Death to the Minds of Men: the “Gospel” of 1984

(For those of you who are not familiar with the book 1984, be forewarned: plot spoilers ahead!)

How It Started

I first read George Orwell’s 1984 when I was thirteen. Though I did get somewhat bogged down in it at times, enough of my initial interest remained and I was able to finish it. I found the ending rather disappointing because it was full of despair. Not that there was despair in the mind of Winston Smith, the main character, but because there was a privation of it where it should have been. In condensed terms, the entire book showed the world being turned upside down, but with a stronger element of permanence, as it was a demonized description of today’s world. Dissatisfied with this, I put the book down with a vague notion of not reading it again.

My high school English teacher, however, made 1984 mandatory for my senior class. At first, in rereading it, I merely enjoyed the (relative) familiarity I had with the story, but at the same time I felt I was also able to find more meaning in the story than I had 5 years earlier. One passage, pertaining to a man named O’Brien, Winston’s chief interrogator, particularly struck me: “A voice murmured in [Winston’s] ear: ‘Don’t worry, Winston; you are in my keeping. For seven years I have watched over you. Now the turning point has come. I shall save you, I shall make you perfect’”. The conclusion is clear: O’Brien is a type of Christ figure.

The Loss of the Minds

This, however, is the gospel O’Brien proceeds to preach: that the Party controls all, including the definition of reality. Thus, something, including the very being of Winston or anyone else, only exists if the Party says it does, and if any man dares to believe otherwise, he is delusional and will be corrected in the end whether or not he wills it (as is what happens to Winston). There is no such thing as martyrdom, for every dissenter, rather than being at least permitted the dignity of an intact free will, is completely and utterly brainwashed, turned into a weak shadow of the man he used to be, before eventually being executed. Furthermore, the Party also dictates how a thing is allowed to exist. When Winston attempts to use the example of the stars against him, O’Brien argues “What are the stars?… They are bits of fire a few kilometers away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out”.

It is precisely because the Party defines reality that they are able to take anyone who sees true reality and convince him with all sincerity – demonstrating how they, the supposed powerful, have fallen victim to their own fantasy – that he is “insane” and must be “cured”. For those inclined toward philosophy, note the resemblance to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The prisoners are able to be convinced of their wrongness because they are constantly subjugated through suffering by their captors, who are strong, healthy, and free, while they are pitiful, trapped, and filthy. After a period of this, the captives also undergo a forcible operation, the result of which is that the extent to which they can see the truth begins to lessen until it is gone. This illustrates how twisted the Party’s view of the world is, that a normal man would need an unnatural operation even to start to agree with them.

Finally, after the prisoners are willing to say and believe anything and everything according to the Party, they are threatened with subjection to whatever is their greatest fear. The Party does not intend to use their greatest fear to kill them, however, but rather to get them to beg that the one person they still love more than Big Brother be destroyed in their place. This betrayal is the final crushing point, after which a prisoner’s mind will have been made “perfect.”

A “Gospel” Worse Than Death

In condensed form, these are arguably the worst forms of “education” and “gospel” ever conceived. The claim to completely control reality isn’t frightening in and of itself, because if another claimed I was crazy simply because I had a different perspective of reality than he did, I would not automatically be branded as a lunatic outside of that person’s mind. No, what is fearful is that the Party makes good on its claim through destruction—not merely death—of all men. Some atheists may certainly believe that religion as a whole ought to be exterminated from the earth, but they also recognize that there are some believers who will not be convinced away from belief in a deity no matter what. Orwell’s Party, on the other hand, does not and cannot take “No,” for an answer—even from a corpse!

That is Orwell’s most frightening idea: that a supreme earthly entity such as a government could rob us of our personhood, our opinions, our capacity to reason normally—in short, of any form of freedom. It is also mentioned that the Party erases the names of dissenters from all history, but, when weighed with the descriptions of the other horrors, I personally find such a prospect less fearful than losing my very self without being allowed to realize it.

More than Men, As They Allege

Those of you who are not familiar with the book may now be wondering how the Party became so powerful. In O’Brien’s words: “Slavery is freedom. Alone—free—the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party (emphasis Orwell’s), then he is all-powerful and immortal.” In other words, the Party is powerful because of its inhumanity, and thus is also able to last forever.

It reminds me of an evil mirror image of Batman. Bruce Wayne created Batman so he could be seen by evildoers an immortal symbol instead of a limited man. The first vital difference here is that the purpose of Batman was to frighten and discourage those who broke existing law, not to create a new form of law. Furthermore, Bruce Wayne had no wish to “absorb” himself into Batman such that his existence as a man became essentially nil; rather, he longed for “a time when Gotham doesn’t need Batman anymore.” Put more simply, he, unlike the Party, used power as a temporary means toward betterment rather than seeing it as the only goal worth achieving.

Searching in a Real Gospel

However, looking from the outside at all the pain Orwell illustrates, I believe there is hope yet that we may not end up like that. Certainly there is solace in Christianity itself, but there may be a different hope apart from the faith, that it may be able to exist freely and not underground, to await naught but the most horrible persecutions. What forms my hope is probably something of a surprise… it is ordinary egotism!

What is crucial to the Party’s existence in its supremely powerful form is the way its ruling entities will die anonymous, remembered by no one. The only face of the Party is the amoral “Big Brother,” no one else. But, we can contrast that with powerful figures in today’s world. My mother once told me of a politician who was trying to re-launch a program that had failed twice previously. When asked about the previous failures, he answered something to the effect that it had never worked because he had not been in charge of it.

Yes, I have given only one anecdote. But, all one needs to do is further research current events to find other examples. Would people such as the man in the story really freely choose to become faceless cogs in a machine, just because it promised power? I highly doubt it. Men tend to love their personal identities too much to want the “immortality” which O’Brien promises.

I don’t claim to know whether these two aspects will be enough to save civilization in the form in which we know it, but Christ Himself promised in Matthew 16:18 that “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Therefore, instead of reading Orwell and feeling fear or hopelessness that we are too far gone, let us be strengthened in our faith in God, and in our fellow men, both for direct good and what God may turn into good. Perhaps we could even consider saying an extra prayer or two for this intention.