George Orwell - 1984

Christopher Hitchen's mentions George Orwell in a new essay in Vanity Fair, and argues that 1984 references the totalitarianism of the Catholic church, finally disrupted by James I authorisation of the King James Version.  I am not erudite enough to get into that particular debate - it interests me though.

When I first read 1984 in my teens, I read it as a straightforward attack on Christianity. In Christianity there was the control of history in the canon and acceptable doctrine drawn from it, the assertion of the power of miracle (as claimed by O'Brien later in the novel) in the teeth of reality, the inverting worldview in which the perfect love of God becomes a perfect hate of everything weak, unbalanced, selfish or distorted about you.  The Ministry of Peace is responsible for maintaining permanent war at the borders, in a perfect sectarianism,  like the militant creationism and uniform critique and condemnation of everything in society - things I thought defined Christian thinking.  Minitru has its unquestionable story which has always to shift to accommodate the present, and yet claim to always stay the same. Miniplenty promises all we can ask or imagine, and indeed reports that we have already received it. In Miniluv society is held together as the nonconformist is punished forever. In Miniluv there is no darkness at all, just the exhausting beat of light, light, light, and never a moment's rest.  (CS Lewis has a poem about the beating of the gaze of God that is not dissimilar.)  Even Big Brother is an apt name for Christ, the 'firstborn of many brothers' - 'the unseen listener at every conversation' as a piece of terrifying Christian Kitsch has it.

The final lesson of the mutual betrayal between Winston and Julia engineered by the Party, is that perfect fear casts out love.  And it is at that point that I think I depart from finding this novel a convincing work of art.  The truth may be that there is a lot more imperfect love than perfect fear.