 1984 requires little introduction.  In Western culture, at least, terms such as Big Brother and doublethink flavor our vocabulary as glib reminders that a British author back in 1948 foretold the existence of increasingly powerful, monolithic, and tech-savvy governments.  We see signs of it everywhere today, from more innocuous instruments such as traffic cameras to the disturbing birth of China's Social C...