Literature Entry Week 8
Wow the end of week eight means only four weeks to go! I’m actually really enjoying this semester’s work (with the exception of the Conrad/Yeats essay - was not a big fan).
And so we come to George Orwell. I must admit I haven’t finished reading Nineteen Eighty Four yet but from what I have read and from what we discussed in the tutorial this week I must say I’m intrigued.
Orwell’s concept of Big Brother as an entity is quite clever really. As we’ve seen in discussions this week, and throughout the semester, the relationship between the individual and society is one of regulations and conventions. There are those few who “dare to disturb the universe” (Elliot in “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”) in which they live and then there is the majority who obey social conventions and live out the conditioning they were exposed to. I think it’s funny that we now come to Orwell and his Big Brother. Up until now the literature that we have been studying has always had that Big Brother idea present without us even realising. There is no actual entity, but there is that conditioned way of being and thinking, and the rules and the customs that dictate the way people behave. I think it’s as if Orwell has acknowledged this fear of people to do anything but conform. By making it crime to act, speak or even think against Big Brother’s law, I think Orwell has made it more reasonable (for lack of a better word). I mean look at today. We nearly think it is absurd to simply do what everyone else is doing, and think what everyone else is thinking. In our society, we encourage individualism, and for people to be independent, and to break free from anything that is a constraint to them (within reason, i.e. the law). We’ve made a reality television show for entertainment mimicking this Big Brother idea.
Wow….I think I just contradicted my last entry! That wasn’t planned. Well I still stand by what I've said in both.
And one more thing…for someone who studies literature (and I know I can speak for more than myself here) I value language as a form of expression. I could not handle Newspeak!!!!!
I think Elise and Theresa said it best in the tutorial. The English language is beautiful. There are so many colours and shades that allow us to profoundly express what we mean. Newspeak kills this beauty. It reduces it to simple math. Something is good. If it is better than good, it is not great or fabulous, it is plusgood, and if it is really, really good, it is not extraordinary, but doubleplusgood. The same goes for if something is not good, it is not bad, but rather ungood. How crazy is that!? Thank goodness we did not come to that.
FROM THIS........
http://www.msholden.com/Pictures/Pledge.jpg http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1232/717416618_9ee9ea3c0a.jpg
TO THIS..
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