Around age 13, I picked up and read 'Animal Farm' (George Orwell), and six weeks later.....picked up '1984' as well. Personally, I tend to regard both books as 'must-read' before you finish high school. Interestingly enough.....you could mandate it for a literature class, or a civil affairs course.
Both attack communism and socialism in critical ways.
Yesterday, I picked up a news item. The folks who control/own '1984'....have gone out and decided that a new edition has to be written. It has to have the prospective of 'Julie' (there are only seven characters after Winston Smith, the lead character.....with Julie being a semi-love interest and dragging Winston along a path of rebellion against the system).
First, let me say of the 320-odd page book....it is purely science fiction material. Orwell had some intent to educate people on how bad things can get....if you allow surveillance and repression to exist in society. It was NEVER meant to be a love-lust-sex novel, or to explain relationships in a surveillance state. If you'd asked Orwell to write a lusty sex novel.....it probably would have been banned on day one.
Second, Julie was meant to be a Eve-like character to charm Winston.....always described in some Orwellian way as 'beautiful' and 'dark-haired'. He could have talked of her attire (rarely discussed)......her boobs....her lipstick, or some tattoo on her ankle.
Third, Julie tends to suggest there is optimism out there and you just need to hang on. Toward the end....Winston is dragged in....accused of crimes, and avoids torture by identifying Julie as the guilty one.....thus putting her on the torture list instead. Weeks pass, and one day at some cafe, they encounter each other. Each remarks on this page of text.....that they'd turn each other in (Julie turned Winston in before he turned her in). Orwell hints (wrongly) that only Julie was tortured but it's her telling Winston this, and you can't be sure of anything.
For some reason, at this bitter end of the book (I thought this was a pretty lousy ending).....they wanted to have this face-to-face 'I-screwed-you' moment, and then define the relationship (mostly a sexual thing) as ended. The coffee or tee sipped is mostly a end-point, and you wonder why Orwell even gave it this type of ending.
So the update part of this?
For many years....there's been internal debate by the pro-Winston/pro-Julie folks.....over two aspects of the book.
Some folks after an intense amount of reading....tend to see Winston (the hero of the novel) as a 'loser'. Why that Julie-gal even went out and slept with Winston is never explained at all.
The second question is....how Julie ever got promoted, when she seemed to be so antigovernment or anti-big-brother?
So the controllers of the book have hired some female writer to write 1984's second part....Julie's prospective. She's supposed to explain why she was into loser guys (my impression) and how she got promoted when she really wasn't into the whole pro-government/pro-big-brother thing.
On social media, this suggestion has created a fire-storm.....lot of negativity.
From my prospective? I have four problems here:
1. As much effort as Orwell put into the book....it's supposed to be about how things got so screwed up and big-brother was such a major part of your life. Yet the novel spends a lot of chatter upon Winston being infatuated or hyped-up over this 'whore-like' Julie gal. At some point, you just kinda wonder....were 99-percent of women in the 1984-era that screwed up, and Julie was the only tramp intellectual gal around?
2. If you were going to write another edition with Julie's prospective....why not include a 3rd prospective, from O'Brien as well? Also, a 4th prospective from 'Big Brother' (the leader of Oceania), who is never really explained in detail within the book? Also, how about the prospective of Mr Charrington (the seemingly nice guy who is really a member of the thought-police)? Also, how about the prospective of Parsons (an actual Truth Commission member)?
I could see seven other editions added....each telling their part of the story....why the Truth Commission had to exist.....how Julie was a four-star tramp....how Charrington fell into the wrong crowd, etc.
3. All of this could trigger a massive writing effort over the next decade....to go back to Wuthering Heights, Tom Sawyer, Bram Stoker, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, Of Mice and Men, Great Expectations, Lord of the Rings, Ulysses, A Tale of Two Cities, and even the James Bond stores.....to tell the feelings of alternate characters.
It'd be nice to know what Doctor No was really thinking of Bond, or how the Moby was actually a friendly whale, or how three of the Rings characters were sleeping with the trampy fairy ladies.
4. Doesn't this all go back to people thinking intensely about characters and asking questions that the writer really never wanted to engage upon?
I mean....if you knew that Julie had slept with over eighty guys before she met Winston....would it bother you? (Julie might have even slept with Bill Clinton)
If you knew that Julie had slept with the top ten guys of the Truth Commission....would it bother you?
If you knew that Julie had even slept with four women who were in the Truth Commission....would it bother you?
If you knew after the break-up of Julie and Winston....that she converted to some cult-like religion....would it bother you?
If you knew that Julie got all tortured-up, then told Winston she actually kinda enjoyed that kind of stuff, and wanted to spice up their relationship with things like this....would it bother you?
So I just see this episode of writing another ending to '1984' as wasted time and effort. The story....was about big-brother and the crazy world that was allowed to exist....not about Julie or the loser boy-friend situation of Winston.
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