I love dystopian novels. LOVE them. I can’t get enough. 1984is my favorite book of all time, and right now I’m reading another dystopian novel, and I have about 15 on my “to read” list. What I especially love about 1984is how it is still relevant today.
I’m sorry, did I say love? I should have said hate. What I hate about 1984is how relevant it is today.
I don’t know if you saw, but the “torture” memos were released today. These were the memos that the Bush justice department put out that basically said “It is okay to do these things that are torture because we say that they aren’t.” Well one of the things that they did was put a guy in a box with an insect that they said would sting him, because they knew that he was deathly afraid of stinging insects.
If you’ve read 1984, you know where this is going. The room where they make you experience the “worst thing in the world,” in order to break you. And I quote:
“‘The worst thing in the world,’ said O’Brien, ‘varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.’”
Yeah… It is just a silly book about stuff that would never happen.