1984, may just be the next read for Madeline Argy’s book club on her Pretty Lonesome podcast.
While discussing the differing literature education requirements by country, Argy brought up the dystopian classic 1984 by George Orwell.
“So I guess, probably, no one in America gets to read 1984 at school,” the podcast host said about the cautionary tale centered around “Big Brother” government written by a British author.
The book, which was written in 1948, focuses on the consequences of totalitarianism, the government’s mass surveillance of the public and how truth and fact can be manipulated.
“If you haven’t read it, you should because it’s more relevant than ever right now,” Argy told listeners.
In 1984, there’s a term “Newspeak” used that describes condensing language to diminish vocabulary with the goal of controlling society. Orwell communicated that “ungood” was Newspeak for “bad.”
Argy said this term reminded her of a study she conducted while at the University of Kent.
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“I can’t remember where this language was from, but it was from a language where they had more words for different colors,” Argy continued.
“And the people who spoke this language had the ability to notice differences in colors that people from, for example, the UK who spoke English as their first language primarily could not see. The people who spoke the language where those were two different colors with two different names knew the difference and could consistently pick it out.”
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While conducting the study, Argy said she made the connection with Orwell’s classic. “It does show that if you remove people’s ability to speak and to think and to put words to things, they literally lose the ability to conceptualize them.”
Argy confessed, “And I’m gonna be so f—ing honest with you right now when I actually tell you as much as I’ve just preached this book to you, I never f—ing finished it because I was a very very very very bad student at school.”
But from the parts she read, Argy said it “made me aware of the fact that, like, there is so much importance in understanding where you are in society relative to your government, essentially.”
In Orwell’s fictional world, society turned on itself.
“And everyone is gonna continue suffering because everyone thinks that the other person is the enemy,” Argy recalled from 1984. “It was like a whole thing. You should read the book. So should I, apparently.”
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