I bought my copy of 1984 by George Orwell on February 25, 1989; I wrote the date right there on the flyleaf. I had read it for the first time a month or two earlier, I think, when I checked it out from the library. I was 13. I remember taking my copy of the book with me to my grandparents’ house one weekend. My grandmother took a look through it and was alarmed. But she didn’t take it away from me.
Since then I’ve read it four or five times probably. And I’m a big admirer of the film adaptation with John Hurt and Richard Burton. I hadn’t re-read it for a long time, at least ten years, but last week I had a sudden craving to read it again. This time around I can definitely appreciate the clarity of Orwell’s prose in a way I hadn’t before. The words he uses and the balance of those words conjures up the world of Oceania masterfully. Therein lies the problem.
I have just started the chapter that begins with the sentence: “When he woke it was with the sensation of having slept for a long time, but a glance at the old-fashioned clock told him that it was only twenty-thirty.” Because I’ve read the novel so many times, I know what’s coming next. I dread it. I dread it in a way that’s completely new to me; perhaps because I’m an adult now, perhaps because of what has happened in the world during the least ten years. Perhaps because I’m simply more aware now. It brings to mind something I’ve noticed about Psycho: after you’ve seen it many times, the first half of the movie becomes tremendously suspenseful. Precisely because you know what’s coming. It’s the flipside to spoilers that few people talk about.
Back to 1984. It’s going to be hard to continue reading it. I can already tell that by the time I reach the end, and that famous last sentence, it’ll be more disturbing to me than ever before. Reading it as a teenager, I guess I didn’t feel the gravity of the book—it just felt like a really great novel. Bleak, depressing, but only a novel. Now, I’m sure it isn’t only a novel. Or else why would I be afraid?
