It’s been a while since I read Orwell’s 1984, but I do seem to recall that England was just a small part of Oceania: The island itself was called Airstrip One, right? (Implying its primary function.) But what was the rest of Oceania like? Was it the Americas? That was what I inferred. But we never think about what the Western hemisphere was supposed to be like, and how American culture, in particular, took to Big Brother and co. More importantly, despite the inherent Englishness of *1984's world, I should think that any Oceania of which the USA was a part would have to be heavily dominated by it. So was BB an American? Where was the capital of Oceania? Washington? (I know it was a socialist state, but surely there was an inner party of all inner parties somewhere that ran a planning committee of some sort.) And how well does the system function in nonurban areas? (There seems an implication in Orwell’s book–and esp. in the movie, whose images are burned in my brain–that the countryside was still somewhat pure.)
Lots of questions. Feel free to answer/speculate at will.
The thing is, there’s just no way you can trust anything the novel says that isn’t directly experienced by the protagonist. How big is Oceania? Well, if the government can create the impression that it’s larger than it really is, that would be a pretty big disincentive to rebel. Maybe it’s just the size of England, and they claim to be intercontinental to scare their citizens. Maybe they aren’t really at war with anyone, and they periodically ship a certain portion of the population off to gas chambers and claim they died heroically defending the State. Maybe every other nation on Earth is a totally groovy Hippie love festival, and England is the new North Korea. The important thing is, as far as the protagonist is concerned, Airstrip One is the entire world, and the entire world is Airstrip One. What ever is going on outside of it doesn’t matter, because there’s no way he can ever get there, or it can ever get to him.
The book reminded me a lot of The Handmaid’s Tale, in which the protagonist lives quite close to Harvard, though it is an area unlike we know it today. Apparently all of North America is taken over by the religious fanatics, though the rest of the world is like talking about “stepping over the edge of known world” – there is just no documentation after the uprising of the new government, because they don’t want citizens to know anything outside of their fun little party.
In Airstrip One, the Party has succeeded in completely eradicating religion, even among the proles. It really stretches my suspension of disbelief to picture Americans abandoning Christianity within 30 years of Ingsoc taking over.
O’Brien’s book states that English is Oceania’s “chief lingua franca.” I wonder what kind of inroads it’s made in Mexico and South America. (Are there Spanish and Portuguese versions of Newspeak?)
What I’ve been wondering about lately is the last moments of the book. Was Winston executed at the end? He says how people who are broken are eventually killed with the time and place being unknown. They are simply killed one day without any warning. Winston also has thoughts during the book that his last thought before death will be hatred for BB so he will have won. Since his last thoughts were of his love for BB, I figured this meant he was killed then and BB had total victory over him. Anyone have an opinion concerning this?
That’s the way I’ve always viewed the ending of the book. He has been so thoroughly broken by the Ministry of Love that at the very end, he’s incapable of even mental resistance against the party. The futility of his attempts at resistance is probably what makes the book so unsettling to read. He never actually got away with anything. Every act of his had been noted in minute detail, as it was revealed when he was first arrested by the Ministry of Love and hauled off to be tortured and broken. In the end, Winston’s struggle is an utter failure, since he has not only failed to change anything, but he loves the very system that he has been trying to resist as they drag him off to his death.
Bearing Miller’s excellent point in mind, The Book states that “Oceania comprises the Americas, the Atlantic islands including the British Isles, Australasia, and the southern portion of Africa.” It goes on to say that “Oceania has no capital, and its titular head is a person whose whereabouts nobody knows. Except that English is its chief lingua franca and Newspeak its official language, it is not centralised in any way.”
Assuming that the above is true (a leap, to be sure), it is entirely possible that BB could take on the locally preferred appearance in any part of Oceania―Amerind in certain parts of the Americas, black in Africa, Maori in New Zealand―whatever would make him most acceptable to the indigenous population. As for Newspeak, I would imagine that it would be consistent, since orthodoxy (goodthinking) among the Party would be easier to maintain with a single version. This would also be consistent with the drive to make the language smaller. Spanish, Portugese, etc. would go the way of oldspeak, i.e., relegated to the proles; and as Syme said, “proles are not human beings.”
To me, the final four words of (the body of) the book have long been among the most chilling passages in literature. In a sense, Winston―the Winston we met at the beginning―was already dead; all that remained was to get rid of the husk. And it was probably done quickly, lest the newly dead reawaken (reference O’Brien’s comment about Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford: “They begged to be shot quickly, so that they could die while their minds were still clean”). It would not surprise me if the waiter were a member of the Thought Police―he would be in a perfect position to take care of the formalities when he saw that Winston had gone over.
A final (yay!) note on the term “Airstrip One.” Orwell chose this name to reflect his distaste for what he considered the American occupation of England. In his mind, the US was using England as a springboard for interference in European affairs―and he didn’t like it one bit.
(i) The Party always drew the administrators of each area from the population of that area, so that nobody had the feeling they were a colony ruled by a distant capital. Big Brother was the corporeal guise of the Party, so I imagine he would have reflected the local ethnographic norm – black, white, hispanic, whatever was desired or necessary.
(ii) Oceania had no capital. Airstrip One would have had the same relationship to New York as Chicago has to Los Angeles: different sizes, climates, geographies and natural resources, but no difference in political significance within the same government.
(iii) They’d force rural dwellers to urbanize while leaving the land uncultivated and unused (if not inhabitable due to the atomic war).
The Party didn’t care what spiritual beliefs the Proles held or didn’t hold. In the absence of churches to attend, bibles to read and spiritual leaders to observe, a religion can continue to exist only as an oral tradition – until Newspeak abolishes the concept altogether.
There wouldn’t need to be. In our own society a Japanese businessman learns English to conduct business in Brazil. Newspeak would have that status in Oceania, except that it would be compulsory for any practical purpose. English, Spanish and any other spoken language in Oceania would eventually die out.
Winston loved Big Brother, but that wasn’t the instant they killed him. The Party would occasionally allow the reformed to remain at liberty for some time before shooting them: evidently Winston was a special case.
Not quite an utter failure…the only way they could make him love the system was to break him completely. They couldn’t make him love it without doing this. A small victory but a victory nonetheless.
Why is that even a small victory? After all, even in Oceania, that breaking process never happened. The moment Winston loves Big Brother, Winston ALWAYS loved Big Brother, had always been true to the Party. He had never been arrested, never been inside the Ministry of Love, never been beaten, never been in Room 101. None of that stuff happened… see?
As to the OP, Miller is 100% right. Supposedly, Oceania basically includes the Americas and some of the major English-speaking outposts, like Australia and South Africa. This doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense in a Harry Turtledove realistic-alternate-history fan kinda way but it really doesn’t matter, because the truth is that Winston just doesn’t know.
Another perfectly reasonable possibility is that there are in fact no other countries at all; the ENTIRE world is Oceania, or maybe some parts call themselves something different, but it’s all ruled by The Party. The wars are all orchestrated by The Party among its own armies. It could even be that various factions of the Party fight amongst themselves and that Airstrip One might even have changed hands but that from the perspective of the ordinary schmoe, nothing changes. It doesn’t matter what the truth is because the truth is whatever the Party says it is. I don’t even think Orwell cared what the “truth” was.
When I read the book in high school, I always thought that Smith was shot & in his dying moments realized his love for BB. Years later, it seems that he was not shot, perhaps would never be shot- his capitulation to love BB was a metaphorical execution, his thoughts about being marched out to be shot & the bullet entering his brain was the shattering of the last vestiges of resistance his mind could maintain against BB. Probably his final reunion with Julia & realization that all feelings between them were truly dead caused that collapse. A residue of hope of feelings between them was what prevented his final surrender- that residue is now gone. Resistance is futile. Prepare for assimilation. S
It would go beyond even this because after his death/execution, he would no longer exist. Any references to him would be thrown into a memory hole and he would never be spoken of again. So even if anything Winston did could be considered a “victory” of any sort, he would be wiped from existence. In the end nothing he did mattered.
Many of the tactics used by BB were similar to tactics used by Stalin. A recent program on the History Channel discussed how Stalin would have all records of someone he had executed removed. This included having people painted out of pictures. Many examples of before and after pictures were shown with people removed.