No, Not *That* Big Brother.
Have you ever had a revelation that seems so obvious with hindsight that you’re not sure if it was something you once ‘knew’ but had long since forgotten?
I was thinking today about George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Winston Smith lives in a world in which the larger-than-life Big Brother (who Winston sometimes doubts is a real person) is always watching. BB is everywhere and can apparently even tell what one is thinking. Winston and his lover Julia get naked in the scenic countryside where she gives him black market chocolate, the taste of which stirs thoughts that he was happier repressing. They rent a room where they believe they’re free to talk without Big Brother and read aloud Goldstein’s book of banned knowledge - The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Winston and Julia make love and wander around the flat naked and unselfconscious about it. They eat jam and their neighbour sings what she remembers of the nursery rhyme about now-forbidden fruits ‘Oranges and Lemons’ and on the wall of the apartment is a massive engraving of the Church of St Clement. It turns out that Big Brother has been listening all the time - there is a telescreen behind the image of the church. They are made to stand uncomfortably naked before the BB and the Thought Police before being forcibly removed from their haven and punished. Winston and Julia each blame and betray each other, but - in the end - at least they love Big Brother.
Since I studied this twice as a student and have taught it at least twice as many times as a teacher, shouldn’t it have come up at some point that the book is a retelling of ‘Genesis’? Because this afternoon, the idea struck me like a rat in the face.
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I was thinking today about George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Winston Smith lives in a world in which the larger-than-life Big Brother (who Winston sometimes doubts is a real person) is always watching. BB is everywhere and can apparently even tell what one is thinking. Winston and his lover Julia get naked in the scenic countryside where she gives him black market chocolate, the taste of which stirs thoughts that he was happier repressing. They rent a room where they believe they’re free to talk without Big Brother and read aloud Goldstein’s book of banned knowledge - The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Winston and Julia make love and wander around the flat naked and unselfconscious about it. They eat jam and their neighbour sings what she remembers of the nursery rhyme about now-forbidden fruits ‘Oranges and Lemons’ and on the wall of the apartment is a massive engraving of the Church of St Clement. It turns out that Big Brother has been listening all the time - there is a telescreen behind the image of the church. They are made to stand uncomfortably naked before the BB and the Thought Police before being forcibly removed from their haven and punished. Winston and Julia each blame and betray each other, but - in the end - at least they love Big Brother.
Since I studied this twice as a student and have taught it at least twice as many times as a teacher, shouldn’t it have come up at some point that the book is a retelling of ‘Genesis’? Because this afternoon, the idea struck me like a rat in the face.
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