Nineteen Eighty Four

I've always been a fan of this novel, and a somewhat more qualified fan of the Michael Radford film - amazing visuals and wonderful Winston but not entirely sure about the music or the way bits of the story are compressed. I know that it is not, technically, a "great" novel -the characters are just not sharp enough (though I've always thought that was part of the point: how can you have sharply drawn characters for an era where character has been poured down the drain?), the language is a bit clunky at times (odd for Orwell, whose prose is usually, as he wanted it, crystal clear, and the story is a bit one dimensional. However, leaving its obvious and now cliched political import to one side, a few things have always bothered me as to the story's meaning:

1. O Brien. Bear with me here. Imagine for a moment that O Brien is an extremely clever, but extremely ruthless member of the Brotherhood. The only way around the Party's mind control for such a character would be to adopt it absolutely, as he does. Such a person would duplicitously attempt to uncover thought criminals, in just the way O Brien does, passing on knowledge of the Brotherhood while being able to use it in an interrogation also (to dismiss Winston's claims of humanity). Such a person would be as fanatical a Party member as possible, would work inside and with the Thought Police to identify possible recruits. They would, as O Brien says outright to Winston in his flat, employ the most brutal methods to overthrow the Party, knowing for certain that such a victory will not be achieved for many many years. The Brotherhood do not have to be nice, social democrats - almost certainly they are not. It does not matter how many people are caught, emptied out, and shot. The word is spread, the possible methods of resistance out there, somewhere. The game, a member of the Brotherhood might say, is too big to be lost by taking stupid risks - like a punt on an unreliable Winston for longer than is absolutely necessary to spread, however slightly, the word of "the Book" and so on. To be a member of the Inner Party and to work for the Brotherhood might therefore be two sides to the same coin - something an outstanding pracitioner of doublethink could easily accomplish. O Brien punishes and interrogates Winston as fully as possible because once suspicion is aroused and other people know (Winston's rebellion is obvious, even to the Parsons boy who shouts "you're a thought criminal" at him) he has no other option. Smith is an agent lost, and O Brien's prediction comes to pass: "When eventually you are caught, you will confess." O Brien will do this to everyone and anyone he comes across, sooner or later, while still, slowly, achieving tiny successes for the Brotherhood.
Plus: he wrote "the Book"; refuses to deny the existence of the Brotherhood (despite being quite keen in the interrogation that there is no alternative to Ingsoc anywhere - surely a simply "no" would have sufficed); and he clearly makes reference to Smythe's disappearance in an ironic way.

Hmmm. Well, maybe.

2. The Appendix is written in the past tense. Has Ingsoc been defeated by this time, hence the workings of its language could be explained in detail? Or is it just a simple part of the rest of the past-tense narrative?

3. To leave 85% of the population free from interference is hardly the act of a party which cannot allow anyone to conceive of a different way of life. Why let so much power drift away from you like that? I know that to some extent it is a satiric point, but does it indicate a much weaker Party than we are led to believe?

4. Where does Julia get all her nice stuff from? Is she still sleeping with Inner Party members? In which case why does she proclaim her love for Winston so loudly? Perhaps he doesn't mind - it is quite possible - but it does make you wonder whether Julia, whose interrogation was apparently "a textbook case", was more than she seemed. What she has done, after all, is not that much cleverer than what Charrington did.

I suppose it is highly unlikely that a writer with clear aims, like Orwell (and in many respects the themes of Nineteen Eighty Four grow naturally out of Coming Up for Air) would leave such minuscule clues as these. But I have always, while nodding sagely at the political parallels, wanted the entire Ingsoc edifice to be destroyed; so I am trying to comfort myself with this. Any further "hints and guesses" that it isn't quite as monolithic as it seems would be welcome!