1984

 I just read Orwell's 1984 and here's what I have to say about it. 

Like with Animal farm, I believe 1984 is an overrated work. One of the most protruding and annoying element was the love story between middle aged Winston Smith (the main character) and Julia, a young almost adolescent girl-like woman, who for one reason or the other is barren. I get Nabokov vibes even though I am yet to read Lolita. I imagine, having seen a picture of Orwell himself, that Winston Smith is him. I find it disgusting that Orwell might have imagined himself through the main character having a love affair with a much younger woman, Julia. The one nice comment the main character makes about a stout obese mum from the lower class doesn't make it more okay for him to go on fulfilling the literary fantasies of endless love making on fields of flowers and bug infested beds. In many ways 1984 is gross, it's a vile display of cruelty and evil power, and it almost makes one think, is Orwell in on it, is he, like the character of O'Brien in on the kind of admiration of power, a boot that threads upon the face of humanity forever. Unbeknownst me the status of Orwell's spiritual life, was he a Christian or did he believe like he wrote, that God is power and that with the last man of Europe (Winston Smith) also all human virtue and goodness dies. The events from Eden as described in the Bible, tell how the world of sin came about, but truly the supreme power that Winston Smith in his last moments of torture tries to capture is that God is love, not power, and so what Orwell ends up describing is a antichristian society where telescreens govern the life of man even to the extent of controlling his mind. If Orwell was still alive I think we could at least agree, that we are living in that era now. 

Presidential candidate Jussi Halla-Aho recently named Orwell's book 1984 as his favorite book. Halla-Aho said that according to him the plot is more about method than ideology and that the troublesome aspect of it was that the people of Oceania didn't have the right to a collective past, a history to be remembered. I beg to differ, the tragedy is when a people refuse to learn from it's past.

Many people mean to say that 1984 is about such absurdity as Kafka writes about in The Trial the guilt of humanity in face of a Judge whom they don't understand, essentially a "God problem" the problem is when man play's God. 

At the moment I'm somehow a bit fed up with men describing the realities of women, because male authors seldom do, at least seldom arrive successful at having captured the female experience of life usually because they know so little of it, and as with 1984 make no effort in understanding. However I will boldly move on to Hawthorns The Scarlet letter.

I've had to modify my reading plans, now it doesn't seem no where close to realistic to read Emma  before new years eve. And I'm also troubled by the fact that some literary critics seem to believe that Austen's Emma was gay, or that Austen herself was. So I'll read the story of Hester Pryme and meanwhile wonder what could be worth my while.